Obama takes a public health view on guns
President Obama's speech and executive orders were an important step forward to address gun violence.
Obama takes a public health view on guns
By Michael Yudell
President Obama's speech and executive orders were an important step forward to address gun violence. The president affirmed both his support for the Second Amendment and his commitment to quickly reduce gun violence in the wake of the national tragedies in Newtown, Aurora, Oak Creek, and Tucson.
As we’ve written here before, gun violence is a public health problem, and the president’s proposal — ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines, improve mental health services, close background check loopholes, and make schools safer — treats it as such.
Any changes to gun laws, including banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, will have to be taken up by the legislative branch, and the president promised on Wednesday to push Congress to do just that. It will be a hard road ahead to pass such legislation, but hopefully our elected officials pay attention to the national mood on gun safety matters.
According to a poll out this week from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, that mood has dramatically shifted to support basic gun safety measures: 85% of those polled support “background checks for private and gun show sales,” 67% support a “federal database to track gun sales,” and a majority support bans on semi-automatic and assault style weapons, as well as a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips.
Using the power of the executive branch, Obama on Wednesday also issued 23 Executive Orders as steps towards reducing gun violence, including allowing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “to research the causes and prevention of gun violence,” to “provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations,” to “clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes,” and to “launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.”
These measures are a first step in the right direction.
As the president said Wednesday, “in the month since 20 precious children and six brave adults were violently taken from us at Sandy Hook Elementary, more than 900 of our fellow Americans have reportedly died at the end of a gun.”
Now we wait for Congress to act. But every day we wait more Americans will die. “The number will keep growing,” Obama said. Well aware of the political hurdles that lie ahead, the president reminded us “the only way we can change is if the American people demand it.”
So let’s demand it. Now.
Read more posts about violence and trauma on The Public's Health.
It's more like a ridiculous "zero tolerance" policy. Nothing the government does will stop all gun violence. If it did, Chicago would be the safest city in America. Obama is grandatanding, playing politics, and trying to take something away he views as conservative.— Phillies2008WSChamps- Republicans are such cowards. You KNOW they will side with terrorism and arming the crazies with semiautomatics. Sane Americans have to stand up to these nuts who support the crackpot organization, NRA.— Foxclove5
- This comment has been deleted. — ComeAndTakeIt
- Notice how people who support reasonable restrictions to assault weapon access are painted as akin to Adolf Hitler? — Izzy812
- I do hope that we are going to take a look at motor vehicles next. Between accidents and the smog that they put off, they have to be the largest threat to our population. I am also anxious to see when we are going to fully outlaw smoking of cigarettes, cigars and pipes. That is most certainly is a public health risk. Would someone like to give me a quote on the death in the last 50 years due to cigarettes alone? How about just the second hand smoke ones....? Anyone? Next up. Sodas and the Big Mac. Please save us from ourselves. We are too stupid to be left to make decisions on our own. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that we have elected Ubama president not once but twice. TWICE!!! Wow. What country s this again?— truthfirst
- Why are you so outraged the President and the majority of Americans want to make our country a safer place?
Why do Republicans love terrorism and violence?
Why are Republicans content with the school massacres?
You nuts will never see a Republican in the White House again. Mainstream American will never elect one of your clowns in a general election.
You people are nuts.— Foxclove5 - Fact check. I'm not a Republican. Nice knee jerk rubber stamp reaction though. I just cannot understand how taking my guns would have saved those kids or the next group of innocents. I am outraged at many things about this country. I just don't have the room here to list them all.
I agree that the Republicans are far out of sync with America. I am not sure why America has shifted off the base on which it was created, but it has.— truthfirst - Your arguments are ridiculous. You do realize that cigarettes and the auto industry are regulated, right? You can't drive your car over the speed limit. Think of these new restrictions as speed limits or cigarette filters. It's time that people like you stop using the second amendment to have whatever you want. This is the same country that it was in 1776 when the document was written. It's a living document, the Constitution and the laws need to change with the times.
What country is this? It's one of the most violent, developed countries in the world. I have no stats, but I'm guessing most is from illegal guns, yes. I don't support a ban on all guns. I do support some common sense.— PotteryPete - This comment has been deleted. — ComeAndTakeIt
- @comeandtakeit: Time and time again, you prove yourself to be an uninformed, ignorant idiot. Nobody said anything about taking anyone's guns away. You and many of your ignorant friends have allowed yourselves to come under the NRA's far right propaganda machine, believing that the U.S. Government under President Obama is aiming to take away our personal freedoms and somehow enslave all Americans. It is unfortunate that you have allowed the wool to be pulled over your eyes by people who endeavor to keep this country in a perpetual state of violence, so that they can achieve an extraordinary level of personal gain, at the expense of every other hard-working American. If there is truly anything that can be done to prevent one violent act committed with a firearm, then it should meet no resistance from anyone. — lalaw9833
- An even better car analogy than the speed limit: all automobiles must be registered, auto thefts must be reported, and auto operators must be licensed! And automobiles weren't even designed for the sole function of killing things... unlike *cough* guns. — Izzy812
- "You do realize that cigarettes and the auto industry are regulated, right? You can't drive your car over the speed limit."
oh, really?
why can't you?
did the regulated auto industry install a speed governor in your vehicle at the insistence of the federal government?
and you think cigarette filters are required?
or that they make cigarettes "safe"?— ekw555 - Reality check; articles are hardly from the NRA in these publications.
Regardless of how you feel about gun control in general, there is no correlation between gun control strictness and mass murder.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-between-the-headlines/201207/mass-murders-are-the-rise
Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/jared-loughner-mass-shootings-mental-illness
But facts should never cloud an opinion.— STEPHEN1988 - Reality check; there has been no established correlation between gun control strictness and anything because federal funding for research into the causes of gun violence has been banned for the past 17 years by carefully crafted legislation endorsed by the NRA. — Izzy812
- Still waiting for the Demagog in Chief to say something about Hollywood violence. Hope his silence is based in science, and has nothing to do with the cash they stuffed in his pockets.— Beethoven987
