Public mourning without action accomplishes nothing

After last week’s mass shooting, President Obama spoke, as he has 10 times before, about gun violence. He sounded frustrated and exasperated.

For good reason. The shootings, he said, have become routine, as has the reporting. Even the reactions have become routine.

People gather, light candles, place flowers, hold hands, pray. And now, by the thousands, they rush to Tweet assurances that their “thoughts and prayers” are with the victims and their families.

But absent action to bring about change, these public displays have become empty rituals, a version of Mourn Porn.

But change is possible.

Consider the decrease in highway deaths. Fifty years ago, in 1965, just over 47,000 people died in auto accidents. In 2013, that number had dropped to 32,719 - more than 14,000 fewer people.

And we know why. Cars are safer now. Seat belts and air bags are standard, because of federal regulations. Drivers, too, are licensed and regulated.

But while the raw numbers are impressive, they barely touch on the success of highway safety measures. In 1965, the number of deaths per 100 million miles traveled was 5.30. In 2013, that number was 1.11.

That’s a decrease of nearly 80 percent! Politicians talk loosely about “job-killing” federal regulations.

(Which is fair enough, though their endless predictions about the “job-killing” Obamacare haven’t panned out.)

But we should also acknowledge life-saving regulations. If motorists were dying on the highway at the same rate as 1965, we’d have well over 100,000 auto-accident deaths each year.

Hundreds of thousands of lives have been spared.

Now look at smoking. In 1965, about 43 percent of adults smoked cigarettes. (You might think it was higher if you watched “Mad Men.”) It has fallen to below 20 percent.

Even at that lower rate, smoking remains, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the leading cause of preventable death. But, again, hundreds of thousands of lives are being saved.

In this case, credit goes not to regulation but to two key factors: high taxes and a relentless public education campaign. (It’s interesting, though, that cigarette companies have been sued because of their products, while the gun industry has been protected.)

Public attitudes about drunk driving have also changed, thanks to the persistence of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. A combination of public education, new laws and heavier enforcement has resulted in fewer drunk drivers.

More recently, soft drink consumption has dropped as people switch to water, the result of people more informed about the health risks of drinking soda.

Please note that none of these campaigns has been 100 percent successful. That is not possible.

The same is true of gun safety. We can’t solve the problem of gun violence any more than we can eliminate the carnage on our highways or force all people to quit smoking.

But we do need to start thinking about gun violence as we do about highway deaths and smoking, as a public health issue.

Here’s where we can start.

Many years ago, in the spring of 1970, I was treated for a broken arm at the Beebe Hospital Emergency Room.

My chief memory, however, is not of my injury, but of an older man who was wheeled in as I was preparing to leave. He had shot himself in the head. He lay uncovered on the gurney, his wound clearly visible. He was probably already dead.

It was, for me, an uncommon sight. But in the U.S., it’s a common occurrence.

Often, after a mass shooting, you’ll see the statistic that 30,000 or so people in the United States die each year by “gun violence.”

The phrase “gun violence” might lead you to believe that’s the number of murders committed by firearms.

Far from it. Roughly two-thirds of those who die by “gun violence” are actually suicides.

Twenty thousand people a year shoot themselves to death and we basically shrug our shoulders.

One odd but well-known statistic, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is that women attempt suicide three times more often than men. Men, however, are four times more likely to kill themselves.

How is that possible? Men are much more likely to use a gun; women more often use poison. Guns are more lethal. Period.

In 1965, nobody would have thought it possible to bring about such dramatic declines in deaths on the highways or from lung cancer.

With changes in public attitudes, we can do the same with suicides and mass shootings.

We don’t need to “take away” guns any more than we need to outlaw cars or cigarettes. We do need to treat gun violence as a public health issue.


Don Flood is a former newspaper editor living near Lewes. He can be reached at floodpolitics@gmail.com.