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The Many Faces of Gun Violence

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Gun violence is not always a mental health issue.

Gun violence is not always an anger issue.

Gun violence is not even always intentional.

Gun violence has many faces, and it is impossible to identify them all in time to prevent it completely. Tragedies can spring from many sources: the disenfranchised loner with a score to settle, the mentally unstable man or woman on a mission, the road rage incident gone too far, the radicalized militant, or even the child who accidentally discharges his mother’s pistol in the back of the car.

There is no single profile for a person likely to commit gun violence. Even mental health issues is not a particularly good indicator of someone likely to commit violence. There are, however, a number of warning signs that we can use to paint a better picture. It is for this reason that doctors have started screening individual patients to determine whether they – or their family members – are at risk of committing, or being targeted by, gun violence.

 

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Some good red-flag questions to ask yourself that may indicate an increased risk:

  • Does your household contain unlocked guns that can be accessed by someone, such as a child or visitor, or are kept readily at hand to be quickly retrieved in an emotional moment, such as rage?
  • Do members of your household threaten each other with violence, either verbally or physically?
  • Has a member of your household ever pointed a gun, loaded or not, at another member of the household?
  • Does someone with mental health issues in your household have access to firearms? If so, do these particular mental health issues suggest an increased risk?

An important thing to note is that these questions largely focus on the behaviors of the people in proximity or possession of the guns, as well as how the guns are stored and accessed. Stopping gun violence is not so easy as focusing on a broad group of people – even those with mental health issues – but must instead start with looking at the individual’s relationship with guns and violence in general.

New Gun Violence measures taken by the White House

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With a number of stories in the news lately about toddlers and young children accidentally shooting, and sometimes killing, themselves and their family members with unlocked guns, President Obama has made a priority of putting new protections in place to help curb the gun violence epidemic that has infected our country.  These new protections focus primarily on the practical safety measures and better screening and reporting for mental illness, and are aimed to be less controversial than past attempts to reduce gun violence. We’ll take a look at the current measures being pursued and what they might mean.

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Smarter Handguns

The first and most well-known idea the administration is pushing is the use of smart-gun technology, designed to prevent people either than the gun owner from firing a handgun. The goal of this technology is to keep guns out of the wrong hands, prevent children from firing unlocked guns, and curb the illegal sale of firearms.

The current challenges facing this technology are largely practical: Are these guns equally effective in the hands of police and military personnel as current firearms? And can manufacturers be convinced to produce these new smart guns efficiently?

The administration hopes to answer these questions by running military tests and incentivizing both manufacturers and local governments from adopting smart gun technology.  A fully report on the processes being implemented can be found here.

While responsible gun owners have long touted the policy of “lock up your guns”, the government has now chosen to have a hand in making this more of a mandatory process than a friendly suggestion. While it may not solve the issue of legal gun owners committing violent crimes, it does provide a welcome safeguard against accidental violence and some amount of black market gun sales.

Focus on Mental Illness

Currently, laws do not allow doctors to collect or share data on gun violence, despite the fact that many doctors now choose to screen for gun violence with their patients. As a result, the president has focused on the background checks system as the current most important stage of screening. The proposed rule the administration is publishing is designed to ensure that mental health information is appropriately reported during background checks while attempting to obtain a firearm. It also seeks to provide an exemption policy from people with mental health issues that nevertheless seek to be cleared to own a firearm.

This policy change would still not fix the knowledge gap we have artificially created which prevents doctors from compiling gun violence records for study. Only by changing the laws in a significant manner could we do that, but heavy lobbying from the NRA has thus far been successful in preventing this from happening. Hopefully, myself and fellow medical professionals will one day be permitted to gather real, concrete data to better understand the gun violence problem we have as a nation, but for now steps like this may help staunch the bleeding.

State and Local Collaboration

This is the least concrete of the initiatives, as it simply announces a 50-state initiative to combat gun violence on the state and local level.  The 50-State Gun Violence Prevention Convening will focus on legislative and executive actions to fight gun violence, as well as a forum to discuss the current background system and reporting tools available to the states.

While it’s difficult to see significant change arising from this initiative, the current issues with reporting on gun violence and the background check system make things like this necessary to better understand the challenges faced at the state and local level.

There’s little doubt that the Obama administration has been frustrated by past attempts to fight gun violence in this country. This recent announcement reflects some of those frustrations, focusing instead on practical, less-controversial measures to fix what can be fixed. Let’s hope these small measures result in real change, and that this is the first step toward a country free of the fear of day-to-day gun violence.