Health expert: Gun violence is a public health issue

A Congressional ban on using federal funds to “promote gun control” has had a chilling effect on the study of guns, leaving many questions unanswered, says David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at Harvard Chan School.
He spoke to several news outlets about the state of firearms research as the gun control debate reignited following the mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
“I’d like to know is who is using these guns inappropriately, and how they get them,” said Hemenway, who is also director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, in an interview with WBUR’s Morning Edition. "We really don’t know that. We know so little about gun theft, about gun storage, about gun training, about concealed gun carrying.”
One thing researchers have established, Hemenway said, is that fewer guns in the home lead to fewer deaths. He told WBUR that there is “incredibly good, solid research” around the fact that a gun in the home really increases the risk of suicide dramatically — maybe threefold — for everyone in the house.”
This risk outweighs the potential self-defense benefit of owning a gun, Hemenway said. Guns are very rarely used for self-defense, he said, and there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that guns are better for self-defense than using another weapon, calling the police, or running away.
“If we had discovered that having a gun in the home was incredibly beneficial, people in public health would be strongly promoting for people to get guns,” Hemenway told NPR’s Science Friday in an interview. “But that’s not what the science shows.”