The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, on Tuesday declared gun violence in America a public health crisis, recommending an array of preventive measures that he compared to past campaigns against smoking and traffic safety.
The step follows years of calls by health officials, including four of Dr. Murthy’s predecessors, to view firearm deaths through the lens of health rather than politics.
The National Rifle Association has vigorously opposed this framing and promoted legislation that effectively quashed federal funding for research into gun violence for a quarter-century.
Dr. Murthy’s 32-page advisory calls for an increase in funding for firearm violence prevention research; advises health workers to discuss firearm storage with patients during routine medical visits; and recommends safe storage laws, universal background checks, “red flag” laws and an assault weapons ban, among other measures.
“I’ve long believed this is a public health issue,” he said in an interview. “This issue has been politicized, has been polarized over time. But I think when we understand that this is a public health issue, we have the opportunity to take it out of the realm of politics and put it into the realm of public health.”
Gun rights organizations were scathing about the new advisory, deriding it, sometimes in unprintable language, as justification for curtailing the rights of law-abiding gun owners. A spokesman for the N.R.A. called it an “extension of the Biden administration’s war on law abiding gun owners.”
