Congressman Mike Thompson hosted a virtual town hall on Tuesday with special guest Dr. Garen Wintemute, a UC Davis gun violence prevention expert and emergency room doctor. The meeting dealt with topics such as gun violence prevention and data on gun violence and how to save lives through legislation.
Thompson (D-St. Helena) said that “Every day 30 people are killed by someone using a gun. If you add accidental deaths and suicides to that number, it goes up to over 100 people every day.” He added that gun violence costs taxpayers $280 billion dollars a year and said that this year alone, there’s already been 225 mass shootings. “There have only been 136 days this year. That means we’re averaging about 1.6 mass shooting every day. Alarmingly, the number one cause of death for children and teens today is gun violence. And already we’ve had 98 children shot and 566 teens shot.”
Thompson said, “this is an epidemic. It’s a problem that we should all be focused on trying to address. There are a number of things that we could do in Washington DC if we had the votes to do them. For instance, we could expand background checks to make sure that anybody who buys a firearm is checked to ensure that they’re not a danger to themselves or to others. We could codify the rules on ghost guns. Those are guns that are put together out of kits. No background checks are required to buy those. There’s no serial numbers on the kits. We can do more money for intervention programs and mental health.”
Dr. Wintemute, renowned expert on the public health crisis of gun violence and a pioneer in the field of injury, epidemiology and prevention of firearm violence, which results in approximately 30,000 deaths a year and approximately 75,000 non-fatal injuries, said “it’s a public health problem. The pandemic has really brought change here as it has to so much else from 2019 to 2020. We had the largest ever increase in firearm homicide that we’ve seen in 100 years and (in) mortality data. From 2020 to 2021, we had that for suicides.”
According to Wintemute, when it comes to interpersonal violence, assault and homicide, “Fewer than 5% of those events are primarily related to mental illness on the assailant’s part.” He added that we need an expanded system of diagnosis and treatment for mental health, because we’re not generally doing a good job. “We need it to prevent violence, but we need to understand that our target will primarily be suicide and self-harm. Our rates of fatal assaultive violence, our rates of suicide are much higher than elsewhere, but it’s because of the technology.”
Thompson elaborated. He said, “We provided funds for community violence intervention programs and for mental health. We were successful in finding some bipartisan support for that. I was amazed that it was so few that it was enough to pass the bills out of both houses, and we’re continuing to work on it. We’re working almost daily trying to find out what’s the secret sauce to get everybody on the same page to be willing to address these issues. There are folks who’ve gone to their corner and aren’t willing to do anything in regard to gun violence prevention, and that puts us all at risk,” he said.
