Gun related deaths in the U.S. are the highest they have been in 40 years, according to a CNN analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database.
CNN’s analysis showed that 2017 had 39,773 gun deaths, 23,854 which were suicides. The CDC confirmed to CNN that these numbers were the highest since 1979, the same year the CDC began recording gun death data.
Art Caplan, the director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU's Langone Medical Center, told Boston Public Radio Thursday that these numbers are not necessarily caused by how many guns Americans own. Countries like Canada and Switzerland have many guns, Caplan said, but do not suffer the same high rate of gun deaths.
“It is not just having guns in the home or guns around. One reason they do better and don’t have these epidemic of deaths, including suicide, is they train people,” Caplan said.
“You have to go through a course in Switzerland, you have to go through some pretty rigorous training about how to operate the guns, store the guns safely, know what to do with your ammo, keeping it separately from the gun, locking it up, that sort of thing. We have none of that,” Caplan continued.
Caplan noted that organizations like the NRA block regulation and safety measures that could potentially prevent such rampant death.
“There are a lot of basic things we can do that are public health in orientation about safety education training, and the NRA fights these tooth and nail … and the numbers keep getting worse and worse,” Caplan said.
Caplan said he believes that people who worry that more gun regulations would impede on their Second Amendment rights have lost sight of what the founding fathers originally intended.
“I don’t think the founders, if you want to get literalist, as some of our Supreme Court Justices seem to want to do, envisioned drunk Uncle Harry with a machine gun and a bazooka in the backyard," he said. "That wasn’t their notion of bearing weapons.”
