Political Rewind: When will it end? Dr. Mark Rosenberg discusses gun safety as a public health issue

Caption

Mark Rosenberg, the former director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, poses for a photo outside his Atlanta home on June 28, 2016. He says several fundamental questions would benefit from in-depth federal research: What leads to gun violence? What are the most effective ways to reduce it? What is the best way to craft legislation to make it happen? And perhaps most importantly, how might this work without infringing on Americans’ Second Amendment rights?

Credit: Lisa Marie Pane, AP

The panel:

Jim Galloway – Former political columnist, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Mark Rosenberg – Former director of the CDC Center for Injury Prevention and Control

The breakdown : 

1. Research on gun safety has been treated differently than other injury prevention research. 

• Rosenberg noted that there is a myth that we cannot stop gun violence without taking everyone's guns. 
• Black men are killed at 20 times the rate of white men by guns. 
• Gun safety is not the first injury prevention issue the government examined.
  • Road and car safety was studied long before gun safety. 

2. How do we make guns safer?

• Rosenberg said in order to fully address gun safety, we need to address the safety of the gun itself as well as who buys guns and how easily. 
• Both the gun and social factors are important to examine, he said.

3. Rosenberg shares how he became an advocate for gun safety. 

• Rosenberg started research on gun violence in 1980s at the CDC.
• He found that having a gun in a home increases the risk of someone in the household being murdered by a weapon by 200%.
  • The risk of suicide by gun increased by 400%. 
• His findings caused NRA to scale up attacks, Rosenberg said.
  • The NRA used Rep. Jay Dickey from Arkansas to lead attacks.
  • Dickey proposed a compromise between warring parties to disallow the CDC from using federal funding to research injury prevention. 
  • Rosenberg was eventually fired from his position due to attacks by the NRA. 
• Despite differences, Rosenberg and Dickey eventually developed a deep friendship. 

4. Jim Galloway points out a double standard on causes of mass violence. 

• He said that the logic is a form of nihilism, and pointed out that we did not examine the mental health of 9/11 terrorists as a cause for attacks. But, we look into potential mental health struggles of teenage boys who commit acts of mass violence. 

5. Do mental health issues increase gun violence? 

• Most people who commit mass violence do not have mental illness, Rosenberg said. 
• People with mental illness are not more likely to commit mass violence than those without it. 

Monday on Political Rewind: The team will observe Memorial Day, but will return with a live broadcast at 9 a.m. on Tuesday.