US surgeon general declares gun violence a public health crisis

The US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, has declared gun violence a public health crisis, calling on Americans to confront it with the same urgency that cut deaths from tobacco use and road traffic crashes.1“Firearm violence is a public health crisis. Our failure to address it is a moral crisis,” said Murthy in a video speech. It is the first time that a US surgeon general has declared gun violence a public health crisis, he noted, saying that he had been driven to act by a steady increase in gun deaths, which reached a three decade high in 2021.In 2020 gunshot wounds became the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the US, surpassing road deaths. In 2022 a total of 4603 Americans aged 1 to 19 died by gunshot, more than double the number killed by cancer or by poisoning, including drug overdoses, and four times the number…
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