The U.S. Surgeon General declared gun violence a public health crisis on Tuesday, citing a sharp rise in firearm injuries and deaths across the country.
The recommendation, issued by the country's top physician, Dr. Vivek Murthy, comes as the U.S. struggles with a summer weekend of mass shootings that left dozens dead or injured.
“In many places across the country that I've visited, people are scared to do normal things like go to school, go to the grocery store, go to work, and they're worried about their lives,” Murthy said in an interview on “CBS Mornings” on Tuesday.
To reduce gun deaths, Mursi wants the US to ban automatic rifles, implement universal background checks for gun purchases, regulate the gun industry, enact laws limiting the use of guns in public places and impose penalties for those who fail to store weapons safely.
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None of these proposals could be implemented nationwide without legislation passing a federal Congress that is typically hostile to gun control measures, but some state legislatures have either enacted or may be considering some of the surgeon general's proposals.
Mursi said there is “broad agreement” that gun violence is a problem, citing a poll last year that found most Americans worry at least sometimes that a loved one will be injured by a gun. More than 48,000 Americans are expected to die from gun injuries in 2022.
“People want to feel safe walking through their neighborhoods,” Murthy said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
Murthy's advisory team is sure to be controversial and sure to infuriate Republicans who twice voted against confirming him to the advisory board over his comments about gun violence.
Mursi has issued warnings about worrying health trends in American life, including social media use and loneliness. He has not issued similar recommendations on gun violence since being appointed surgeon general in 2014, but his efforts were stalled and nearly derailed by the gun lobby and Republicans who objected to his past comments on firearms.
Director General of Public Health Dr. Vivek Murthy Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Mursi ultimately promised the Senate that he would “not use my position as Surgeon General as a platform to deliver a strong speech on gun control.”
Then-President Donald Trump fired Mursi from his post in 2017, but President Joe Biden nominated him back to the post in 2021. During his second confirmation hearing, Mursi told senators that declaring guns a public health crisis was not a focus of his new term.
But Biden has been under pressure from some doctors and Democratic advocacy groups to say more, and a group of four former surgeons general has called on the Biden administration to produce a report on the issue in 2022.
“Please take this issue out of the political realm.”
“It is time to move this issue from the political sphere to the public health sphere, just as we did with smoking more than half a century ago,” Mursi told The Associated Press.
The 1964 Surgeon General's report, which raised awareness of the dangers of smoking, is credited with playing a major role in eradicating tobacco use and promoting regulation of the tobacco industry.
In his advisory paper, “Gun Violence: America's Public Health Crisis,” Murthy noted that children and younger Americans are especially affected by gun violence. In recent years, the rate of gun suicides among Americans under the age of 35 has increased significantly. Research he has collected shows that American children are far more likely to die from gun injuries than children in other countries.
“I hope that we can understand this as a children's issue, make it a priority, and see it not as a political issue, but as a public health issue that we should all be concerned about,” Murthy said.
In addition to new restrictions, Mursi has called for increased research on gun violence and for health care systems, which are presumably more compliant with his recommendations, to provide more gun safety training during doctor's visits.
“The good news is there's a lot we can do,” he told “CBS Mornings.” “For example, there are community violence intervention programs we can invest in. There are safe storage education programs we can expand. There are firearm risk mitigation strategies like background checks and other measures that aim to create time and space between firearms and individuals who seek to harm themselves or others.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week that gun injury rates last year exceeded pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels for the fourth consecutive year. Nationally, gun death rates last year were worse than 2019, although they have slowed from peaks in 2020 and 2021, according to preliminary CDC data on gun deaths.
A new FBI report released Monday said the rate at which mass shootings across the United States targeted civilians increased by 89% from 2019 to 2023 compared to the previous five years. Last year, 105 people were killed in mass shootings, the highest level in recent history.
Public safety figures released by federal investigators on Monday showed slight year-over-year improvements in some areas of concern across the country, including a 4% decrease in mass shootings in 2023 compared to 2022, while other indicators, such as total deaths and injuries and “mass murder” incidents, showed slight declines.
Last year, 244 people were shot across the United States, 139 were injured, and 105 were killed. Compared to previous years, the total number of fatalities, including injuries and deaths, decreased from 313 in 2022, but there were five more fatalities in 2023 than in 2022.
These incidents are only a small part of the total toll from gun violence: In 2022, the United States will see an average of more than 53 gun homicides per day, according to CDC data.
Alexander Tin, Rob Legare and Kelsie Hoffman contributed to this report.
