Picture Above: This interactive map allows you to click on a state for specific information about gun safety laws.
Dear Colleagues and Students:
One year ago yesterday, I was at Boston University’s School of Public Health giving a speech about how the Master Settlement Agreement on tobacco might provide a powerful lesson on reducing other major epidemics in the U.S. – including opioid abuse and gun violence.
During the course of my speech, I noticed members of the audience checking their phones. Afterward, I learned there had been another mass shooting – this time at a Florida high school. Seventeen people were gunned down and seventeen more wounded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the course of my speech.
Like everyone across the nation, I felt sick because another group of innocent lives had been lost, and I was afraid that little would be done to prevent it from happening again.
But something did change. The students who survived that shooting became remarkably articulate advocates for responsible gun reform, and they made their voices heard. According to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, “dozens of gun safety bills passed in 2018, and 67 measures enacted in 26 states and Washington, DC would have an impact on gun related deaths and injuries.” (NBC Connecticut)
Six of those bills were passed in New York State last month, described as “the most comprehensive set of gun bills in the state in six years, including measures that would ban bump stocks, prohibit teachers from carrying guns in schools and extend the waiting period for gun buyers who do not pass an instant background check.” (New York Times)
On Tuesday, Navy combat veteran and retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, announced he would run for Senator John McCain’s Arizona seat next year, saying “We need gun control, not prayers.” (CNN)
Up on Capitol Hill, “the House Judiciary Committee passed a measure Wednesday that would require background checks for all gun sales and most gun transfers within the United States, the most significant gun-control legislation to advance this far in Congress in years.” (Washington Post).
But it’s one step forward, two steps back in Florida. After the Parkland shootings the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act was signed into law in March 2018; however, a new bill just introduced threatens to “remove a mandatory waiting period to purchase firearms other than handguns and a provision which raised the age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21.” (NBC)
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, the namesake of the high school in Parkland where the massacre occurred, was a staunch environmentalist, conservationist and advocate for women’s suffrage. She once said, “You have to stand up for some things in this world.”
As people observe Valentine’s Day across the nation this week, I’ll now always associate February 14th with the Parkland shootings.
So please use both your heart and your head and join me in standing up -- on Valentine’s Day and every day -- for common sense gun control, and help bring an end to this preventable public health epidemic.
Cheryl G. Healton, DrPH
Dean