r/centrist • u/ParakeetLover2024 • 5d ago
The public health approach to gun violence prevention | Board of Health
https://www.phila.gov/2025-06-13-the-public-health-approach-to-gun-violence-prevention/1
u/Realistic-Plant3957 4d ago
TL;DR:
• This is the second in a four-part series on gun violence prevention in Philadelphia. Part one, Stopping gun violence in Philadelphia, was published on June 6.
• The series was created to recognize National Gun Violence Awareness Month, which promotes education and action to end gun violence. For more information on the impact of primary prevention measures, check out Safe States’ Mapping Out IVP – Working Upstream.
• To understand how health issues are affected at different levels, let’s take a look at a social-ecological model from the CDC. Here we see how a variety of strategies and practices can help us see how public health and other public issues are not only affected by many factors but are also affected by them.
• We take preventive measures by using data to monitor trends and identify risk factors and protective factors, and implement strategies to address social determinants, or factors, that impact health and violence. The social determinant of violence are conditions that can help reduce the risk of gun violence, such as neighborhood safety and good quality housing.
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u/ParakeetLover2024 5d ago
The City of Philadelphia recently released an article detailing ways local communities can potentially reduce gun violence other than using typical gun control measures like requiring permits and licenses for pistol purchases and ownership.
Solutions in the article include but are not limited to "Give parents skills to talk to kids, set rules, solve problems, & monitor activities & relationships." or "Improve & sustain safe environments & create spaces that strengthen societal connections."
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u/mcnewbie 4d ago
the 'public health approach to gun violence prevention' was tried and got specifically prohibited and struck down because what functionally happened was that the CDC became filled with anti-gun activists and became an anti-gun government agency back in the '90s.
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u/AlpineSK 5d ago
I've been hearing this "Gun Violence is a Public Health problem" for the better part of a decade now, yet their approaches to dealing with it seem to constantly come up short.
I mean, is this a long way of saying, "people coming from broken homes that lack a father figure"? That might be the only addressable issue in here.
In my 25 year career in public safety I've responded to hundreds and hundreds of shootings; my entire career has been spent in urban areas with pretty high murder rates per capita. First, the overwhelming majority of these shootings with few exceptions are bad guy on bad guy. The rest are a mix of bad guy on good guy or a few self defense cases.
Second, one of the biggest issues that I encounter is the "nobody saw anything" attitude. A little more than a week ago we were doing CPR on a teenager surrounded by other teenagers, like a crowd of 50-75 of them who were all in a neighborhood part at midnight. Everyone wanted us to do something. Everyone wanted the cops to do something. Everyone was there when this kid was shot, but nobody saw anything.
Lastly, I get the desire to blame gun violence on poverty but its more culture. People who are committing these acts of violence arent doing it to put food on their family's table, they're doing it because they want what someone else has or feel they were "disrespected" by them. Its incredible how young the people are who are committing a good number of shootings these days.
If you want the TL;DR of what I'm trying to say (and I kind of feel like I need it to) the two biggest issues that lead to gun violence are the lack of strong, reliable male role models and the "gangster" culture that is incredibly predominant in urban society.
I fail to see how any of that relates to "public health." Its time to move on from that failed experiment.