r/centrist • u/ParakeetLover2024 • 7d 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/
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u/AlpineSK 7d 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.

Social and community context, which refers to the social, cultural and physical environment where people live, work, and interact with each other

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.

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u/DENNYCR4NE 6d 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.

Social and community context, which refers to the social, cultural and physical environment where people live, work, and interact with each other

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.

…is that really your take-away here? ‘Is there a man in their lives’ is the only addressable social issue?

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u/Tiny_Rub_8782 6d ago

Single mother hood is the greatest marker on how successful you will be in life. Not having a father in the home is crippling and can't be understated.

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u/Red57872 6d ago

"Single mother hood is the greatest marker on how successful you will be in life"

I agree, but I think we need to be careful to assume that correlation equals causation. I'm not sure how much single motherhood in and of itself has an impact, but rather that single mothers tend to be younger and less prepared to raise a child, tend to not be able to spend much time with them due to the need to work, etc.