Private Guns, Public Health

On an average day in the U.S., guns are used to kill almost eighty people, and wound nearly three hundred more. If any other consumer product had this sort of disastrous effect, the public outcry would be deafening; yet when it comes to guns such facts are accepted as a natural consequence of supposedly high American rates of violence. "Private Guns, Public Health explodes that myth and many more, revealing the advantages of treating gun violence as a consumer safety and public health problem. Author David Hemenway fair-mindedly and authoritatively demonstrates how a public-health approach -- which emphasizes prevention over punishment, and which has been so successful in reducing the rates of injury and death from infectious disease, car accidents, and tobacco consumption -- can be applied to gun violence. Hemenway uncovers the complex connections between guns and self-defense, school violence, homicide, and more. Finally, he outlines a course of regulation and policy that would significantly reduce gun-related injuries and deaths. With its bold new public-health approach to guns, Private Guns, Public Health marks a shift in our understanding of guns that will finally point us toward a solution. David Hemenway is Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and Professor of Health Policy at Harvard School of Public Health. A former Pew Fellow on Injury Control, he has been a Senior Soros Justice Fellow and received a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.Hemenway, David is the author of 'Private Guns, Public Health ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780472031627 and ISBN 0472031627.