Guns are the biggest public health threat children face. Why are they not receiving messages?

I still remember the husky voice of a shriveled cancer patient with a hole in her throat. So addicted to the poison that was killing her, cigarettes, she interspersed the words of the warning about the dangers of smoking with puffs of the cigarette through the tracheostomy hole.

It was a short, disturbing video shown in my sixth grade class as part of an anti-smoking campaign linked to the US Surgeon General’s report, which for the first time formally linked smoking to cancer and heart disease.

That night, I flushed my father’s cigarettes down the toilet. The image of this woman haunted my nightmares for years. After watching this video, I never once caught fire.

Today, such a video would probably not make it into the classroom, as it was considered inappropriate for teenagers, too provocative.

But perhaps this is exactly the kind of aggressive information campaign, especially aimed at youth, that we need right now to fight what has become the #1 public health threat in the country for American youth: guns.

Firearms became the leading cause of death among those aged 19 and under in 2020 due to a sharp increase in deaths from gun violence among youth during the pandemic. The U.S. gun homicide rate among people aged 15 to 24 was already 49 times higher than in other developed countries more than a decade ago. It’s also a matter of racial justice. Black men aged 15 to 34 are more than 20 times more likely to be victims of firearms than their white counterparts.

While much of the media attention is related to mass school shootings and the proliferation of semi-automatic weapons, handguns were used in 59% of homicides and “negligent manslaughter”. The majority of murders with the use of firearms involve the execution of a small number of people, “ones and twos.”

There is little national data on the age of those responsible for this everyday violence, but there is evidence that they are getting younger. According to a 2021 report, where I live in Washington DC, 40% of the suspected shooters were between the ages of 18 and 24, and 11% were under the age of 17.

Dr. Babak Sarani, director of trauma at the George Washington University Medical Center, tells how he treated a teenager for gunshot wounds four times since 2018, until the young man died after being shot in November at the age of 19.

In response to the rise in gun violence, Congress last year passed its first gun safety measure in decades, and more than 500 state gun safety measures have been enacted in the past decade.

But the carnage continues, and laws alone are unlikely to stop it, as gun ownership is protected in one form or another by the 2nd Amendment and the Supreme Court, which has a broad idea of ​​what that means. In 2020, the largest number of arms sales in the history of the country was recorded. Our country is oversaturated with weapons.

Despite all this, one important leverage remains strangely underutilized: the use of the media, social media, and the entertainment industry to turn weapons from symbols of status, power, and personal freedom into weapons of death and carnage.

Gun manufacturers, following the lead of the tobacco companies in the 1940s and 1950s, created a positive image of lethal weapons among young Americans, especially men. And in the process, they have had collaborators—violent films, TV shows, and video games that glorify and embellish guns.

Smoking was the norm in America until health officials took over. What allowed smoking bans to gain momentum in public places was years of public health work to change the image of cigarettes—often and drastically—by officials such as Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Anti-smoking campaigns have portrayed the health scourge through images and words that have often been deeply disturbing. This message was then supported by public announcements featuring sports and film celebrities. Research has shown that these emotionally charged ads can help you quit smoking.

Today we recognize firearms as a threat to public health. So it’s time to act on the same visceral public campaign that threw my father’s cigarettes down the toilet.

Today’s public service announcements about gun safety seem somewhat cleaned up. None of them reflect the horrendous physical and emotional damage caused by firearms. Maybe if we showed the public what it looks like when a child is shot, the shock and disgust – a look at reality – would be opposed to the social glamor of a gun.

The airwaves and social media channels are filled with messages urging young people to take care of their mental health. Where’s the ad that says it’s not cool to bring a gun with you? Will filmmakers be making action movies without guns the way filmmakers stopped making smoking in movies sexy?

Of course, there will be debate about whether images of gunshots and bodies would be traumatic, especially for the children and families of the victims. But some may feel differently. Emmett Till’s mother demanded that his body be displayed in an open coffin because “everyone should have known what happened to Emmett Till.” Disturbing images have proven to be a powerful vehicle for sparking public outrage and action: the horrific video of the killing of George Floyd has fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.

If we want to end gun violence, we may have no choice but to show the public the true damage of guns in all their ugliness and brutality.