Notes from Gun Violence Teach-Out

The University of Michigan is hosting a free "Preventing Gun Violence in America Teach-Out" through coursera. The Teach-Out has multiple expects who discuss the complexities of this issue from different angles. I would recommend this Teach-Out. (It is pretty quick and can be covered in an hour or two) 

My personal responses to some of the discussion questions raised are posted below. Consider what your own responses might be.

At the end, we were asked if we had any questions. I am putting my answer to this first because I think it helps provide context to my answers overall.

How do we increase funding for this research? How can we make this type of research more "sellable" ie newsworthy? How can we change the conversations around topics such as gun violence and suicide when there is deeply ingrained pushback to the discussion in society?

Do guns play a role in your life? Is there anything you wish people with different perspectives than you understood relating to guns? What changes do you want to see in your community related to gun violence? Are you hopeful or concerned about how these changes will come about?

I live in Chicago so my relationship with Guns is that they are harmful. No one I know uses Guns for hunting etc and I struggle to balance the idea that people feel they need guns when guns appear to me to be equal to death and pain and sorrow. In my experience guns are only used in mass shootings, in the military, by cops killing unarmed individuals (typically unarmed people of color) or in other violence. As items which kill I struggle with the pushback, many have to what feels like to me sensible gun laws.

Though media and a lot of our conversations center on mass shootings or assumptions about mental health, this Teach-Out highlighted how gun violence plays out interpersonally or through self-harm and that very, very few incidents of gun violence come from a person with mental health diagnoses. If this is a new understanding for you, how does it impact your thoughts on gun violence? If you were already aware, how can we start shifting our conversations?

I was already aware that gun violence was rarely instigated by a person with a mental health challenge. But it was not until recently that I started to think about the role that guns play in suicide (oddly I learned this from a candidate who released an envolved platform around mental health and suicide because they are part of populations which have had a higher tendency towards death by suicide).

I wonder if we frame our discussions about guns more around suicide prevention if certain suggestions could be seen as protecting gun owners and gun owner families themselves which I would imagine would feel less "threating" towards peoples way of life.

Like childproof caps on medicine, people complain, and for some populations like the elderly it can be a real pain but most people understand why we have childproof caps and don't see it as someone keeping medicine away from them. Or using a gun example seeing a waiting period as a way to check if you are in an acute mental health crisis not keeping you from guns.

You’ve heard experts compare gun violence and other public health issues that should be studied and prevented, like the introduction of seat belts or drivers’ license rules to react to car crashes. Have you thought about gun violence this way before? What kind of different feelings or thoughts come to you when you think about gun violence with this public health frame?

I think a Public Health frame is useful when looking at issues around Guns. There has been a general sense that Gun Violence is something we can't actually look at or study which means the conversations come up only during heated moments (when there is a mass shooting or a police officer shoots a civilian). These are no good moments to try to have complex conversations about complicated issues. We need to do more research on Guns and Gun usage.

Gun-Violence is a complex issue which is often only spoken about during heated moments of crisis. We have to be willing to have these conversations at other times. We also need to fund the research which could help us deal with this issue. Not funding this research is not making anyone safer.