Experts: Gun Control is a Public Health Issue

• comments
• 
• 

"The President and Vice President are committed to using every tool at the administration's disposal to reduce gun violence," the White House assured the Americans on Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, via a press release from the Office of the Press Secretary.

And, to underpin this claim, the administration has just announced a series of what it referred to as "common sense executive actions," while Pres. Barrack Obama addressed the nation regarding the matter via a live address from the East Room of the White House Tuesday, according to NPR.org.

"We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency," said Obama who even grew emotional at one point during the speech. "It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. It's not even close." The president stood before the crowd surrounded by victims of recent mass shootings.

Many public health experts and scientists lauded the president for his strong conviction on the matter. They believe that firearm safety and gun control is, definitely, a public health issue. They are one with the administration in urging the Congress for gun-law reform, the NBC News reported.

"Our nation's epidemic of gun violence exacts far too high a toll on the health of our communities," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

"The actions the president is announcing today are important steps to help keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them. These are steps he is able to take using existing law to strengthen gun safety protections, and we applaud them."

According to the White House, there have been more than 100,000 people who lost their lives in America because of gun violence in the past 10 years. These include those who took their own lives using a gun, police officers who were shot while doing their duties and children who died because of firearms-related accidents.

Obama and his administration also picked on the Congress and its failure to pass significant laws that would help in reducing gun violence. The president said that the Congress made it tough for health experts and researchers to track and research gun violence in America.

"The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now. But they cannot hold America hostage. We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom" he said before receiving a standing ovation from the audience.