Advisory on gun violence meets receptive Long Island audience

The U.S. surgeon general's advisory Tuesday calling gun violence a threat to public health drew support from health and law enforcement officials on Long Island who have seen the carnage up close. 

The advisory from Dr. Vivek Murthy, the federal government's top physician, called for regulations limiting access to guns, money to research firearm injuries and investment in risk reduction.

“This requires a public health strategy because it’s a public health issue,” said for Dr. Chethan Sathya, a trauma surgeon who is director of Northwell Health’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention.

Last year, according to New York State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, Hempstead Village police reported 22 shooting victims and one killed, Nassau County police reported 22 victims and four killed and Suffolk County police reported 47 victims and 11 killed. Over the last decade, each department typically reported dozens of shooting victims annually.

From 2014 to 2023, the three departments reported 228 people killed by gun violence.

Murthy's advisory was intended to offer hope that the nation could replicate past public health campaigns to reduce the tolls of tobacco-related disease and motor vehicle crashes. But it also described a cascade of national damage: 48,204 Americans killed by guns in 2022, a spike in child suicide by gun, depression in families who lose loved ones to gun violence and anxiety in the population at large, with a third of American adults saying fear prevents them from going to certain places or events.

Police support

Hempstead Village Chief Richard Holland hadn't read the advisory Tuesday but said his department would “get behind anything that’s going to deter gun violence.”

In an email, Nassau County Police spokesman Det. Lt. Richard LeBrun said the department “continues to reduce crime, shootings and homicides to historic low levels to continue to keep our residents safe.”

A spokesperson for Suffolk police did not comment. 

Sathya said he was hopeful that the advisory “could open up funding opportunities” for research and “catalyze action among governments.”

Cadence Acquaviva, a spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health “strongly agrees with the Surgeon General’s declaration that gun violence is a public health crisis," she said an email.

New York State actions

The department, which opened an Office of Gun Violence Prevention in 2022, “is implementing multiple strategies to advance gun violence prevention coordination between communities and local, state, and federal government,” the spokeperson said in the email.

Surgeon general’s advisories are intended to call the nation’s attention to a public issue and provide recommendations for addressing it, but some of Murthy’s recommendations would require legislation by Congress to be implemented nationally. These include calls for a ban on assault weapons, universal background checks, regulations on the gun industry and requirements that guns be stored safely.

The National Rifle Association on Tuesday suggested it would lobby against any national legislation to come out of the advisory. In a statement, it called the advisory “an extension of the Biden Administration’s war on law-abiding gun owners. America has a crime problem caused by criminals.”

New York State has already implemented some of Murthy’s recommendations, like a Red Flag law that prevents people who show signs of being a threat to themselves or others from buying or possessing guns. In 2022, there were 1,044 gun deaths in New York State, a rate of 5.3 per 100,000. The national rate was 14.5 per 100,000.

More research funding

Murthy also called for investment in historically underfunded gun violence research. There is no national data collection system that includes all nonfatal gun injuries and research gaps exist on subjects like community-based gun violence, suicide prevention and domestic violence involving firearms, according to the advisory. In one 10-year period, according to the advisory, funding for gun violence was less than 1% of funding for sepsis.

Sathya said some of Murphy’s other recommendations, like an array of community risk reduction and education strategies, require no legislation at all.

Northwell, the state’s largest health system, already screens patients for gun violence risk, just as it does for smoking and other behavioral risks.

To determine household risk, Northwell health care providers ask emergency room patients if they have access to guns. Health care providers can offer gun locks and refer those with access to guidance about safely keeping firearms. To determine community risk, the providers also ask patients if they hear gunshots where they live and if they’ve had a gun pulled on them. If the answer is yes, Northwell may deploy “intervenors” to help resolve potential neighborhood conflicts.

“These are evidence-based strategies that work,” Sathya said.

Gun-related killings are is now the leading cause of death for American children and adolescents. Uniondale-based S.T.R.O.N.G. Youth, a grassroots group that works to prevent youth and gang violence, said that the advisory might not have any direct impact for groups like his, “it heightens awareness locally, and now we have an opportunity to say, 'Long Island, wake up.'”

The advisory also detailed a host of issues faced by young survivors.

“You can’t trust anything you see,” said Nyzier Ross, 13, of Hempstead Village, who was shot in the arm last summer at a party in Valley Stream. There’s a lumpy circle where the bullet went in and a mark where it went out. “I don’t really trust anybody anymore.”

With AP

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story gave the wrong year for the creation of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention in the Department of Health.