Stan and Clarence chat with Dr. Tom Kottke and Anthony Butler about unintentional firearm injuries and gun violence prevention.Dr. Kottke first joined Health Partners in 2004 and is now the Medical Director for Well-Being for the health plan, Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, and a health services researcher at the HealthPartners Institute. Additionally, Dr. Kottke is a strong advocate for gun violence prevention.Anthony serves on the Protect Minnesota board - a coalition of 16 statewide groups committed to working together to prevent gun violence. Find out more about Anthony and Protect Minnesota at https://protectmn.orgListen along as Dr. Tom Kottke and Anthony Butler share their thoughts on unintentional firearm injuries and gun violence prevention efforts.Join the conversation at healthchatterpodcast.comBrought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships.More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Health Chatter. Today's episode is on unintentional firearm deaths for children, unfortunately, between the ages of birth and 17. We've got two great guests with us today. We'll get to them in just a moment. I'd like to thank our great crew. Our research crew includes Maddy Levine-Wolf, Aaron Collins, Deandra Howard, and Sheridan Nygaard.
Sheridan also provides us with some great marketing skills, so thank you to all of you. Also, I'd like to thank Matthew Campbell, who's our production great assistant, who gets these shows out to you, the listening audience, in perfect form, along with some great music. So thank you to Matthew as well. And then, of course, there's
Clarence Jones, who's my colleague and co-host of the show, who is down in Memphis right now in the airport. So thanks for working it out so that you can still be on the show today, Clarence. It's always great to have your voice. Finally, I'd like to thank Human Partnership, who is our sponsor for these shows. It's a great community health organization.
We recommend that you check them out at humanpartnership.org along with our website as well, which is healthchatterpodcast.com. So today, a sad topic, but yet I'm glad that we're talking about it because just merely talking about it and bringing it to you, the listening audience, will heighten our awareness about this topic of unintentional firearm deaths. We have two great guests.
I'll introduce one and then I'll let Tom introduce another guest who's a colleague of his. I've known Tom Kaki, Dr. Tom Kaki, we figured for close to 40 years. Tom is an absolutely wonderful colleague, a true clinical expert in the area of cardiology, but also A wonderful colleague in the public health arena.
I can't really begin to tell you how many arenas Tom has been involved with in the public health arena. and has really been a strong voice connecting the public health side of all these different issues that we deal with, with the medical aspects. It's been a pleasure, truly a pleasure having him as a colleague, and we still connect to this day.
So Tom, thanks, many thanks for being on our show today. Tom, I'll let you introduce Anthony.
Okay, thanks, Dan. Anthony Butler is a colleague of mine. We both serve on the Protect Minnesota board. Anthony's chair of the C3 board. And Protect Minnesota is the only statewide, exclusively Minnesota gun safety organization. Firearms Safety Advocacy Group. We do collaborate with groups like Moms Demand Action, Giffords, et cetera. Anthony was born in Harlem in New York City.
And although living with both parents, he was always in trouble as an adolescent. He attended five different high schools in the greater NYC area before dropping out at age 17 and getting his GED. Growing up, Anthony knew the value of hard work.
The day after his eighth grade graduation, he began working in McDonald's with his father on the weekends and always held a job throughout high school and beyond. In the summer of 2008, I think he was about 20 at the time, he was the victim of a shooting that resulted in his loss of vision. After problems with his family and nowhere else to turn, Anthony moved into a homeless shelter.
While residing in the shelter, Anthony was introduced to a mentor whom he credits with changing the entire trajectory of his life. He enrolled in the New School where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts before attending New York University and obtaining his Master in Social Work in 2016.
Since graduating, he's had a number of positions in the workforce, such as social worker for young men of color at Kings County District Attorney's Office in Brooklyn. He's been a recovery specialist with Community Access. And after leaving that program, he relocated here to Minneapolis with his girlfriend, where he works as a therapist for offenders of sex crimes.
When he's not working, he participates in multi-sport endurance competitions, which has afforded him the opportunity to travel to over six countries and half the United States. As a social worker, Anthony strives to be an advocate for the underserved and help people navigate the many hardships one may endure on a daily basis.
And as I mentioned, I know Anthony because we both sit on the board of Protect Minnesota, where he is the current chair. So thank you very much, Anthony, for that. joining me on this podcast.
Anthony, it's great. Great to have you. And I'm giving you a virtual hug. So there you go. So thanks for being on our show today. So let's talk about this issue of unintentional Firearm deaths. What I thought I would do is, you know, our illustrious research gang has put together some statistics. And then I thought maybe Tom and Anthony, you can respond to this.
So it's a leading cause of death, unintentional injuries, leading cause of death among U.S. children and adolescents from, again, from birth to 17 years. And firearms are a leading injury cause.
method which is the sad part of all of this in 2021 a couple years ago now approximately 30 million children live in homes with firearms 4.6 million in households reporting storing firearms loaded and unlocked in other words ready to to be fired um When we kind of break this down a little bit by age and sex and race, a majority of the deaths occurring among boys, about 83.1%.
And the highest age range is in ages 11 to 15, non-Hispanic, Black, or African-American amount to close to 40%. of the unintentional deaths. And I can go on. So let's just start there. Let's talk about the problem. So Tom, you wanna start us out?
Yeah, sure. And I personally have been affected when about 40 years ago when my daughter was a student at JJ Hill, one of her classmates didn't show up for school that day because the three-year-old had found a pistol in the couch And you don't have to complete the sentence. You know what happened.
And then when I was in practice over at Riverside, just around the corner, again, a kid, about three, found a pistol in a wastebasket where it had been, quote, secreted and shot his brother and killed him. And so a couple of take-homes. There's no such thing as a hidden gun.
You may think if you have a firearm in your home, you may think that it's hidden from your kids, but it's more likely to be hidden from you because you've forgotten about it than your kids. Your kids know everything. I mean, if they can find Christmas presents, they know where the guns are. And because 50% of homes have a firearm in them, when your kids go over to play,
there's a fair chance that there's a unlocked, loaded firearm in that house. And so my suggestion is before a play date, you're setting up a play date. Your Timmy is going to go play over at Johnny's. So you call Johnny's mom and say, are the firearms in your home locked and unloaded with ammo, also locked and stored separately? Okay, so Johnny's mom says, well, we don't have firearms.
I said, great, perfect. She says, yeah, they're all locked and put away. So you say, I'm really glad about that. And she says, no, we have one in the bedside table for protection. I say, well, maybe let's have Johnny come over here. I'm very uncomfortable with having my child in a home where there's an unlocked firearm.
okay now um the uh uh some people say well they can't they can't afford a uh a biometric safe well i just looked online you can buy a biometric safe for 70 bucks and so that's what is that 10 cups of coffee at starbucks yeah if you can afford a pistol you can afford a biometric safe and um
I'm going to stop there for a moment and turn it over to Anthony for his reflections, and we can turn back for some other ideas I have about increasing the safety of your children in a gun culture, which is the United States. Anthony?
Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, I mean, you make very good points. I mean, speaking to you the other day when you brought that up about going to people's houses, it made me think and I asked my wife, like, man, like. we have to make sure we ask some of these questions. Coming up, I never even thought about these things.
So that's why I'm happy I get to speak to people like you about topics like these, because it helps me expand on some of the things that I may have never thought of. But getting back to you, and this is why organizations like Protect Minnesota or the advocacy groups are important to help with resources like this, because although one may think $70 is cheap,
I don't know how many households could actually afford to buy like $70. How much disposable income does a person have every week to where they could get a biometric safe, right? Because, you know, some people may not even get their guns legally, right? So even though they think like if you can afford a pistol, you could afford a safe, but... How did they even get their gun?
Did they just get it from like some kind of like bartering system, like traded drugs for a gun, you know, trade a little bit of marijuana or some other kind of drug for a gun or some other service for a gun? So that's that's the question, too, right? Because some of these guns aren't even legal, you know, and then we have to ask ourselves, too, like.
Yeah, we want to ask somebody else about if they have guns inside their house, but we don't even know if their gun is legal. So would they even tell us if they have guns in their houses? So that's another barrier to keeping our children safe too, right? So it's about how can we really trust one another and have open dialogues about guns? Because imagine trying to talk to people about guns.
We're afraid to even ask other people about, talk about like money and finances. So talking about guns, that could be really hard in certain households, especially like urban households. So, yeah.
So Tom, let me, you know, you bring up an interesting scenario. So let's just take a parent who's got a young kid and their young child is going to go, wants to go play with a friend. Have we gotten to the point where parents need to ask the other parent if you have a gun in the house? Is it stored properly? I mean, are we at that point? Or do we just go with trust, I guess?
So what's your sense on that? Where are we in the prevention arena, the safety arena?
Well, the data are clear. We're there. We're there. Now, Anthony brought up an excellent point. Of course, I come from a white middle-class background. For decades, $70 has been not very much to me. But firearm locks free. If you live in St. Paul... You can get a free firearm lock from the St. Paul Police Department. Or in Ramsey County, they also have the Gun Safety Initiative website.
And then Minnesota Department of Safety will also provide them. And we're working with doctors' offices to basically have a bowl of gun locks, trigger locks out on the desk next to the bowl of condoms. And you just pick them up. But Anthony is absolutely right that it may have been barter or that I shouldn't assume that $70, particularly in this economy, is sort of optional money.
Are we seeing this in other states as well, that gun locks are being made available? Are you aware of other states?
Yep. California, Colorado, even down in Louisiana, they have campaigns. The docs have campaigns to offer gun locks.
Great. Clarence. Well, Dr. Kahnke, I just want to tell you this. I think we're at the point where as a parent, you got to ask your kids questions. You also ask those other parents questions because it's not only just guns, it's also substance abuse. It's also other kinds of things that are going on in homes. And so Are we at that place where we have to be as parents more protective?
The answer is totally yes, because we're starting to see these things. I was also going to say that, you know, even while this is being done in Minnesota, we recently had a series of young people who were killed or hurt by guns in homes. And so we have to have this conversation. And so, you know, we're at different places, but at the same time, it is an important issue that's impacting all of us.
And so I'm just glad that we're able to enter into the conversation, regardless of our lane.
Yeah. Anthony?
No, I agree. And I agree that we're there with the conversation.
I remember a few weeks ago, my daughter just turned two, you know, but a few weeks ago we were at another couple's house and they were both in the army, you know, and she just mentioned out loud, like the woman who house we went to just mentioned out loud, like, oh, all my husband does on the weekends is go shooting and then come back home, you know?
And automatically I thought like, oh, I don't, that was a trigger for me, you know? So when we left, I'm talking to my wife, like, I don't know if we can remain friends with them because I don't know if I don't know if I want to have a conversation with them about their gun storage. I don't even know how to have that conversation, you know.
So I would also like to think I'll hear from you guys about like how how do we even engage in that conversation? No matter what race they are, like how do I engage in that conversation with with someone else about like.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question, Anthony. And what we're learning from the docs is that you don't ask, do you have guns? You start out by asking, are your guns stored safely? And so that gets around the Second Amendment thing or the, you know, like, why are you asking me if I have guns? It's, are your guns stored safely? And I think, you know, folks in the military, I...
um or ex-military may i mean they've they've had some training and and i'm going to offer something i think I had gun safety training when I was in Boy Scouts. We used to hunt with a classmate of my father's who had been in the military in World War II. He was a stickler for safety. I was talking to one of the chaps who was in the St. Paul violence interrupters. He said,
The way I learned how to shoot a gun was on Nintendo. So there's no real, the reality of what happens when somebody struck by a bullet is not known. So I would suggest sending, as your child, if they're not in Boy Scouts or, you know, sending them to gun safety, program. Now, Outstate, the Department of Natural Resources hosts these.
Here in the Twin Cities, there's a chap, he operates a company called Protection Far Left of Center, and I haven't been there, but if you look at his website, what he talks about is very realistic. He's not a carry and kill guy, but he's teaches respect for guns. The other the other opportunity, if you want, is have your child participate in the Minnesota Clay Target Association.
I mean, you know, competitive trap shooting and because their first their first order is safety and respecting what you know, what that firearm can do.
And I'm sure that there are analogous groups, you know, in across across the country, at least I hope. You know, let me let me ask this question. You know, it's like I grew up, I'm sure most of us did with squirt guns. OK, or just any play type of guns. Have we also gotten to the point from a prevention standpoint that that should be taboo with kids growing up?
Absolutely. I would absolutely not buy a kid a replica gun, you know, like a like, you know, one that shoots ping pong balls. Fine. You know, nobody's going to mistake that. But a replica gun can get your child killed.
because um they pull it up and it happened and i think cincinnati it was cleveland or cincinnati kids on a swing has a replica gun the sheriff or a police officer comes roaring up uh says drop it in three six you know three seconds later or 10 seconds later fills them full of uh uh lead and yeah you know and and so i think you know and and that's the other thing you
I would not carry myself personally a gun because you read the newspaper and all the dumb things people do with their guns in the heat of the moment. Anthony, do you have an opinion about that?
Let me say this real quick. When I was growing up, my father would not let me have a gun. It was just not something that he would do. I don't know what his reasoning for it was, but that's happened. But I think you made a good point.
We have become so desensitized with killing now with the Tendo and these other games that people think that, you know, when you're doing this, they don't realize the impact of a game versus a real game.
a real uh uh uh instrument uh that person if you shoot them they're not gonna get back up again on that gang they will so you kind of like well if i shoot them you know they'll jump back up that's not happening or i can just shoot them in the leg and that you know and and i think that there's a there as as you just said there's a desensitizing that we've done that we need to really have some conversations about and the reality is this the other thing i want to make real quick is that
A lot of people don't want to bring up topics because they don't want to lose their friends. You know, you know, they're just certain, you know, everybody's so sensitive and politically correct. And, you know, so you can't really talk about a lot of things.
But yet those things that you don't talk about are the things that's hurting you and your family or could potentially hurt you and your family. And so you would rather risk saving a relationship versus sometimes saving your own family. And I mean, so that's what health chatter is about. I know I'm on a limb here, but that's how I feel.
Yeah. You know, Anthony, I've got a question for you. You know, you obviously went through an unfortunate event where you were shot, right? and you lost your eyesight, have you ever reflected upon the idea of, okay, I'm involved in this subject because what has happened to me? Okay. On the other hand, um, have you ever thought about, would you have gotten involved in it?
If some, if an event has not happened to you from a prevention standpoint?
That's a great question. I think, you know, I think growing up, I couldn't see past a certain point. Right. Like not not not in a literal sense, but like I couldn't think I was I couldn't think to when I was 21. You know, I was 21 years old. I was 20 years old. I got shot three months before my 21st birthday. You know, so growing up, I knew I knew one day I would get shot.
I knew there was a high chance of me getting shot. I remember even after me getting shot, I went to like my old neighborhood one day and there was five of us just hanging out. And the common thing that all of us had with one another was all of us got shot within a one block radius of where we were standing that day. Wow. You know what I mean? I don't know if a lot of people can even say that.
You know what I mean? When people like us get together in my communities, it's primarily because of trauma, right? Somebody dying. And, you know, a lot of times that's because one of our friends is getting murdered, right? Or something else that affects us in some kind of way. So to answer your question, I I can't say no. I can't say yes.
I know at that time, I was starting to want to go to school and get out of the streets and make better on myself. I don't know what that would have what that would have looked like, you know, at that age, probably not. But, you know, who knows when I was 40 or 50, would I have wanted to start doing acts of service and giving back in some sort of way?
I would like to hope I can say yes, but I can't even honestly say yes because at that time, it's just self-preservation, right? It's self-preservation by any means, you know, whether that's carrying a gun, whether that's something, whatever it is, I have to get my next meal. That's how I was wired, you know?
So I can't say, I can't say yes with confidence.
Yeah. And, you know, Tom, I'm sure we can reflect on this, that, you know, many of the major public health problems that we're facing, it's not unusual that people get involved with them based on experience that they've had one way or the other. And like, for instance, I think of you, Tom, in the cardiology field and your work many years ago on smoke-free.
And you understood the connection between cardiac events and smoking. So I guess it's not... unusual that people get involved based on being involved in an event or what have you. Does that seem reasonable to you as well?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Makes things salient to people. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about, okay, what is it? Really, what is it that brings the issue of unintentional firearm deaths to to a heightened level, for instance, in the African-American community? What is it? Why are they like X number of percentage points above the other groups of people?
Is there any thought on that? I think, Stan, this is glaring. I think that part of what we have to acknowledge is that there are systemic things that are happening in this country. There's systemic pressures that are being applied to certain groups of people. There are certain kind of unrealistic expectations that are placed on people. And people are, you know, somebody used the term traumatized.
And I try not to get too far into that lane, but that's the reality. People are underneath the pressure. And so we live in a, when I was growing up, we lived in a John Wayne kind of society too, where if you're going to handle your problems, you know, you beat them up or you shoot them or whatever that kind of thing.
I mean, so you can develop a certain kind of, whether it's a kind of unknown or it's kind of suppressed feeling about, about certain kinds of things. And that's how you handle, how you handle your problems. And so I think that part of,
what's happening is that based on what you see on TV, based on how people present things, based on the rap, based on the media, I mean, there is a certain kind of image that's placed on people so that they, fortunately, their life is imitating art. It's not that art imitates life.
You know, I mean, so now they think of it as, you know, I hope that other population groups do not get a false sense of security. In other words, our safety. In other words, you know, if my kids are white. OK, well, not a problem. They're safe. But think about that.
Think about that. Think about that. What you just said. Or safer. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Think about what you just said. Isn't it sad that that. we know that there are certain pressures applied to certain groups that may not necessarily be applied to other groups. The hope is that we don't let our group become affected like that group. And that's sad because all of us should have a sense of safety.
All of us should have a sense of protection, but that's not true in this country, you know? And so, I think that those are the kinds of things that we have to be honest about as we start talking about this issue of why do we have so many unlocked guns? Why do we have so many guns? Why are our children impacted by this? What do we as parents say about these issues?
And then how do we effectively message so that other people can take more safety measures in order to address the issue?
Can I say something? Yeah, absolutely. I think our society has not been taught to really appreciate and embrace what prevention is. As a society, the medicine is always in the candy. We don't treat people before they get sick. We treat people when they are sick. We have to really, like, come to a universal kind of understanding of what is safety, you know?
Because in my household, or growing up, or probably, like, for lack of a better term, anyone, right, is like, you know, if I put my gun up in the closet behind this shoebox, it's safe because my kid can't reach it. But they don't think about, oh, will that kid get a step stool and get curious because they just want to see what's up there. They don't think about that, right?
And we're not taught to think like that as a society. We're taught to think about things when it actually happens. So, like, me growing up in the inner city, you know what I mean? We had metal detectors going to my school. All the way down to our bottom. We had to take our shoes off. We had to clap our boots. And we had to walk through the metal detectors every single morning.
So we had to get to school like an hour, a half an hour early to walk through metal detectors in order for us to get to class on time. Yeah. So when these school shootings happen in these suburban neighborhoods, I'm like... They don't have metal detectors? Like, that's what we think. But they don't because what people think, right?
Because they're white or because they're in an affluent neighborhood, they're safe. They don't have to worry about guns. But for us, we get wanded. We have metal detectors every day, which, hey, it kept us safe and I'm happy. But just look at that. They took for granted their safety, but They don't know that they actually saved our lives by also stereotyping us.
They saved our lives, but they didn't do the same thing back home. And that was impacting them the most. Yeah, you make a great point. Yeah. So, you know, we have to really focus on prevention as a society. We have to understand that prevention is worth investing in. You know, whether it's insurance companies, whoever it is, we have to really focus on prevention. You know, so.
You know, Tom, you've been involved in the prevention arena. I mean, for many, many public health issues. So reflect on what Anthony just said. You know, it's like, you know, you and I know prevention is a tough game. It really is. And I've often said that prevention isn't as sexy as intervention, okay? And so what's your sense, Woe, these years?
Yeah, I mean, Anthony's absolutely right. And one of the problems is that the NRA, funded by the gun industry, uh manufacturers the firearm manufacturers has uh convinced uh the american public that they're safer with a gun than without one it and that's only that's only about the last 20 years but it is now true and during covid i mean covid was great for um gun sales um and and uh
A pistol for the average American is really, it's more a talisman than a safety device because the data are clear. You have a firearm in your household. The life expectancy of everyone that lives in that household is shorter than if you did not have. It may be
Like a case when I lived in Rochester where the granddaughter came home late, despite the fact that the grandparents said, oh, if somebody tries to break in, we're going to lock ourselves in the bedroom and call the police. They did. They fired through the back door, hitting their granddaughter in the stomach. She lived, but may have ended up with a colostomy for the rest of her life.
Um, I think one of the, you know, we know that volunteerism being a volunteer improves, uh, happiness, eudaimonic wellbeing. And I think for people who have the time to, to, to mentor young men in particular, to give them, uh, uh, both like Anthony talked about his mentor that changed his life. Mentoring changed, uh, having mentors for me changed my life. Um,
and teaching, identifying for young men what they want to do, giving them opportunity, and then also helping them think through what does a fire carrying do for me? Because in many of our subcultures in the States, you have to carry. And like they talked about, it's really an urbanist arms race. Okay, the other guy's got a bump stock, I need a bump stock, that kind of stuff.
They've got a high capacity magazine, I need a high capacity magazine. And it doesn't make anybody safer, it makes everybody unsafer, but it's teaching and it's teaching within the relevance, within the context, and by somebody who is respected by that individual. I think it's creating opportunity. But you're right, it's absolutely a challenge because Americans, as a result of advertising,
sponsored by the gun industry and through the NRA and others, I have come to believe that having a pistol, having a firearm makes them safer. And they have this image that, oh, I'll just shoot him. But you have to, you know, say I have a friend who's, he carries a pistol in his car because he says, well, maybe I get in a road rage.
well boy you get that pistol out you better be prepared to shoot because if the other guy has a pistol he's going to shoot you and so you have to shoot first but what if what if that what you think is a pistol is a cell phone you know and you shoot him you're you're in deep doo-doo you
Or like in Rochester, last couple of years, a high school coach got in a fender bender with some Somali kids and shot and killed one of them. not a good scenario for that chap. He's going to spend some time reflecting on that with limited freedom. And, you know, even if you shoot somebody by accident or, you know, are you prepared to do that?
And so this whole idea of thinking through, you know, what are the next five steps that are going to happen? if I shoot somebody. And a lot of times you're gonna spend some time in Oak Park Heights.
So Tom, what about the idea of something, I'm just trying to think creatively here as far as prevention is concerned, community conversations around safety, frankly, maybe in general, that, you know, so in other words, it wouldn't be just focused on gun safety, which might just keep people away just by the mere title, but safety overall.
And then within that conversation, you included gun safety as one example of things that we should be doing to make all of us safer. Is that even feasible?
I think so. Certainly, probably traffic safety, you know, in terms of community burden. Yeah. Traffic safety. Talk about safety. Jogging at night or walking at night. Every...
seems like every every morning i read about somebody who's been killed by walking on a road and my wife and i walk our dogs and people are they're out jogging in black walking but you can't see them you know and this whole belief that if they if i can see them they can see me yeah you're dead wrong and you're going to be dead because you're wrong you know but um
Yeah, I think, you know, we need to practice those conversations about, you know, that it's okay to ask about, you know, are your firearms locked up? It just, you know, assuming, you know, and then if they say, well, we don't have them, that's, you know, I'm glad, you know, then being prepared to do something, but Yeah, having those conversations.
I don't know if they'd play or not, but... Yeah, yeah.
Anthony, what do you think about that? Community conversations around a generalized topic of safety that would include gun safety so that people wouldn't necessarily be turned off by the subject of just gun safety, but just generalized safety.
You know, I think it's hard in certain areas. And I think why I could perceive it being hard in like my community is because we're impacted by gun violence so much that it may be perceived as now you're just teaching my kid how to use a gun. Like, I don't know. You know what I mean? And that's the disconnect. I think it really takes for...
people who could really identify with these intersecting identities that can really come in here and really speak to people about, hey, we need to... Some people are going to do it anyway. I used to always say this to my mom. When I was growing up, I used to smoke weed. I used to smoke marijuana a lot. So a lot of the times when I got arrested, it's because of smoking weed.
But I always told my mom, listen, I'm going to smoke anyway. Why don't you just let me do it in the house? But she couldn't get past it. Like, hey, listen, it's illegal. And I got it. It's illegal. And I understand why she did it. But I'm like, mom, I blamed her, which is pretty selfish of me. But it was like, hey, it's also a way for me to remain safe.
I mean, of course, we couldn't come to the... from the terms on that. But now that the conversation is changing about marijuana in different states, that could be an option for parents, right? It couldn't be an option for me before in New York, but now it could be an option for parents depending on where you live. So that's what parents need to understand what safety actually looks like.
Like we said before, what does safety look like for you? All right, your kid is probably going to get a gun anyway, whether it be illegally, without your permission or whatever, because how many people in the house... I know my parents didn't know if I had a gun in the house, you know? How many kids are out here?
Their parents don't even know if they have a gun because they're trying to respect it. Obviously, they're not going in their room. They don't want to ruffle any feathers, but we're not being honest with the people that love us the most, you know? Yeah, yeah.
So it's going to take a lot of it's going to take a lot of advocacy work and a lot of people, like I said, that identify with these intersection identities to say, hey, listen, I want to teach you and I want to teach you and I want to teach your kid how to be safe with guns. I need to teach you how to teach your kids how to be safe with a gun.
Maybe it's about working with the right going into these schools, teaching the educators how to talk to their how to talk to them. to the parents about gun safety and getting the parents to go to classes so they could teach their kids themselves and give them an introduction and then bring them out of the house. It's going to take a lot of work, but I think it's possible.
Yeah, yeah. And you truly understand it. Yeah, Tom, go.
Yeah, so I can tell you the anxiety is out there. So we have a paper in review right now based on three different national surveys about anxiety about gun violence. And we plugged it into the global burden of disease database. condition weights. And anxiety about gun violence is the leading cause of disability-adjusted life years lost in the United States by a factor of about 1.5 over back pain.
If you look at medical conditions, back pain, orthopedic problems is the leading cause. But our calculations, it's about 50% higher. So the anxiety is there to have the conversations. And thinking like with Anthony, you may not want your kids to have sex ed classes. but they're gonna learn about sex. And probably from somebody who's two years older than they are.
If it's your daughter and she's 16, she's probably gonna learn it from a 21 year old guy. Really. And so if you live in a gun culture,
Your kid's going to learn about guns, and it's probably going to be that a friend of theirs, it's highly likely that a friend of yours, maybe same age, maybe a year or two older, maybe three years older, they're going to find a pistol and start playing with it and saying, hey, how does this work? look down the barrel and pull the trigger to see if you can see the bullet coming out, you know?
And, and so it's, it, you know, we live in a gun culture. And so the, the safest thing to do is educate the kids about how to deal with it. And one of the advice I'd give is, you know, somebody gets out a gun and you're over at somebody's house playing, call home, get a ride home. Yeah. Leave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Clarence.
You there, Clarence? Yeah, I'm here. This is a great conversation. I think that, you know, when we talk about how do you change...
So let me say, the Second Amendment guys have gotten us so scared at our place that we don't ask about gun safety on our health assessments. You know, it's just like, whoa, we can't do that. Somebody's going to say, oh, you're asking about gun safety because you want to take away our guns.
And so we've got to, if we're going to have a conversation about gun safety, we need to stay away from the Second Amendment and make it clear we're not talking about taking away your guns. It's not, you know, you can have a gun, that's legal. It's not smart, but it's legal. But we're talking about how can children be safe in a gut culture.
You know, it's interesting, and I'm sure Anthony and Tom, you can reflect on this. It was only, what, maybe a couple years ago now that data from the Centers for Disease Control was allowed to be analyzed and looked at in order to start assessing gun violence, and then consequently gun safety, which is mind boggling to me personally. I mean, it's just like, what the heck here?
But at least now we're starting to get the information out, like all the different research and the statistics, and maybe just that would be the common denominator of knowledge in order to get the conversations really going nationally, I think.
Yeah. So let me jump in, Stan, about other ways to make it safer besides conversation. But thanks to the coalitions, Minnesota now has a red flag law, which says that you can ask a judge to take somebody's firearm away if they are of a threat to themselves or others. We also have universal background checks. And we're going to be working toward getting guns out of the Capitol.
You know, you can have a firearm in the Minnesota Capitol. What's the purpose of a gun during political discourse other than intimidation?
Right, right, right, yeah.
And so, you know, there are other steps too besides conversation to increase safety. And one of them we're going to be working on is getting guns out of the Capitol.
Good idea. Anthony, last thoughts.
You know, I'm just happy that I'm able to have some conversations like these because I couldn't even imagine myself having conversations like these a few years ago. So I was thankful to have this conversation, this discussion. I'm happy to meet people like you and Tom and Clarence along the way to help me shape the person that I want to be.
And I just hope that this can inspire other people to have conversations and to get involved and to start to volunteer. You know, it's a great thing for us to have on our minds, especially now.
Well, I compliment you on your efforts. And I hope I'm speaking for the public that we appreciate your insights, your storytelling, and your commitment to change. Tom, last thoughts.
Yeah. For the Second Amendment people, They're more likely to be able to hang on to their guns if there is gun safety. The lesser the threat their firearms are to the rest of the public, the more likely they're going to be able to hang on to them. So that's a thought. The other is the idea of getting out, knowing your neighbor's
engaging socially to reduce fear, because the recent political movements have been based on fear, which is unfortunate. So get out, meet people, do things, volunteer, because we know that volunteering increases the well-being, your own well-being, and it increases the well-being of others. And I think that's the path to safety.
Yeah. Clarence, thoughts?
This has been a great conversation. I'm really glad. I do know that this won't be the ending conversation. I think we've just scratched the surface and there's so many interesting things that we can talk about, lanes that we can go with this. And so thank you.
You know, I'll tell you, it's sad that we have to talk about these types of things, but yet the fact that we are, hopefully will be wake-up calls for a lot of people to increase their awareness, to increase their safety thinking overall. And I compliment both you, Anthony, and Tom for your commitment to change. So thank you for being on Health Chatter.
We hope that as more information comes your way, that you understand that you can always be on Health Chatter podcast and make these podcasts available for communication purposes for the people that you deal with. So many, many thanks. To our listening audience, we have great shows coming up.
We're going to be looking at the new drugs that are coming out for weight management and also a subject of Pharmageddon, the idea of many, many drugs. And is this just normal fix-it-alls for everything? So stay tuned on that. And in the meantime, everybody, keep health, chatting...