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Target prevention: Researching the epidemiology of gun violence

Garen Wintemute, MD, MPH, doesn't hate guns and isn't trying to get them banned. He does want to stop the bone-shattering, blood-spurting, life-ending injuries that guns can cause.

By Kathleen F. Phalen, amednews correspondent. Aug. 20, 2001.

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Emergency physician Garen Wintemute, MD, MPH, says he's a crisis junkie. It's all about making a difference in critical situations. But that's not always easy, especially when the physical damage is almost irreparable. Like when he was in a bush camp during Cambodia's civil war, treating 20 or more combat wounds each day. Or now, working 12-hour shifts in the University of California, Davis', urban trauma center in Sacramento.

These are places where wounds are sometimes hard to treat. Where torrents of blood are common. Where time equals death and injuries paralyze and kill. These are the kind of wounds that come from guns -- bullets tearing through flesh, tissue and bone.

"Guns are unique among weapons. The chance of dying is much greater than with a knife," says Dr. Wintemute, professor of epidemiology and preventive medicine at UC Davis.

"Most people who die from gunshot wounds die where they are shot. And those who receive care die within the first 24 hours."

The injuries Dr. Wintemute treated during his three months in Cambodia's war zone are not that different from those treated at any urban trauma unit: insidious, life threatening and violent. There's the bleeding kid dumped out of a gang member's speeding car, the suicidal woman who shoots herself but now wants to live, the boy who aims at his 2-year-old sister thinking the gun is a toy, the store clerk trying to avert a robbery, the hunting trip gone bad.

Nearly 40% of American households have guns. There are about 220 million firearms in civilian hands. And there are more than 30,000 firearm fatalities each year in this country. For every death there are approximately three nonfatal firearm injuries, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [...]