Intervention needed to halt gun violence

To the Editor:

The response of Richard Struck to your timely article, “Stop the Shooting: Calling Foundations to Arms” (My View, June 1), shows the formidable challenge posed to all of us by the National Rifle Association’s armament of well-rehearsed “facts.”

As Mr. Struck notes, education is perhaps the critical element in reducing gun violence. The appropriate educational effort, however, must begin with policy makers who all too often retreat behind pro-gun-lobby doubletalk, and with foundation heads who ignore gun-violence issues by consigning them to the realm of politics.

In fact, gun-violence prevention is a matter of public health and should be addressed as such. As with other public-health interventions, the solutions should be multiple, and aimed at reducing the virulence of the agent of harm (guns), educating the people at risk (gun owners and gun victims), and improving the environment in which harm occurs (gun distribution and industry practices and standards).

Education of victims, as is the case with the N.R.A.’s own Eddie Eagle program, which teaches young children not to pick up firearms they discover, will not in and of itself reduce the chances of a child’s finding a gun. And it is the saturation of guns in our society and their sale, no questions asked, to buyers over the Internet, at gun shows, and in flea markets that makes gun-related harm particularly common.

The N.R.A. raises millions of dollars for education that supports its assertions that handgun licensing and registration are unnecessary, much as Big Tobacco hammered home the message that tobacco was not addictive.

Common sense and common decency, though, argue in favor of fewer guns and better methods for regulating their sale to criminals and children, as well as measures to educate gun owners about safe storage of firearms.

As for the suggestion that the majority of gun-violence victims are “criminals,” “hoodlums,” and “thugs” who are beyond reasonable help, such designations hardly seem appropriate for the victims at Columbine High School, or the 6-year-old killed by another 6-year-old recently in Flint, Mich.

Many of us in the foundation world have recognized the need for intervention, rather than invective, in helping to bring reform to neighborhoods and populations written off as beyond help. The central role of gun-violence prevention in social-justice efforts — and the clear need for faster change — has led groups as varied as the Million Mom March, the N.A.A.C.P., and the Funders’ Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention to put renewed energy toward the fight.

We can only hope other foundations will bring new commitment and funding to the gun-violence-prevention movement. To ignore the need is to repeat the deadly lessons being taught to children on the playgrounds of Flint and the corridors of Columbine, and to leave America in the terrible position of leading the industrialized world in all forms of gun injuries and deaths.

Irene Diamond
Founder, Funders’ Collaborative for GunViolence Prevention
President, The Irene Diamond Fund
New York