I still remember the raspy voice of the wizened cancer patient with the hole in her throat. So addicted to the poison that was killing her 鈥 cigarettes 鈥 she interspersed her words of warning about the dangers of smoking with taking puffs of a cigarette through her tracheostomy hole.
It was a short, disturbing public service video shown in my sixth-grade classroom as part of an anti-smoking campaign linked to a , which for the first time officially linked smoking to cancer and heart disease.
That night, I flushed my father鈥檚 cigarettes down the toilet. The woman鈥檚 image haunted my nightmares for years. After seeing that video, I never lighted up.
Today that kind of video would probably not make it into the classroom, deemed inappropriate for preteens, too triggering.
But that鈥檚 arguably just the kind of aggressive messaging campaign 鈥 particularly aimed at young people 鈥 we need right now to combat what has become the country鈥檚 No. 1 public health threat for American youth: guns.
Firearms became the leading cause of death among those 19 and younger in 2020, owing to a during the pandemic. The gun homicide rate in the U.S. for people ages 15-24 was already as in other developed nations more than a decade ago. It鈥檚 a racial justice issue, too. Black males 15 to 34 are as likely to be a victim of gun homicide as their white counterparts.
Though much of the media attention surrounds mass school shootings and the proliferation of semiautomatic weapons, of murders and 鈥渘on-negligent manslaughters.鈥 Most gun homicides involve the shooting of a small number of people, the 鈥渙nes and twos.鈥
Little national data is available on the age of the perpetrators of this day-to-day violence, but there is evidence they are getting younger. Where I live, in Washington, D.C., 40% of suspects in shootings were 18 to 24 years old and 11% were under age 17, according to .
Dr. Babak Sarani, co-chief of trauma surgery at George Washington University Medical Center, tells of how , until the young man died after being shot in November, at 19.
In response to rising gun violence, Congress last year and more than have passed in the past decade.
But the carnage continues, and laws alone are unlikely to stop it, with gun ownership protected in some form by the 2nd Amendment and a Supreme Court that of what that means. The year . Our country is supersaturated with weapons.
Despite all that, one important lever remains oddly underutilized: using the media, social media, and the entertainment industry to rebrand guns from symbols of status, power, and personal freedom to ones of death and carnage.
Gun manufacturers, following the playbook of tobacco companies in the 1940s and 1950s, for deadly weapons among young Americans, particularly men. And they have had collaborators in the process 鈥 violent films, TV shows, and video games that glorify and glamorize weaponry.
Smoking was normative in America until public health officials took it on. What allowed smoking bans in public places to gain traction was decades-long public health work to re-image the cigarette 鈥 frequently and forcefully 鈥 by officials like Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
The anti-smoking campaigns depicted the health scourge with images and language that were often . That message was then echoed by public service announcements featuring celebrities from sports . Research has found that such in smoking cessation.
Today we recognize guns as a public health threat. So it鈥檚 time to act with the same kind of visceral public campaign that put my dad鈥檚 cigarettes into the toilet.
Today鈥檚 public service announcements on gun safety feel somewhat sanitized. None really captures the horrifying physical and emotional damage caused by guns. Maybe if we showed the public what it looks like when a kid is shot, the shock and disgust 鈥 a view of reality 鈥 would counter the social glamour of guns.
The airwaves and social media channels are filled with messages urging young people to . Where are the ads saying it鈥檚 not cool to pack a pistol? Would filmmakers commit to making action movies without guns, just as filmmakers stopped making smoking sexy in films?
There will, of course, be debate about whether the images of gunfire and bodies would be traumatizing, especially to kids and victims鈥 families. But some may feel differently. Emmett Till鈥檚 that his body be displayed in an open coffin because 鈥渆verybody needed to know what happened to Emmett Till.鈥 Disturbing images have proved powerful in awakening public outrage and prompting action: The horrific video of George Floyd鈥檚 murder lent fuel to the Black Lives Matter movement.
If we want gun violence to end, there may be little choice but to show the public the true damage of guns in all its ugliness and brutality.
