What Automobiles, Tobacco and Guns Share in Common: They Are Deadly Public Health Issues

I FIRST PUBLISHED THIS 50 MONTHS AGO. I POST IT AGAIN THE DAY AFTER THE SLAUGHTER OF 19 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN AND TWO OF THEIR TEACHERS IN UVALDE, TEXAS BY AN 18-YEAR OLD MAN WHO HAD BOUGHT AN AK-47 ON HIS BIRTHDAY. 

NO OTHER COUNTRY ON THIS PLANET IS EXPERIENCING THE NUMBER OF SENSELESS KILLINGS FROM GUNS LIKE WE ARE. WE CAN'T SKIP AROUND THIS FACT BY CITING MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES. YES, THEY ARE REAL. BUT THEY CANNOT BE AN EXCUSE FOR NOT TAKING THE STEPS WHICH WE KNOW WILL LIMIT THE CARNAGE THROUGH SENSIBLE GUN REGULATIONS. IN FACT SUCH REGULATIONS ARE SUPPORTED BY THE MAJORITY OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC. 

As many as 50 people—50 men, women and children—might still be alive today if the common-sense gun policies supported by 80% of the American public were in place.  

That’s right.  Fifty people today, 50 more tomorrow, 50 every day after that, would still be alive if  we were acting  on what we know to be true.  

For someone of my age, this fight for life through the adoption of responsible gun policies recalls other fights for life through common-sense regulations. Fights including automobiles and tobacco.

Take automobiles. Today, about 35,000 people die annually as a result of automobile-related accidents.  That’s tragic, but consider that if automobile fatalities per mile were occurring at the same rate today as they were in the year I was born, those 35,000 deaths would not be 50,000, not 100,000, not 200,000, and not even 300,000.  They would be closer to 400,000 people each year. 

Back then, seeing this carnage, nobody talked about banning cars.  But they did come to demand common-sense 

regulations. Seat belts became required; so did airbags.  You were required to pass a driver’s test.  (How, I ask, do you justify requiring a test to drive a car and not a test to shoot a gun?)  You have to get your license renewed every five years.  There are fines for traffic violations and sometimes suspension of your license. 

Make no mistake.  These common sensed regulations didn’t come easily.  Car manufacturers complained about the cost of some of the safety devices. Drivers complained about being "forced" to use seat belts.  But the evidence prevailed.  So did common sense. So did public will.  

  

Or  take tobacco.

What if people were smoking today  at the same rate as when I was a teenager in the mid-1950s?  Almost half the population  smoked then, compared to 15% smoking today.  If that rate of smoking still prevailed, and if the linkage of smoking to mortality remained about the same, up to one million more people might have died last year from smoke-related diseases.  Instead of what is still a tragedy of almost 500,000 people dying from smoke-related illnesses, the death toll could be closer to 1,500,000.  

Believe me, getting common-sense regulations for cigarette smoking was a decades-long battle.  If you think the NRA is a strong lobby today, you should have seen the tobacco lobby.  It supported politicians committed to the industry.  It supported medical conventions and encouraged doctors to recommend cigarettes; I’m serious.  It lobbied against research to establish the linkage of smoking and cancer.  But we kept getting more data linking smoking to cancer, just as we are today on the linkage of guns to gun-related deaths.  

As a result, warning labels were mandated on cigarette packages.  Age limits were imposed on the purchase of tobacco; advertising was regulated to shield children from its influence; excise taxes were increased. 

What drove these changes in automobile and tobacco regulation?  There was increasingly compelling data and research. Above all, this research showed that automobile and tobacco related fatalities werematters of public health.  

We came to recognize that whether a person smokes is not just a private issue.  It's a public health issue.We learned the damaging impact of secondhand smoke.  

We recognized that how a person drives a car is not just a private issue.  It affects others.  It can kill others.  So we insisted that you had to have a license  and demonstrate you were able to drive.

Just as with tobacco and automobiles, owning a gun is not only a private matter. It is also a matter of public health. Tragically, we witness that every day.  So just as with tobacco and automobiles, use of guns must be regulated responsibly.

Importantly, changes in behavior resulting from the regulation of tobacco and automobiles also changed the “culture.”  It is no longer “cool” to smoke.   When I joined Procter & Gamble, there was an ashtray in front of every board seat.   You would walk into a store or restaurant and it could be “cool” to be smoking.  Movie stars were portrayed smoking; men and women. No longer.

It’s no longer “cool” to drive without a seatbelt.  It’s stupid.  That’s what strong social movements can do.  

Culture changes impact everything.  Including business.  Businesses stepped up to forbid smoking on their premises and encourage safe driving habits. 

We’re seeing businesses step up on the gun issue.  Walmart has banned the sale of assault weapons and now has increased the age to 21 at which one might buy a rifle.  Dick’s has done the same thing.  Rental car companies and airlines like Delta have stopped giving preferred discounts to members of the NRA.  Kroger has banned the sale of large magazines. 

 Businesses are getting the message. 

I urge you support businesses which are adopting responsible gun policies.  Let them know that’s why you’re shopping there.  And let those which aren’t adopting similar policies know you’re going to support their competitors.

Focus on electing candidates who support responsible gun policies and rejecting those who don’t.  Nothing counts as much as your vote. Demand to know exactly where a candidate stands on universal background checks, keeping guns out of the hands of people who have been involved in domestic violence and banning assault weapons and large magazines. 

The wind is at our back on this, but it’s going to be a continuing battle.I’m inspired how young people are taking the field.  Let us be worthy of their commitment.   

As I said at the outset, as many as 50 men, women and children might still be alive today if we had adopted responsible gun regulations.  This estimate is not a matter of sheer speculation.  Nineteen state already require background checks for ALL gun sales. In these states,  we are seeing up to a 40-50% lower incidence of gun deaths linked to domestic abuse, suicide and involving law enforcement officers.

These facts don’t call for banning guns. They don't call into question the practices of millions of responsible gun owners.  They don’t deny any reasonably interpreted right conferred by the Second Amendment.  

They do call  for common-sense regulations of the kind we have applied to automobiles  and tobacco. Universal background checks. Red flag laws. Banning sales of assault weapons. Regulations that recognize that having a gun today is not only a private matter; it is a matter of public health.  

Let's  act on what we know to be true.  Let's stop simply asking for prayers for parents who have lost their precious children. Let’s demand that legislators, business leaders, pass legislation that helps prevent a repetition of this carnage. Let’s stop the needless killing. Let's start saving lives. We can do this. We must do this. The time is now.

*This an edited transcript of a talk I gave to a rally of "Moms Demand Action" in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 25  2018

Perspectives from A Fine Book on the World We Live in Today

CHURCHILL & ORWELL:  THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM BY THOMAS RICKS

A fascinating book which presents the beliefs and lives of Winston Churchill and George Orwell.  Most impressive about it is the brilliantly selective use of quotations from both writers and what I found to be wise perspective on the meaning of their lives on our contemporary situation and my own life. 

A few examples:

·      I am struck by how often in history the “wisest” writers and thinkers have felt the world was going down the drain.  The historian Arnold Toynbe began the 1930s observing that it was becoming common to think that “the Western system of society might break down and cease to work.”  In 1935, the Shakespearean scholar, A.L. Rowse, wrote that it was “too late to save any liberalism, perhaps too late to save socialism.”  In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the novelist, Virginia Woolf, wrote to her sister, lamenting “the inevitable end of civilization.”  

Despite the easy-to-support assertions, “civilization” has shown the ability to sustain itself against great setbacks.  It’s worth remembering that today as we bemoan what’s going on around us and work to make it right. 

As George Orwell wrote after World War II, lamenting what was going on around him but still looking forward:  “Spring is here, even in London…and they can’t stop you from enjoying it.  The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going around the sun and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”

On the other hand, we must not fail to see how narrow the gap is between calamity and avoiding calamity.  If it hadn’t been for Churchill, a “peace agreement” might have been reached between the leaders of Britain and Hitler.  Many leaders, including Lord Halifax, wanted to find such an agreement.  And also, in our own history in America, there were those who advocated that Lincoln agree to the Confederate states withdrawing from the Union.  The challenge Churchill faced in World War II was huge.  As just one example, in 1942, Churchill was crushed one day to learn that, of a convoy of 34 ships coming from Canada, 20 had been sunk.  

·      I’ve often remarked on how every life is made up of “successes” and “failures.”  That is certainly true of the lives of Churchill and Orwell.  Churchill’s defeats were many prior to World War II and after World War II.  Yet, he displayed towering strength and willpower during the war.  Without him, it may not have ended the way it did.

Orwell, with his books Animal Farm and 1984, has achieved more notoriety and success after his death than before.  When he was alive, his book sales were measured in the hundreds and thousands.  Since his death, an estimated 50 million copies of his books have been sold.

In Animal Farm, Orwell described an existence that spoke directly to the tragedy of Communism.  Later, he wrote, “Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of truth.”  It is not just the future that belongs to the all-powerful, but also the past.

·      Both Churchill and Orwell were, at their very heart, focused on understanding reality and, drawing from that, conclusions in a direction that fostered individual freedom.

I love this from Ricks:  “In war time, people will believe the worst if they are not told the truth, or something close to it, perhaps mixed with a vision of the way forward.”  That is what any leader in any time must provide to his or her organization.

Orwell, like Churchill, would spend the post-war period warning of the great dangers that still existed despite the defeat of the Nazis.  In fact, “great dangers” will always exist as part of human nature.  These tendencies to exercise power to one’s own or to one’s group’s advantage. 

We must always stay rooted, to the best of our ability, in the sanctity of the individual and doing what we are called on to do and what we believe is right. 

"Looking Back-Looking Forward: Reflections and Recollections"--Personal Essays

I recently published a series of essays and reflections on personal experiences, beliefs and readings which, in one way or another, have significantly influenced my life.

 

They include essays on my time with the Walt Disney Company and at Yale University; my battle with cancer; the role of religion in my life; and what I describe as a “Personal Model for Living.” 

 

A few of these essays capture blogs which I’ve posted on this site over the past several years. 

 

I’ve tried to capture my view of our responsibility to ourselves and to each other, particularly the young.  I include direct extracts from and reflections on the writings of my favorite authors, as well as our relations with other countries, particularly Russia, with which I have had a long relationship.

 

While the content is diverse and eclectic, I hope readers will find threaded throughout a commitment to service, to respecting and helping others and to the values of integrity, tolerance, justice, courage and simply never giving up.

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The essay collection is available on Amazon and other book-sellers.