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Address to the United Nations Conference on the Illicit
Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects
by
Dr Neil Arya
Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates, ladies and
gentlemen, I am a family physician in Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada, and President of Physicians for Global Survival,
IPPNW-Canada.
For many reasons, this conference has not focused on the
effects of small arms in developed nations that are not at
war. But, from a public health perspective, the problem of
small arms, including civilian or commercial firearms, extends
to those nations of relative peace and prosperity. I will try
to summarize the health impact of small arms in Canada and the
United States in terms of scope, patterns, and costs.
Of course, these adverse effects of small arms on health
are well-known to emergency room physicians, trauma surgeons,
psychiatrists, pediatricians and family doctors. A physician
stemming a bleed in the chest of a gunshot victim, is not
concerned with whether the shooting was a suicide, accident or
homicide, whether it took place in a conflict-situation or in
peacetime, or whether the perpetrator was a gang member, a
soldier, a non-state actor or a law-abiding gun owner. What
matters to us is whether bullet struck bone, whether bone
shattered, whether metal and bone fragments punctured vital
organs, blood vessels, or severed the spinal cord ? in short,
whether the patient will survive and if so, what his or her
future health will be.
Ultimately though, what matters to physicians is whether
this ongoing tragedy can be prevented. Every year since 1972,
over 30,000 people have died from gunshot in the United
States, far higher than the US toll in the entire Vietnam war.
This amounts to one million deaths since 1970. The world knows
of massacres such as the one at Colombine High School, but few
realise that in the US, guns are the leading cause of death in
the 15-24 age category surpassing even traffic accidents, and
in Canada they are the third leading cause of death in this
age group.
Studies in several US cities have demonstrated that
households with guns have rates of homicide and suicide that
are three to five times those in similar households without
firearms. Both the number of firearms per capita and the total
of firearm deaths per population in the US are about three and
a half times the Canadian rate. And the Canadian rates both
for homicides and suicides are far higher than those in
countries with stricter controls on access and fewer weapons.
Consistent with this, studies in Canada have shown that the
percentage of households with firearms in each province
correlates directly with the rate of firearm death. A study of
more than 20 developed countries demonstrated that this
correlation between percentage of households with firearms and
firearm death rate was true across borders and cultures. And
in both developed and developing countries, the vast majority
of the weapons that kill or wound
in crime begin as legal
weapons and end up ?leaking? into situations in which they are
misused in deadly ways.
There are also public health data on the huge financial
costs imposed by small arms. The direct cost of deaths and
injuries due to firearms in the US has been calculated as
being ,000 for each fatal gunshot and ,000 for each injured
person. The total impact goes much further than emergency
medical care. It extends to police services, to lost
productivity, to rehabilitation, to psychological support for
victims and their families, to the social cost of children
growing up without parents, and to those relations and
contacts who continue to live in fear. The total cost of
firearm-related problems has been estimated as being 5 per
person per year in Canada and 5 per person per year in the US.
But as victims and families will attest, even these startling
numbers do not begin to measure the total damage of these
arms.
These tollshuman and financialare why major
physicians organisations recognize gun injuries to be a major
public health problem. In the US, all large and highly
respected medical organizations including the American Medical
Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American
College of Physicians, and Physicians for Social
Responsibility have been strong advocates for stricter gun
control.
Growing up in a small town in Ontario, I too, indirectly
experienced the impact of small arms. In Grade 4, one
classmate was killed accidentally by his brother in their
barn; another grade school playmate was killed in a hunting
accident in his early twenties. For this reason too, I urge
youboth as a professional and as a private citizento
do all you can to reduce the toll of this global epidemic of
death and injury from small arms.
Neil Arya
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