In October 2017, a man barricaded himself in a hotel room with an arsenal of 23 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition and opened fire on the crowd below, killing 58 people and injuring 500 more in this country’s deadliest mass shooting (Yan, Park, & Simon, 2017). The deaths of so many innocent people propelled gun control into a fierce national debate once again. Horrified, Americans watched the parade of victims’ pictures on the news and wondered how this happened. Analysis and debate of gun violence centers around politics. Rarely is there discussion of the impact firearms have on our lives, health, and economy. Gun violence in America causes a heavy toll of death and disability and should be treated as a public health crisis instead of a political debate.

The Scope of the Problem
While mass shootings are sensational and receive most of the news headlines gun violence occurs daily and in a variety of ways. Firearm-related injury and death can be unintentional – a hunting accident or a curious toddler discovering an unsecured handgun, or intentional – assaults, homicides, or suicides. As illustrated in the chart below firearms cause far more injuries than fatalities. Gun violence resulted in injuries 2.5 times more often than fatalities in 2010 (Simonetti, Rowhani-Rahbar, Mills, Young, & Rivara, 2015). Though firearm-related fatalities remain a significant cause of death. In 2015, the most recent year data is available, firearm fatalities were the 3rd leading