June 25, 2025
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has declared gun violence a “public health crisis” in a new advisory from the Office of the Surgeon General, urging the nation to collectively address the issue.
Texas Gun Rights has been warning Americans about the potential for the radical left to declare gun violence a public health crisis after federal, state and local governments abused their power in a declared public health crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chris McNutt, President of Texas Gun Rights, remarked, “This so-called public health crisis is just another way for the government to ram radical gun control down our throats. We’ve seen how they’ve exploited health crises before, and now they’re trying to do the same with our Second Amendment rights.”
Gun Violence Statistics and Misconceptions
The gun control debate is often fueled by alarming statistics that sow fear among the public.
Yet the Brady Campaign, a staunch advocate for radical gun control, claims that a whopping 60% of gun deaths are suicides — and only 37% are homicides, including the 1% of mass shootings.
The remaining 3% of gun deaths involve law enforcement, unintentional shootings, and undetermined causes.
Among the homicides, the majority are criminals killing other criminals, often gang related.
Despite these figures, the likelihood of an average person dying from gun violence is extremely low.
Yet the use of such statistics is frequently aimed at inciting fear to push a political agenda rather than presenting a balanced view of the role of firearms in society.
The Reality of Defensive Gun Use
While guns are often villainized in the media for every death they are involved in, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of gun uses in the United States are defensive.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), studies on defensive gun use indicate that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year.
These instances often go unreported to law enforcement and are rarely picked up by local or national media outlets.
This extensive defensive use of firearms highlights the critical role that the Second Amendment plays in American society.
It demonstrates that the “good guy with a gun” is not a myth but an essential aspect of self-defense and public safety.
Surgeon General’s Push Call for Gun Control
But the Surgeon General’s advisory outlines what they refer to as the devastating impact of gun violence, noting that “over 48,000 people died from firearm-related injuries in 2022” — which accounted for less than 1% of U.S. deaths in 2022.
For perspective, the three leading causes of death in 2022 were heart disease (699,659 deaths), cancer (607,790), and unintentional injury (218,064).
COVID-19, listed as the underlying cause for 186,702 deaths during 2022, ranked as the fourth leading underlying cause of death.
The Surgeon General’s advisory calls for more research, better data collection, and the implementation of “public health strategies to reduce gun violence,” which, of course, includes radical gun control laws in the form of mandatory storage requirements, an assault weapons ban, universal gun registration and even “red flag” gun confiscation.
Dr. Murthy argues that this “public health approach” can somehow significantly reduce gun violence, drawing parallels to successful efforts in reducing tobacco-related diseases and motor vehicle crashes.
