An Expert’s Take on Why We’re Dying from Gun Violence

On July 11, 2024By Rgal Nv

By Robert J. Hansen | OBSERVER Editor

Garen Wintemute, an emergency room physician at UC Davis Medical Center, sees firsthand the damage gun violence is doing to Sacramento.

Over the course of a week earlier this month, four incidents left at least three people dead and one person in critical condition after being shot, according to Sacramento police.

Wintemute, 72, is a recognized expert on the gun violence crisis and a pioneer in the field of injury epidemiology and gun violence prevention. In more than 40 years of gun violence research and prevention work, he has produced an informative body of research on gun violence that directly improves the health and safety of Americans.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, a gun violence expert at the University of California, Davis, has dedicated his life to reducing gun violence. Louis Bryant III, OBSERVER

In the early 1980s, Wintemute visited Cambodia, saw the homicide rate there, and decided he had to do something about the violence in the United States.

Wintemute is the first doctor people see when they enter the emergency room at UCD Medical Center. Working in triage, he sees 70 patients in an eight-hour shift.

“We see every gunshot victim in Sacramento, even if they don’t die on the scene,” Wintemute says. When a patient “knocks on the door,” a team of 10 to 15 people springs into action to treat them.

Between 2019 and 2022, Black people visited emergency rooms three times more often than white people to be treated for gunshot wounds, according to the California Department of Public Health.

The OBSERVER recently reported that Black people made up just over half of those killed in gun violence in Sacramento County between 2019 and 2023, despite making up only about 11% of the county’s population, according to the U.S. Census.

Wintemute says the numbers are dire but not surprising. He says 2019 was the largest increase in homicides in American history — and that increase is driven by a growing racial disparity.

In Sacramento County, between 2018 and 2023, 62 people killed by gun violence were 19 or younger, and 34 of those victims were black, according to a report by The OBSERVER.

These disparities among young black victims of gun violence also exist in rural America, according to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Although black youth represent only 10% of the rural population aged 1 to 19 in 2022, they are responsible for 30% of gun-related deaths among rural youth.

In 2022, for the first time, young Black people in rural communities died from gun violence at a rate equal to or higher than those in urban communities.

Of the 2,279 gun-related deaths among Black youth in 2022, nearly 9% occurred among youth residing in rural communities.

The study reveals a critical and overlooked aspect of rising youth mortality: a significant increase in gun-related deaths among rural black youth, primarily due to homicide.

“This report says we are aware of the disparity in urban homicides, but there is also a huge racial disparity in rural homicides,” Wintemute says.

Wintemute believes racism is a major factor in why there hasn’t been much progress in preventing gun violence. He says when people think about gun violence, they think about interpersonal violence, and demographically, Black and brown people are at the highest risk for homicide and assault. Racism comes into play when people can look at those demographics and say, “That’s not my problem,” Wintemute says. “So we’re not getting anywhere.”

He met people who said that homicides among people of color were not a problem.

“It’s really terrible,” Wintemute said. “What you find here in Sacramento County is reflective of the national situation.”

Wintemute published a 2022 study that found that in California, about 8.9 million adults — more than one in three — personally know at least one person who has been shot or intentionally shot themselves, and 6.3 million know someone they perceive to be at risk of violence toward themselves or others.

“We found that people who live in communities with high levels of violence feel the effects of gun violence even if they are not directly affected by that violence,” Wintemute says.

Two consistent findings are worth highlighting. Respondents’ gender was not associated with any experience of violence, which contrasts sharply with the much higher risk among men for most forms of violent victimization.

Second, non-gun owners who lived with gun owners reported experiencing violence more frequently than others. They were significantly more likely than gun owners and non-gun owners living in households without guns to know people they perceived as being at risk of violence.

“They said they regularly passed memorials or heard gunshots,” Wintemute said.

According to Wintemute’s research, black people were significantly more likely to know two or more people who had been shot than respondents from other racial groups.

In recent years, the fight against gun violence has faced a new problem: “ghost guns.” These are firearms manufactured by private individuals that do not have serial numbers, meaning they are not registered. By definition, ghost guns do not appear in law enforcement’s database of people prohibited from owning firearms and cannot be tracked.

“Ghost guns exist to allow people to commit crimes with impunity,” Wintemute says.

One of the most effective tools for solving gun crimes, he said, is being able to trace gun ownership. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reported that 30 percent of guns recovered in California were unserialized. At least three mass shootings in California have involved ghost guns.

“If I commit crimes with a gun, I can shoot my gun and throw it away because it’s a ghost gun,” Wintemute says.

He anticipates that any significant policy at the federal level will be challenged in court. But in California, measures have been put in place to prevent people from obtaining ghost guns.

According to the California Department of Justice report, between 2020 and 2021, incidents involving ghost guns increased by about 10,000, from 13,000 to 23,000. However, in 2022, the use of ghost guns decreased to about 21,000 incidents per year.

“What we’re seeing (in California) is a stabilization,” Wintemute said.

The problem is that ghost guns continue to arrive in California from other states. Wintemute suggests several specific legislative reforms or administrative measures that, if implemented quickly, would reduce the risk of gun violence.

“Federal and state governments should prohibit the manufacturing of unlicensed firearms,” he said. “The ATF should establish a clear point, early in the production process, at which unfinished receivers or frames are defined as firearm precursors and subsequent finishing work is defined as manufactured firearms.”

It also suggests that unique and permanent serial numbers be assigned to firearm precursors and that individual production and disposition records be kept.

“The current purchase restrictions for fully functional firearms must be applied to firearm precursors,” Wintemute says.

It says that owners of existing stocks of ghost guns and non-serialized firearm precursors should be required to declare their existence and receive, affix and record unique serial numbers. After an appropriate period of time for implementation, possession of a non-serialized firearm or precursor should be a felony, it says, for which a conviction would prohibit any further possession or acquisition of firearms, precursors and ammunition.

“The firearms industry operates under a regulatory structure that was put in place over 50 years ago. Time and technology have moved on,” Wintemute said. “Ghost guns pose a threat that extends beyond political violence to criminal violence of all types. Produced clandestinely and untraceably, ghost guns are tailor-made for the criminal gun market. It’s time to do something about them.”

Although he sometimes becomes discouraged, Wintemute’s mission remains the same: to prevent death and suffering.

“I am a physician, and I was a physician before I was a researcher,” Wintemute says. “I have a duty to alleviate suffering, whether that means treating it or preventing it from happening.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Caught In The Crosshairs” is a series about gun violence and its impact on Sacramento’s black community and was funded by the USC Annenberg Center for Health JournalismCalifornia Health Equity Impact Fund 2024.

Anyone wishing to share their experiences with gun violence is invited to contact Robert J. Hansen at [email protected].