Guns a Matter of Life and Death, Not Just Crime

Dr. Michael Lekawa, director of trauma services at UCI Medical Center, calls gun accessibility a public health issue. He has drawers full of studies to support that. But he makes the point best when he talks about one of his own recent patients:

“He was an elderly man who had been a war hero. Because of health problems and depression, he decided to take his own life. Later, recovering in the hospital, he talked about how he very much wanted to live after all. But it was too late; his wounds were too grave and he did not survive.”

The man had shot himself with a handgun. It’s the only suicide method, the doctor said, in which you are more likely to succeed than to fail.

“I’m convinced if he had chosen another method for trying to kill himself, he probably would have survived,” Lekawa said. “But when a gun is available, that’s what people in a depression go for first.”

Three years ago this week, California’s Gov. Pete Wilson was forced to fold his presidential campaign tent. Voters just couldn’t conjure up any enthusiasm that he was more than a lightweight when it came to political vision.

Now Wilson is doing his darndest to prove them right.

On Monday, he vetoed three common-sense gun control bills passed by the state Legislature. At the same time, he delivered a stinging lecture that tougher sentencing laws--not gun restrictions--were the better way to fight crime.

That’s the nut of the problem. The governor sees it as a crime issue--instead of a public health issue.

Among those upset with the governor are members of the Trauma Foundation, based at San Francisco General Hospital. It’s one of the state’s leading advocates for strong gun control legislation and was formed 25 years ago mainly to find ways to reduce the number of burn patients. But as firearm deaths surpassed burn deaths among children, the foundation’s direction changed.

“For children, firearms are not only the No. 1 cause of injury-related deaths in this state, it tops even deaths from diseases,” said Andres Soto, the Trauma Foundation’s policy director.

Gov. Wilson decried what he saw as a “con job on the public” by gun control advocates. But when you look at the bills he vetoed, the only “con” is his confounding argument. His general point for all three bills is that they didn’t help solve the crime problem.

One bill would have strengthened an existing ban on the sale of assault weapons. California passed such a ban in 1989. But gun manufacturers got around the law by producing copycat weapons that weren’t specifically mentioned on the ban list. The new bill would have closed those loopholes.

A second bill would have required gun sellers to offer trigger guards or other use-limitation devices to anyone in California who purchased a gun. Gun buyers weren’t required to buy the precautionary device--the law simply would have required that gun sellers mention that they were available.

A third bill would have required some handguns, those generally known as Saturday night specials, to be subjected to safety tests before they could be sold. It almost defies logic that anyone could oppose such testing. Maybe that’s why Wilson did not directly address this one when he vetoed it.

“No amount of logic or facts will work with the governor,” the Trauma Foundation’s Soto argues. “The gun lobby is simply too strong; he won’t defy it.”

Soto believes Wilson lacks perspective. Most gun crimes, for example, are not committed by people with criminal backgrounds. It’s the married person who has never done anything illegal but shoots a spouse after losing control. Or the person who shoots the neighbor on impulse. Or maybe the war hero, in a depressed state, who later tells his doctor he wishes that gun hadn’t been there for him to use.

Public health advocates are left to deal with gun issues as best they can. Hildy Meyers, Orange County’s director of community disease control and epidemiology, says her office often recommends a triangle approach to tackling public health problems, including gun-related traumas. You try to intervene with solutions for any of the triangle’s three points--the “agent” (the gun) and “host” (the gun user) and the “environment” (availability). One environmental change, she said, might be in our perceptions of whether guns should be in the home. Another might be in using trigger guards.

Flying in the face of this logic, however, is a new Chicago study that gun toters are now using as their bible. Its researchers found that gun ownership is actually a deterrent to crime. Many critics say the study is flawed. I find a more credible statistic in Dr. Lekawa’s own research on the subject:

“The chances of someone innocent getting killed by a gun are 25 times greater when there is a gun in the house.”

If you are into statistics, the Trauma Foundation has loads of them on its Internet Web site: https://www.pcvp.org. It also includes an interesting essay on gun safety for those who insist on ownership.

Whether California does tighten up its gun restriction laws will likely depend on what happens in November. Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, the Democratic candidate for governor, has indicated he would support the bills vetoed by Wilson. Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, his Republican rival, has supported some gun control legislation. But the gun control lobby is far less satisfied with Lungren’s positions.

In the meantime, we’ll have stories like the one out of Dana Point last month, where an 8-year-old girl was accidentally shot in the leg by her 10-year-old cousin.

A 10-year-old with a loaded gun: Now, that’s a public health issue.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com