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According to the World Health Organization, the prevention of violence is a multifaceted public health mandate, which requires strategies that are adapted to local and national social contexts (Eisenman & Flavahan, 2017). Brian Owens paper on the role of physicians to address gun violence emphasizes not only the much needed role of physicians in developing policies on gun safety, but also the existence of social and political obstacles to this form of advocacy in North America.
Now, if the objective, as he rightly proposes, is to stop shooters before they shoot, then gun safety and gun control, although absolutely necessary, need to be complemented with policies and programming that reflect and address other social determinants of violence and the precursors of violent acting out identified across the scientific and threat related literature (Silver, Simons, & Craun, 2018).
Violence by lone actors is associated with identifiable and modifiable social and psychological factors that can be targeted by prevention and intervention programs. First, the well-known imitation and contagion phenomena after mass killings (school shootings for example), are associated with media coverage of these events. The Quebec National Institute for Public Health just released guidelines to equip the media in order to minimize these effects (Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec, 2019). However the influence of the internet and social media, fueling hate discourses...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.