American Gun Violence & Mental Illness: Reducing Risk, Restoring Health, Respecting Rights &

In the summer of 2022, following a pair of highly publicized mass-casualty shootings in upstate New York and West Texas, a bitterly divided United States Congress responded to a groundswell of public outrage and forged a path to consensus on the first major piece of gun violence legislation in over twenty- five years.1 After decades of federal dithering on gun violence, lawmakers enacted a statute. [...] What are the dimensions of gun violence in the United States? More than 1.7 million people have been injured by firearms within the bor-ders of the United States since the beginning of the twenty-first cen- tury, and more than 700,000 have died, a total surpassing the combined American military combat death toll of World War I and II combined.4 Fifty-nine percent of those gun deaths were suicides,. [...] That one out of three people with a serious mental illness got no treatment at all in the past year–an estimated five million total–is a tragedy and nothing short of a national scandal.10 These are some of the most marginalized and disadvan- taged members of our society, often friendless and estranged from their families, left to navigate alone a public system of care that is fragmented and overbu. [...] gun industry, the NRA, and a generation of politicians in their sway have capitalized on this phenomenon, to the ultimate detriment of our civil society and at the cost of many lives lost and families and communities damaged by fear and anxiety. [...] Rosenberg was the Founding Director of the National Center for Inju- ry Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the former President and CEO of Task Force for Global Health.