New York Times' Nicholas Kristof cites Press author on gun control

By: Shaun Manning | Date: January 18, 2013
New York Times' Nicholas Kristof cites Press author on gun control

In two opinion pieces for the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof has cited Private Guns, Public Health author David Hemenway in his discussions of the gun control debate. Writing in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown, CT, school shooting, Kristof noted the grim statistic that children ages 5 to 14 "are 13 times as likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries."

"So let’s treat firearms rationally as the center of a public health crisis that claims one life every 20 minutes," Kristof argues. "The United States realistically isn’t going to ban guns, but we can take steps to reduce the carnage."

Following President Obama's announcement of 23 executive orders aimed at curbing gun violence, Kristof began his column with an anecdote about a conflict over a goose at a local farm before driving his point home: that guns are too often "an instrument not of protection but of escalation." He quotes Hemenway as saying that "having a gun at home increases the risk of suicide in that household by two to four times."

Read the full articles at the New York Times:

"Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?"

"Lessons From Guns and a Goose"