In a previous newsletter, we discussed what at the time were being called Presidential Executive Orders regarding gun violence. One of these has now shown up on the Whitehouse web site as a Presidential Memorandum rather than an Executive Order.
In any case, we thought you might be interested in more detail about this issue and how it might relate to the purpose and mission of Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
Following are selected quotes from this Presidential Memoranda and the White House web page devoted to preventing gun violence — which is located at http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/preventing-gun-violence.
Presidential Memorandum “Engaging in Public Health Research on the Causes and Prevention of Gun Violence”, January 16, 2013:
- “The Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary), through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other scientific agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, shall conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it.”
From the White House web page on preventing gun violence:
- “Though the vast majority of Americans with a mental illness are not violent, we need to do more to identify mental health issues early and help individuals get the treatment they need before dangerous situations develop. As President Obama has said, ‘We are going to need to work on making access to mental health care as easy as access to a gun.’ The Administration is proposing steps to identify mental health issues early and help individuals get the treatment they need before these dangerous situations develop.”
If you have information about the causes of gun violence and ways to prevent it, please send it to:
Secretary HHS in care of Kathleen.Sebelius@hhs.gov
Director CDC in care of Tomfrieden@cdc.gov
You might want to mention that important and often neglected causes of violence are psychotropic drugs, whose violence-causing side effects are already documented by the Food and Drug Administration; and that the way to prevent it is to simply stop taking these drugs (but do not stop taking these drugs suddenly, as the violence caused by withdrawal symptoms are just as deadly as violence caused by taking the drugs in the first place.) For evidence, go to the FDA’s web site www.fda.gov and search for “black box warning antidepressant” — for example, the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in children and adolescents being treated with antidepressant drugs.
For more information about the relation between violence, suicide and psychotropic drugs, download and read the booklet “Psychiatry and the Creation of Senseless Violence” from the CCHR St. Louis web site.