By Bill Cameron, WLS-AM News
(CHICAGO) Four gun controls bills failed in the U.S. Senate Monday and so leading officials of the Cook County Health & Hospitals System are calling for scientific research into the problem.
If Congress won’t enact gun control, Dr. Jay Shannon who heads the Cook County Health and Hospitals system, says lawmakers should at least resume funding of basic research into what he calls a “major public health crisis.”
“In this country we know that gunshots are a leading cause of death but one of the things that’s not appreciated is that, as an example, suicides are more common than homicides,” Shannon said. “This would just be one example of how research and epidemiological approaches that are used typically in public health, can help to illuminate what kinds of things need to be done.”
So far this year in Cook County, deaths due to gun violence are up 50-percent.
@ 2016 WLS-AM News
