Gun control will prevail regardless of next president, says researcher

Philip Alpers is the founding director of GunPolicy.org, an Australian based website devoted to gun violence. (Photo: Action on Armed Violence)

It doesn’t matter which candidate is elected the next leader of the free world next Tuesday, stricter gun control is inevitable — at least according to one onlooker.

Philip Alpers is the founding director of GunPolicy.org, an organization devoted to publishing facts and figures on gun violence and gun control. It’s hosted by the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney in Australia. Alpers says it doesn’t matter what Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump think about gun control, American citizens will not continue to tolerate an “ever-worsening state of armed violence.”

“There must come a time when solutions already tested and championed by the United States are deployed to reduce the country’s toll of 33,000 firearm-related deaths each year,” Alpers says in an Op-Ed published by CNN.

Alpers notes that automobiles have endured decades of “evidence-based public health measures” with licensing and registration that didn’t lead to mass confiscation, an argument often presented by public health researchers. “Cars remain objects of maleness, power and freedom,” he says.

He calls armed violence a public health problem and says the gun lobby in America has suppressed research into the problem for 20 years, according to his references.

“Imagine the outcry if for two decades the transportation industry lobby had managed to choke off all federal funds for road safety research,” Alpers wrote.

He even went after the Second Amendment. “Unique to the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution is just that — an amendment,” he says. “Americans are free to change an outdated law when they so choose.”

Alpers says long term public health efforts will prevail, and they will save countless lives. Background checks, micro-stamping of guns and ammunition as “a crime-busting tool,” smart guns that can only be fired by the owner – even licensing and registration, he says, are what will slowly become the norm.

“This pair of presidential candidates will be long gone, but America’s children will insist,” he says.