Garen J. Wintemute is an emergency medicine physician at UC Davis Medical Center, in the US state of California, where he is the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program.[1] He conducts research in the fields of injury epidemiology and the prevention of firearm violence.[2] He has been named a "hero of medicine" by Time magazine.[3] He is the director of the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center, which was established in 2017; the center is the first state-funded gun violence research center in the country.[4][5]

Research

Wintemute is one of a few public health experts researching gun violence in the United States—he has said that there are only a dozen researchers in the United States who study this subject, including him. He has funded this research in part through more than $1 million of his own money.[6][1] In 1987, he published a study on accidental gun deaths among children in California, of which 88 occurred between 1977 and 1983. The same study found that in about one-third of incidents, the shooter did not know the gun was loaded or real.[7] At a press conference to announce the study's results, multiple real guns like those involved in the accidental deaths were placed next to toy lookalikes; few of the reporters in attendance could tell them apart.[8] His research on Saturday night special handguns, especially a 1994 study he published entitled "Ring of Fire", has been credited as the main reason for the California government's efforts to impose strict regulations on them.[9] In 2017 he has published a study showing that gun owners with an alcohol-related criminal conviction are more likely than gun owners without such a conviction to be arrested for a subsequent gun-related crime.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b Wadman, Meredith (April 24, 2013). "Firearms research: The gun fighter". Nature. 496 (7446): 412–5. Bibcode:2013Natur.496..412W. doi:10.1038/496412a. PMID 23619673. S2CID 31745559.
  2. ^ "Violence Prevention Research Program, Garen J. Wintemute". UC Davis Health System. UC Regents. 2014. Archived from the original on January 28, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2015.
  3. ^ Craft, Cynthia H. (July 5, 2016). "For This Man, Reducing Gun Violence Is A Life's Mission". Kaiser Health News.
  4. ^ Lambert, Diana (August 30, 2016). "UC Davis Medical Center to house first-ever state gun violence research center". Sacramento Bee. Retrieved September 2, 2016.
  5. ^ Kate Washington (June–July 2019). "Armed With Knowledge". Sactown Magazine.
  6. ^ Beckett, Lois (April 22, 2014). "Meet the Doctor Who Gave $1 Million of His Own Money to Keep His Gun Research Going". ProPublica. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  7. ^ Wintemute, GJ; Teret, SP; Kraus, JF; Wright, MA; Bradfield, G (June 12, 1987). "When children shoot children. 88 unintended deaths in California". JAMA. 257 (22): 3107–9. doi:10.1001/jama.1987.03390220105030. PMID 3586229.
  8. ^ Thacker, Paul D. (October 27, 2015). "Gun Myths Die Hard". Slate. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
  9. ^ Golden, Frederic (June 24, 2001). "Drop Your Guns". Time.
  10. ^ Ellis, Emma Grey (January 31, 2017). "Gun Research Will Get Even More Difficult Under NRA-Friendly Trump". Wired. Retrieved June 7, 2017.

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