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How the Law Affects Gun Policy in the United States: Law as Intervention or Obstacle to Prevention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Jon S. Vernick  and
Julie Samia Mair
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Extract

In our experience, public health practitioners (rather than scholars) seeking to address a health problem often have just two very basic questions about the law: (1) how can I use the law to create new interventions, or improve existing ones, to protect the public’s health; and (2) will the law prevent me from successfully implementing certain interventions? In this way, the law is seen as either an opportunity for intervention to affect a public health problem, or an obstacle to enacting or implementing a desired intervention.

In addition, because some public health practitioners may not fully understand the intricacies of a given legal area, some possible obstacles to intervention may be either real or perceived. A real legal obstacle is not necessarily an insurmountable one, but it does have genuine legal force. A perceived obstacle has little, if any, true legal application to a given kind of intervention.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , Winter 2002 , pp. 692 - 704
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2002

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