Column:Solutions exist to gun violence in Cincinnati

Gun violence in Cincinnati is all over the news again - activists, rappers, drug dealers and random bystanders shot or killed.

This time, however, Mayor Mark Mallory and University Hospital are doing something about it.

According to a report Tuesday in The Cincinnati Enquirer, they have proposed a plan called "Out of the Crossfire," where "gunshot victims will be evaluated by a program coordinator to assess their employment history, education, living quarters, drug or alcohol use, environmental factors, socio-economic status, prior episodes or hospitalization for violence, coping skills and support systems."

It is a plan to keep gunshot survivors from getting shot again - or worse, getting zipped up in a bag.

Why is a hospital running some touchy-feely program against gun violence? It's an excellent question, because it determines the degree to which the massacre on our streets is about "gun control" or public health.

The answer is brutally simple: It's both.

The Enquirer reported last January how Dr. Jay Johannigman, a two-tour Iraq war veteran and head of trauma care at University Hospital, "cared for soldiers riddled with shrapnel or bullets in battle and has spent too much of his civilian career digging bullets out of young men who are the casualties of urban warfare. 'What you learn in a big-city emergency room serves you well in war,' said Johannigman, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve."

That's right. We've let gun violence in Cincinnati become a trauma surgeon's training ground for war, instead of the other way around.

Mayor Mallory now has the city's full attention, and he must lead Cincinnati out of this public safety emergency. Only he can propose a complete strategy to end the violence - one based on data and analysis - that can unite the city's liberals, conservatives and moderates behind the same cause.

In 2001, professor Lawrence Sherman of the University of Pennsylvania wrote a meta-analysis called Reducing Gun Violence: What works, what doesn't, what's promising. Sherman collected research from around America and evaluated anti-gun violence policies in terms of epidemiology - i.e., whether they tackled the causes of gun violence like the causes of a disease.

Sherman found that, while gun buyback programs are a policy failure, "gun patrols" by uniformed police are empirically shown to work. Officers patrol "gun crime hot spots, in areas with homicide rates … above the national average … looking for illegally carried guns."

A 1992 experiment in a high-crime Kansas City area showed "a 49 percent reduction in crimes committed with guns."

In 1996, two areas in Indianapolis showed a 50 percent and a 22 percent drop, respectively, in "gun assaults, armed robberies and homicides."

Sherman also discusses the utility of "ammunition control" and outright handgun bans. While there is no conclusive data yet to show these ideas definitely work, the data we have are "promising." Sherman argues that the only way to know for sure is to experiment. Therefore, I suggest that:

(1) Cincinnati City Council amends Municipal Code Sec. 708-17 to state simply, "No person shall sell handgun ammunition to any purchaser with whom the seller is not personally acquainted."

(2) Subject to Ohio's Concealed Carry law, City Council ban for one-year civilian handgun possession within the city limits. (Note: The Second Amendment does not apply against state and city government regulation.) (3) Mallory and the Hamilton County Commissioners raise city and county taxes to hire the extra police, and build the extra jail space, needed to run uniformed officer gun patrols in high crime areas.

Combined with the social resources of "Out of the Crossfire," maybe these steps can end our gun violence epidemic.

E-mail Doug at sintaeks@hotmail.com