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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has apparently removed a page on its website describing gun violence in the U.S. as a public health crisis.
The department made that designation in June 2024, when former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated, “Firearm violence is an urgent public health crisis that has led to loss of life, unimaginable pain, and profound grief for far too many Americans.”
“U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has issued a landmark Surgeon General’s Advisory on Firearm Violence, declaring firearm violence in America to be a public health crisis,” the website used to read. At least 10 prominent medical organizations wrote in support of Murthy’s advisory.
As of Tuesday, however, the HHS page that included Murthy’s public health crisis declaration appears to have been deleted.
The URL that once led to that advisory currently leads to a “Page Not Found” message. “The page may have been moved, it no longer exists, or the address may have been typed incorrectly,” the site states.
An archived version of the page shows that the website URL is correct. A search of the terms “guns” and “public health” at HHS.gov does lead users to a PDF result that reads “Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America.” However, upon clicking that link, the same “Page Not Found” message appears.
It’s probable that the department removed the page following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in early February, which called on all executive branch agencies to review Biden administration actions that “purport[ed] to promote safety but may have impinged on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”
A recent analysis of gun violence data reviewed by the Pew Research Center shows that close to “47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in the United States” in 2023, the most recent year for which statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are available.
“While the number of gun deaths in the U.S. fell for the second consecutive year, it remained among the highest annual totals on record,” the report stated.
Nearly 4 in 10 gun-related deaths were homicides, while just under 6 in 10 were deemed death by suicide. About 3 percent were killings by law enforcement, accidental deaths or deaths due to “undetermined circumstances,” according to the report.
For the past few years, gun violence has been the leading cause of death for kids between the ages of 1 and 17 in the U.S.
“The United States has by far the highest rate of child and teen firearm mortality among peer nations,” a report published in 2023 by KFF stated. “In no other similarly large, wealthy country are firearms in the top four causes of death for children and teens, let alone the number one cause.”
Organizations advocating for stricter gun laws in the U.S. criticized the HHS’s decision to remove Murthy’s advisory from the department’s website.
“Gun violence is a public health crisis and must be treated as such,” wrote the account for GIFFORDS on X. “Instead, the Trump administration is removing lifesaving resources from the Surgeon General’s website. Trump has made his priorities clear, and it’s NOT keeping our children safe.”
“The Trump Administration just removed the HHS report declaring gun violence a public health crisis. Let’s be clear: Taking down a report won’t change the fact that our country has a gun homicide rate 26x that of peer nations, or that guns are the #1 killer of our kids,” Everytown for Gun Safety wrote on its Bluesky account.
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