EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Dr. Archie Bleyer spent more than five decades helping children survive cancer. But then he discovered a bigger killer and set out to confront it.
“I treated children with cancer and was into pediatric research. We improved pediatric cancer prognosis. Then I discovered that bullets have killed more children and adolescents than cancer. In the United States, the most common cause of death under 20 is guns, not cancer,” Bleyer said.
American Pediatric Association research recently published by Forbes says firearm fatalities among children and adolescents increased by nearly 90% from 2011 to 2021, beating out car accidents as the leading cause of death for that group.
The pediatric oncologist from Oregon is among the experts gathering on Saturday at the El Paso Community College Administrative Services Center for a Gun Violence Prevention Forum sponsored by Texas Doctors for Social Responsibility. The forum is from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 9050 Viscount Drive.
Topics include how to improve gun safety at home, testimonies from gun violence survivors and how rhetoric can lead to violence.
Bleyer will talk about his research on gun violence in Hispanic communities, which will probably raise eyebrows among older generations who grew up watching police television shows where Latinos were often portrayed as gun-happy gang members being led away in handcuffs.
“Texas border counties are among the safest in the state, some among the safest in the country in gun violence. Why? The strongest hypothesis I have been able to develop is because of the Mexican-American heritage,” Bleyer said. “They grew up with their families, with their grandparents who brought their culture and it a way to protect themselves and their families, their children.”
Bleyer said he has researched data from 22 Texas counties near the Mexican border as well as Latino communities in other states that reflect a similar trend.
“Sure enough, in Oregon there is a direct correlation between population density of Latinos and gun violence: The higher the population of Latinos, the lower the gun violence,” he said.
Latin American countries, including Mexico, have strict gun laws, in some cases to the point that the only ones who have access to firearms are the police and the criminals. While that anti-gun upbringing may prevail when those families migrate, the trend may not hold in future generations. Bleyer says the gun industry has been aggressively marketing its products to Latinos since 2015, and that is beginning to skew decades-old trends.
Firearms are displayed at a gun shop, Feb. 19, 2021, in Salem, Ore. A federal appeals court upheld a county law in Maryland on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024, that requires gun dealers to distribute information about suicide prevention, conflict resolution and mental health resources. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, File)
“Ever since then, the gun violence rate started to go up among Hispanics; suicides increased, sometimes in children (as young as 8 years old). Still, gun violence rates are lower (in Texas border counties) than in the rest of Texas,” he said.
Bleyer, 81, made no allusions to politics nor the Second Amendment during a half-hour telephone interview from his rural Oregon home.
In addition to wanting to save children’s lives, he said a personal tragedy motivates him to talk about gun violence prevention. That was the suicide of a 12-year-old boy who was a classmate and a sports teammate of his grandson.
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