Vision impaired or professionally blind: health education research and firearm violence.

In the past three decades, approximately 1 million Americans have been killed with firearms and over 2 million have been injured with firearms. Firearm violence is one of the top 10 causes of premature mortality for racial/ethnic minorities and youths 1 to 19 years of age. However, firearm violence issues are virtually absent in the past 15 years in health education-related journals. We provide several examples of areas of health education where firearm violence is congruent with the professional responsibilities of health educators. Finally, we encourage health educators to become involved in firearm violence research and health education-related journal leaders to become more proactive in soliciting manuscripts that address firearm violence-related issues.