Latest Joycelyn Elders Quotes from Interviews

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• [We must] deal with all of the contributing factors to gun violence as a whole, because it's like a leaky bucket - if you've got a bucket with six holes shot through it, [and] you plug up five, you've still got a leaky bucket.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Gun, Buckets, Violence

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• My biggest challenge is to educate the American people, to make access to health care available for all, and to make sure that prevention plays a big part in health care. In the case of guns, prevention means we prevent homicides and devastating, expensive gun injuries by preventing those who shouldn't have guns from getting their hands on guns.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Mean, Gun, Hands

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• We know that there are several predisposing factors to gun violence: poverty, lack of education, lack of good parenting, lack of jobs, living in an environment where violence is seen every day, all the time. And children being born to children are likely to have all of these predisposing factors.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Jobs, Children, Gun

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• We can begin to address the issue of guns by teaching our young people how to deal with situations in nonviolent ways. Someone said to me the other day, "What our adolescents need is not so much health care, but healthy caring," and I agree. Parents and churches need to provide that. Curricula in our schools [need to] provide that.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Teaching, School, Caring

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I feel that we can't educate children who are not healthy, and we can't keep them healthy if they're not educated. There has to be a marriage between health and education. You can't learn if your mind is full of unhealthy images from daily life and confusion about right and wrong.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Children, Confusion, Healthy

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Nobody with a criminal record would ever be allowed to buy a gun. All assault weapons would be banned, completely. And everybody who still possesses a gun license would receive mandatory education and training by professionals on how to handle a gun. After all, I can't drive my car until I pass a test proving I know how to handle a car.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Gun, Assault Weapons, Car

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• What I can do is to go out and talk about the problems and solutions, make people aware of the scope of the problems, get them to become advocates for a turnaround, and convince them to develop an action plan, targeted to their community, to deal with young people. [They need to] find out what the kids want to do - dances, midnight-basketball leagues.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Basketball, Kids, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Certainly we have to find some kind of warning to put on guns for sale. And that's not too far-fetched. But what I really want to do is take the guns out of the hands of irresponsible people.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Gun, Hands, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I support a total ban on handgun ownership for anyone under eighteen. Uzis should be absolutely banned from entering this country. Automatic weapons of any kind should not be for sale in America. For that matter, toy Uzis should not be available for kids, either. There would be a minimum seven-day waiting period between applying for a gun permit and obtaining a gun.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Country, Kids, Gun

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Who is the NRA anyway? They are usually middle-income people who only think of themselves, who want to have no government, really, except self-rule by themselves. I think that little cracks are starting to emerge in the NRA armor.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Thinking, Government, Self

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I think we should have a very, very heavy tax on handguns and on bullets.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Thinking, Should Have, Bullets

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I don't know how anybody can say that who looks at what's happening to our young people and what's happening to our country, all because of guns. The NRA is putting themselves in a position where people will no longer trust them. They've been trusted in the past, but now their credibility is on the line.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Country, Gun, Past

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Guns are far too accessible and too readily available. There are over 200 million guns in our society - and that's just the legal ones, the ones we know about. Every ten seconds, another gun is produced. And every fourteen minutes, some person in America dies from gun-inflicted action.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Gun, America, Our Society

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I've pretty much always used my positions as a bully pulpit. What that means is strongly advocating for the things I feel are really important. Gun violence, to me, is the highest-priority public-health issue, and I have to make sure Congress is aware of it, the American people are aware of it, the president is aware of it, and that we all begin together to develop policies to exterminate the disease - the epidemic, really - of gun violence.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Mean, Gun, Epidemics

  "Surgeon General’s Warning". Interview with Ken Kelley, www.motherjones.com. January/February 1994.

• Homicide, often involving guns, is a disease that is the leading cause of death for young black men, and the second-leading cause of death for all people aged fifteen to twenty-four. That makes it the leading health issue, particularly when guns are used in combination with drugs and alcohol. And the statistics show that is most often the case.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Gun, Men, Issues

  "Surgeon General’s Warning". Interview with Ken Kelley, www.motherjones.com. January/February 1994.

• Guns kill more teenagers than the other big killers - heart disease, cancer, and AIDS - combined.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Cancer, Teenager, Heart

  Source: www.motherjones.com