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That America has 300 million or more firearms in private hands is worrying. That many — perhaps most — of those guns aren’t properly secured is madness. Owning a gun increases the risk of homicide, suicide and unintentional shooting. Strikingly, though, more than half of gun owners report failing to use safe-store practices for their guns, such as a gun safe, cabinet, case, or a lock on the firearm itself. (7/17)

By one count, nearly five million American children live in constant danger of being killed by a device that was meant to protect them. One of them was six-year old Millie Kelly of Dallas, Georgia. On April 8, her four-year-old brother took a loaded pistol out of the center console of their mother’s car and shot Millie point-blank in the face. She died two days later. Her mother had bought the gun – a Taurus PT-738, so small and manageable it seems almost built for a child – for “general safety and security,” the local sheriff’s department told Frank Wilkinson. But rather than locking the gun away, Courtney Kelly had simply left it, loaded, in the center console of her Hyundai Elantra. (Mark Gongloff, 7/17)

As states and municipalities begin to settle the more than 1,000 lawsuits filed against pharmaceutical companies over the opioid crisis, it may appear as though this chapter in the epidemic is coming to a close. After all, it seems obvious that the money drawn from these lawsuits should go toward combating the crisis, given that an opioid overdose is still one of the leading causes of the death in the United States. But with state and municipal governments, hospital systems and even the federal government all jostling for their piece of the pie, making sure the money from these settlements goes where it’s needed most will be much more complicated. Fortunately, there’s a valuable example to learn from: the mistakes and successes of the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. (Abdullah Shihipar and Brandon D.L. Marshall, 7/17)

Progressives are hurtling to the left so fast that even liberals in good standing are casualties of the tornado. Witness the coup this week at Planned Parenthood, which is a tacit reminder that the group is less a health-care outfit than a political lobby. The Planned Parenthood board defenestrated president Leana Wen, a physician who had been on the job for less than a year. What happened? By Dr. Wen’s account she was pushed out because she wasn’t radical enough on abortion. (7/17)

Public health is the nexus of science and politics. Unfortunately, the two frequently do not mix well. A recent example involving childhood immunizations prompts real concern for the erosion of science in the name of politics. State Sen. Ralph Alvarado, physician and lieutenant governor candidate with Gov. Matt Bevin, recently declared: “I think it’s good health policy to administer vaccines, but if people don’t want them, we shouldn’t force people to take them.” This followed the governor’s ill-advised exposure of his own children to kids with chicken pox, a practice discouraged by both public health and physician organizations. These politicians are playing with fire. (F. Douglas Scutchfield and Al Cross, 7/17)

Some of the state’s most vulnerable children — those with serious mental health issues — continue to have difficulty accessing the care they so desperately need. Meanwhile, the Baker administration has chosen to appeal the court monitoring that has at least brought some improvements to the system. (7/16)