The repeated incidents of mass shootings are shocking. Yet, they're sanitized and abstract for most of us who haven't been directly touched by gun violence.
The response to mass shootings has become predictable: anguished adults, candlelight vigils, and photos and remembrances of the victims in happier times. It's never about the carnage or the lingering impact on survivors or their families, communities, medical doctors, nurses and psychiatrists who care for them.
These mass shootings have become so familiar, but remain a smaller subset of the almost 100 gun deaths and over 300 gun-related injuries that occur daily in this country from actions like suicide, domestic violence and urban crime.
Here's what one doctor had to say shortly after an NRA tweet advised doctors to "stay in their lane," in response to the American College of Surgeons recommendations on firearm safety.
We read all too frequently about mass shootings. But your son’s story was never in the news. There were no news conferences, cameras or reporters. The day your son was shot, he was one of five gunshot victims brought to our trauma center — all unrelated. Nowadays, five individuals gunned down separately is not newsworthy. Some, in fact, might consider it socially acceptable — the price of doing business in a country where gun violence is the norm
Today, we talk to three doctors, including one who is a gun owner, about the need to find common ground to deal with a public health issue that has many faces, causes, and solutions.
You won't hear us bashing the NRA. You will hear a nuanced conversation about possible solutions around which a group of doctors and gun owners hope we can find consensus.
GUESTS:
- Heather Sher - Radiologist, North Broward Radiologists, in Florida
- Richard Sidwell - Trauma surgeon at the Iowa Clinic in Iowa
- Harold (Hank) Schwartz - Former Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Behavioral Health, Hartford Healthcare and the Institue of Living
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Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this conversation.
