An ER Doctor Cures America’s Gun Epidemic

In 2020, while The Covid-19 pandemic, a growing epidemic, continued to rage across the United States. Gun violence claimed the lives of 45,222 Americans that fateful year, the worst year in history for gun deaths up to that point.

The path to each of these deaths is layered and complicated. Every American killed by a bullet, every family grieving for a loved one, deserves its own book. I never thought I would be the one to write such a story.

I am an ER doctor who owns a gun, a father, and the cousin of a man who was shot and killed. If it weren’t for the National Rifle Association declared in 2018 that doctors, like me, should “stay the hell out of it” and keep quiet about the consequences of this epidemic, I wouldn’t write about it. But gun violence is ruining my life. I see victims of gun violence from family tragedies—children, teens, and adults—almost every day.

Addressing violence and death is the responsibility of anyone who has ever had to heal a gunshot victim, perform heroics in a trauma ward, care for the wounded in an intensive care unit, or admit defeat in front of loved ones. I have never known a worse feeling than telling a mother or father that their child has been killed by a bullet. We have practiced and perfected evidence-based medicine for decades. Likewise, we should practice evidence-based health policy. For guns, some of that evidence already exists.

As a physician, I understand the limitations of science. The best research, at least in biomedicine, often requires the findings of randomized clinical trials, but conducting such trials to inform policy is often not feasible. In public health, the next best option is a natural experiment, in which one jurisdiction implements a policy and a similar nearby jurisdiction does not, and policymakers can observe the difference.

RAND Corporation The Science of Gun Policy—a compilation of research on US gun policy—often relies on these types of studies to inform its analysis. It is sometimes inconclusive, sometimes weak, and sometimes strong in its assertions about the impact various policies might have on lives during this gun violence epidemic, but overall its analysis describes a myriad of policy levers that our current lawmakers can, and in my opinion should, quickly implement at the federal, state, and local levels. The evidence is clear that we can save lives through the following:

• Background checks through federally licensed firearms dealers for all firearm purchases
• Licenses and permits for individuals wishing to purchase guns
• Raise the minimum age to purchase all weapons to 21
• Strict laws prevent children from accessing
• Short waiting time
• A domestic violence restraining order requires the relinquishment of existing weapons.

But I also believe that there are two additional laws that need to be repealed. Their presence in society should cause concern for doctors, lawyers, and those who draft laws.

Policy Rule #1: Reversal of Self-Defense Law

On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, a black kid about my height and build, was walking through a neighborhood in Sanford, Florida, after buying a bag of Skittles and a drink. He was essentially being followed by the captain of a local neighborhood watch. After a scuffle—a scuffle that a 911 operator urged the overzealous neighborhood watch to stay away from—Martin lay on the ground, shot to death by a single bullet that pierced his heart and lung.

That young man’s hopes and dreams of one day becoming a pilot were dashed by a man who was eventually acquitted of murder because Florida’s self-defense laws created a culture of approaching, provoking, and killing. Self-defense certainly contributed to the boy’s death.