In light of another preventable tragedy in America - one involving the massacre of 21 people, including 19 children in a Texas elementary school - doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, health professionals and scientists are once again demanding a long overdue, public health response based on evidence of the unique U.S. public health crisis on gun violence.
“This is largely our tape,” Dr. Bindi Naik-Maturia, a pediatric surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told NBC.
She spoke vividly about the immediate effects that AR-15-style weapons have on the human body - especially the smallest ones. In a shooting at Uwalde School, Texas, this week, the attacker used an AR-15 rifle (Daniel Defense DDM4 V7 rifle), which he bought online. AR-15 style rifles are often used in mass shooting. They use conventional ammunition of military caliber. Bullets do not always pass clean through the flesh, but instead can become “unstable” and overturn, causing devastating damage that can make victims unrecognizable and with extremely low chances of survival.
“It’s not just the hole you see outside. It’s a huge explosion effect,” Naik-Maturia told NBC. “You see completely dismembered organs. The vessels are completely disrupted. There is no way to save themselves.”
The condition of some of the bullets from the bodies of fourth-graders killed in this week’s shooting was so high that heavy authorities were forced to use DNA testing to identify their small bodies.
“We have our hands inside these people, these children, trying to save them,” Naik-Maturia added. “How can anyone tell us that’s not our problem?”
Public health trail
In 2018, the National Shooting Association tried to do just that, tweeting “Someone should tell self-important doctors against weapons to stay in their lane.” But medical and health experts have continued to insist that it is, in fact, their band, launching an online movement. “# ThisIsOurLane. ”And their demands for action only grew louder as gun violence not only continued but increased.
In 2017, firearms injuries became the leading cause of death for children and teenagers, surpassing the more than 60-year-old series of motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause. Between 2019 and 2020, the relative rate of all types of firearms deaths (suicides, homicides, unintentional and unidentified) among children and adolescents increased by 29.5 percent, according to an analysis published May 19, 2022 in The New England Journal of Lek. Those numbers are primarily caused by the increase in the gross rate of murder of children and teenagers from firearms, which increased by 33 percent.
“This is about protecting people’s health. This is about protecting children’s lives,” Michael Dowling, president and CEO of New York-based Northwell Health, told Becker’s Hospital Review this week. “Violence with weapons is not an external issue - it is a central issue of public health for us. “Every single hospital leader in the United States should stand up and scream about what a disgrace this is.”
All in all, the United States is relatively overwhelmed with weapons - and gun tragedies. U.S. civilians own about 393.3 million weapons, or 120.5 per 100 inhabitants, according to the Small Arms Survey report from 2018. Today, there are probably more. But that rate of ownership already makes the United States the world’s leading country in gun ownership. Among high-income countries, Canada has the second highest rate of gun ownership, with 34.7 weapons per 100 inhabitants, less than a third of the rate in the United States.