Doctors clash with NRA over gun deaths
244 views · Published 28 November 2018 · 1:38 · Indexed 2 October 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(22 Nov 2018) A war of words between physicians sick of treating gunshot victims and the gun industry lobby has gotten a boost following this week's shooting death of a doctor outside the hospital where she worked. It started in late October, when the American College of Physicians urged adoption of a number of gun control laws. The National Rifle Assocation's response telling doctors to "stay in their lane" erupted into a hashtag war on Twitter. Doctors posted photos of bloody operating rooms to show the toll of gun violence. Physicians across the United States have seized on the phrasing, taking to Twitter with 22,000 comments and the hashtags #thisismylane and #thisisourlane, posting photos of their encounters with gun violence and offering their own personal stories of treating such wounds. The debate gained new urgency this week with the shooting death of an emergency room doctor outside the hospital where she worked, as physicians argue shootings are a public health crisis that they must play a key role in trying to stem. Dr. Tamara O'Neal was killed Monday outside a hospital in Chicago in what police say was a dispute with her ex-fiance. The shooter and two other people — a responding police officer and a resident in the hospital's pharmacy — also died. About 35,000 people each year are killed by guns in the United States, and about two-thirds are suicides. That's about 670 people per week and among the largest number of civilian gun deaths in the world. The world's highest rate of gun deaths is in El Salvador with a rate of 72.5 per 100,00; the rate in the U.S. is 3.1 per 100,000. Among all European countries, the rate never breaks 1 gun death per 100,000, according to Small Arms Survey, a Switzerland-based research organization that examines firearms and violence. It's not the first time that medical professionals have taken on powerful industries: auto companies over seat belts, Big Tobacco over cigarettes and toys that posed choking hazards. It's also not the first time that the gun lobby has pushed back against the medical community or researchers it considers to be biased. In the 1990s, Congress barred the Centers for Disease Control from conducting research that advocated or pushed for gun control; while it didn't ban research from being conducted, it did have a chilling effect. More recently, the NRA backed legislation in Florida — eventually overturned in court — that would have barred doctors from asking patients about guns in the home. Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in the San Francisco Bay area, examines the dead. She took to Twitter to push back at the gun lobby, posting: "Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly? This isn't just my lane. It's my (expletive) highway." She's conducted about 300 autopsies involving gunshot wounds, about half of those suicides. She's seen the damage from bullets and believes more and better research would help prevent gun violence. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/20905395a57537861c783e0fb308c0ce
