In 2020, while As the Covid-19 pandemic raged, an ever-growing epidemic continued to make its way across the United States. Gun violence claimed the lives of 45,222 Americans that fateful year, the worst year on record for gun deaths up to that point.
The path that leads to each of these deaths is complex and intricate. Every American killed by a bullet, every family mourning a loved one, deserves their own book. I never thought I would be the author of such a story.
I am an emergency physician, a gun owner, a father, and a cousin of a man who was shot and killed. If it weren’t for the National Rifle Association declaring in 2018 If physicians, like me, were to “stay in our lane” and remain silent about the cost of this plague, I would not have written about this issue. Yet, gun violence consumes my life. I see victims of gun violence in family tragedies — children, teens, and adults — almost every day.
Addressing violence and death is the duty of anyone who has had to tend to the wounds of a gunshot victim, attempt heroic measures in the trauma room, meticulously care for the wounded in the intensive care unit, or admit defeat in front of loved ones. I have not encountered a worse feeling than having to tell a mother or father that their child has been killed by a bullet. We have practiced and perfected evidence-based medicine for decades. We should similarly practice evidence-based health policy. When it comes to guns, some of that evidence already exists.
As a physician, I understand the limitations of science. The best research, at least in the biomedical field, often requires the results of randomized clinical trials, but these are often not feasible for policymaking. In public health, the next best option is a natural experiment, where one jurisdiction implements a policy and a similar nearby jurisdiction does not, and policymakers can observe the difference.
The RAND Corporation The science of gun policy—a synthesis of research on U.S. gun policy—often relies on these types of studies to inform its analysis. Sometimes it is inconclusive, sometimes it is weak, sometimes it is blunt in its claims about the impacts of various policies that could affect lives in this epidemic of gun violence, but overall its analysis outlines a myriad of policy tools that our current policymakers could, and in my view should, quickly implement at the federal, state, and local levels. The evidence indicates that we can save lives by:
- Background checks through federally licensed firearms dealers for every firearm purchase
- Licenses and permits for people who want to buy weapons
- Raise the minimum age for purchasing firearms to 21 years
- Strict laws to prevent access by minors
- Short waiting periods
- Domestic violence restraining orders requiring surrender of existing firearms.
But I also think there are two more laws that should be repealed. Their presence in society should alarm doctors, human rights activists and those who draft laws.
Policy Prescription #1: Roll Back Self-Defense Laws
On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, a black boy of my height and similar build, was walking through a neighborhood in Sanford, Florida, after buying a bag of Skittles and a drink. He was essentially harassed by the captain of a local neighborhood watch patrol. After an altercation (which a 911 operator urged the overzealous neighborhood watch officer to prevent), Martin lay on the ground, dead from a single bullet that pierced his heart and lung.
All of the young man’s hopes and dreams of one day becoming an aviator were dashed by a man who would eventually be acquitted of murder thanks to Florida’s stand-your-ground law, which created a culture of getting close, taunting and killing. The stand-your-ground law undoubtedly contributed to the young man’s death.