This past June, 49 lives were taken by gun violence at the LGBT nightclub Pulse in Orlando, FL. Between 2010 and 2014, guns were involved in nearly 43,000 hate crimes across this country. This cruelty is part of the nationwide public health crisis of gun violence. The Disarm Hate Rally in Washington, DC on August 13 brought together friends, family, and activists to urge fellow Americans to do more to stop gun violence. I made the following speech on behalf of Doctors For America, and ask you to do your part:
My name is Sanjeev Sriram, and I am a member of Doctors for America. I am a pediatrician in southeast DC, in the backyard of Congress. As Americans we identify mass shooting tragedies by hashtags and geography, but doctors know the public health crisis of gun violence is hurting every community in between those tragedies too. Every year, between Newtown, CT and San Bernardino, CA over 20,000 Americans commit suicide with a gun. Every month, between Aurora, CO and Orlando, FL over 50 women are killed by domestic abusers. Every day, between Oak Creek, WI and Tucson, AZ 90 American lives are taken by gun violence. These are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, friends, classmates ... And they are my patients.
My patients and their families in southeast DC are struggling with gun violence while many in Congress turn a blind eye, a deaf ear, and a cold heart to this public health crisis. Many parents are asking what are we going to do about all this? About 10,000 children are injured or killed each year by homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings. That's more than heart defects, cancer, and infections.
Children are also injured or killed in car crashes. But you know what's interesting? When any of us from the medical or public health communities talk about keeping people safe with seatbelts, car seats, or speed limits, we get to have civil grown-up conversations with car manufacturers, transportation agencies, law enforcement, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). No one is calling doctors communists or questioning our patriotism or threatening to take our medical licenses away.
Gun lobbyists have been bullying doctors and public health professionals for a long time. Since 1996, gun lobbyists like the NRA and their friends in Congress have used the Dickey Amendment to intimidate the CDC from studying gun violence. Some of our best and brightest minds are using science and research to save millions of lives from car accidents, smoking, and drowning. Those same scientific methods can help end gun violence. Twenty years of ignoring questions that public health and medical experts want to solve in order to help save thousands of Americans from gun violence.
Twenty years of unanswered questions. Since 1996, we've learned the answers to all kinds of other questions. Will Ross and Rachel make it as a couple on "Friends"? Will Tom Cruise keep doing Mission Impossible movies? Are there worse songs than the Macarena?
All joking aside, there are more important questions we should have worked on in the last 20 years. Here are some of the questions public health experts want to work on in gun violence:
- What kinds of programs and supports work best to help families and communities stop gun violence among young people?
- How does gun storage affect the decision to use that gun in a suicide attempt?
- What characteristics differentiate mass shootings that were prevented from those that were carried out?
Imagine if the CDC and National Institutes of Health (NIH) had resources to answer all these questions. That's why we need Congress to end the ban and properly fund gun violence research. I'm not the only doctor who knows this. Over 140 medical groups, including Doctors for America, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and many others are demanding Congress to support gun violence research at the CDC and NIH. Let's end the ban and End Gun Violence.
Medical and public health personnel need you, our fellow Americans, to be part of the changes in policy and culture that will end gun violence. We can stop another American town from becoming a mass shooting hashtag. We can guide families with mental illness or domestic violence towards recovery instead of tragedy. Ending the ban on CDC gun violence research and letting doctors ask about guns are steps that we can take together on a very long, very difficult journey to end gun violence. The time to start is now.