Straight, No Chaser: The Role of Gunshot Wounds in a Nation at War with Itself

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Apparently there is going to be an ongoing need to address this… Somewhere in the midst of reconciling the parts of me that are physician, public health professional and African-American male, I realized that I don’t have the luxury to simply review the medical aspects of gunshot wounds. As an African-American, I have lived my entire life learning and having it reinforced that I and others of my kind are a misunderstanding or inappropriate interaction away from becoming a statistic (and not just via the police). As a physician I get to treat, and as a public health professional I get to report and fashion broad solutions to various challenges, but as an African-American, I get to live a certain reality that for me began when my father died from a so-called “random gunshot” wound when I was a small child.

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The trauma inflicted by a gunshot wound is not theoretical. It is a medical lie that such a thing as a warning shot exists, if indeed a bullet enters your body. Penetrating injuries to virtually all areas of the body (brain, neck, chest, back, abdomen, groin, extremities) can be fatal. Gunshot wounds have several ways of injuring you, including the direct damage to tissue, indirect damage from the shock waves and direct damage from fragments (of the bullet or bone). When you shoot someone, you have factored in a possibility that the wound you inflict could be fatal. Police officers shooting individuals are aiming at areas correlating with defined statistic probabilities of death, none of which is zero. Those trained in firearm use make choices: shooting to kill instead of to subdue is a deadly choice among other options. No one should ever be allowed to claim otherwise.

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We live in a country that is without debate the most violent country on earth, both outside of and within all parts of our borders. From the individual’s rights to bear militia levels of arms to the police’s increasing position as military units, from the contradictions of allowing both “Open Carry” and “Stand Your Ground,” we are spiraling toward an inevitable conclusion. Stop being so deficient of attention about what’s happening before our eyes, and think and ask what the inevitable conclusion of all of this is going to be.
Regardless of your political persuasion, there are issues to be addressed. Although the news of the day isn’t pointed in this direction, the extent of this madness has begun to envelope children as well.

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Consider the following facts from the Children’s Defense fund,

  • 7,768 children and teens were killed with a gun during 2013-2015. That’s enough to fill 388 classrooms of 20 children. 2,799 were killed in 2015 alone.
  • Young Blacks are being exterminated by gunshot wounds in this country.  Black children and teens accounted for 14% of the total child population while each day in America 8  children or teens are killed with a gun; black children and teens account for 3 of those daily deaths. Are you just going to read this statement passively without wondering about and contributing to a solution?
  • Gun violence remains the leading cause of death for Black children and teens.  In 2015, 9.5 out of every 1,000 Black children and teens were killed with a gun; a rate four times higher than the rate for White children and teens (2.5 per 1,000). A Black child or teen was killed with a gun every 7 hours and 25 minutes.
  • Since 1963, the number of children and teens killed by guns on American soil was more than three times higher than the number of U.S. soldiers killed by hostiles in wars abroad. Nearly 180,000 children and teens dies from guns in the U.S. between 1963-2015.

Using more recently available data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists the number of firearm-induced deaths in 2015 as 36,252.

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What is it going to take to get the American public and leaders to stand up to protect the lives and safety of children over the lobbies of gun owners and sellers? America can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can fashion reasonable safety measures and restrictions that will save lives while working within the framework of current interpretations of the Constitution by the Supreme Court. This will not occur without pressure from the populace.
Martin Luther King, Jr had two famous and related quotes that are relevant and applicable here.

  • “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
  • “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

If you are not willing to take specific actions to eradicate the challenges facing us, that makes your condolences somewhat hollow after tragedies have occurred. It is past time to get involved in whatever way you can or choose. The life you save may be your own.
Feel free to ask your SMA expert consultant any questions you may have on this topic.
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