One lane that is frequented by a number of medical professionals is rushing a gun shot victim to the operating room. (Photo: Getty Images)Getty
If the goal of the National Rifle Association (NRA) was to get doctors’ attention, this Tweet certainly did its job:
Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves. https://t.co/oCR3uiLtS7
— NRA (@NRA) November 7, 2018
The NRA editorial that accompanied this Tweet included the following statement: “some doctors’ collective hobby is opining on firearms policy.”
If you had somehow thought that this would have garnered no response from any doctors, you would have been bit wrong. Instead, the NRA Tweet motivated the creation of the Twitter hashtags #ThisISMyLane and #ThisIsOurLane which then were attached to a wide lane of responses such as:
Hey @NRA ! Wanna see my lane? Here’s the chair I sit in when I tell parents their kids are dead. How dare you tell me I can’t research evidence based solutions. #ThisISMyLane #ThisIsOurLane #thequietroom pic.twitter.com/y7tBAuje8O
— Stephanie Bonne (@scrubbedin) November 9, 2018
And:
Many of the Tweet responses relayed heart-wrenching stories of doctors caring for patients who suffered and died from gun shot wounds. Some Tweets included pictures of blood-spattered scenes to emphasize what doctors have to regularly address. There were also doctors who emphasized that even though they are gun owners themselves, they still strongly objected to the “stay in their lane” comment.
Speaking of comments. Who is the “someone” that the NRA referred to in their Tweet? Enter commentator and columnist Ann Coulter who became such a “someone” when she Tweeted: “Emergency room doctors pull cue balls, vines & gummy bears out of human orifices every week. That doesn’t make them experts on pool, horticulture or chewy candy.”
Talk about adding some flatulence to the fire. This stoked additional pyrotechnics such as:
Ma’am, before you challenge our expertise, I invite you to see it first hand. You are welcome to join me on call. DM me to arrange. You will understand that real shock value is what we see daily, not ridiculous analogies like this. #ThisIsOurLane #EndGunViolence #Unsungpandemic
— Matthew D. Neal, MD (@macky_neal) November 11, 2018
And:
Of course, with Coulter mentioning orifices, as you can imagine, some of the responses were a little less polite.
Additionally, the NRA Tweet prompted a trio of docs, Megan L. Ranney, MD, who is an emergency physician and co-founder of the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine (AFFIRM), Heather Sher, MD, a radiologist and a advisory board member for AFFIRM, and Dara Kass, MD, an emergency physician and another AFFIRM Advisory Board Member, to compose a letter to the NRA entitled: “This is Our Lane: An Open Letter to the NRA from American Healthcare Professionals.” They invited others to co-sign the letter. The letter began by saying:
Dear National Rifle Association,
On Wednesday night (11/7/2018), in response to a position paper released by the American College of Physicians (ACP) Reducing Firearm Injuries and Death in the United States, your organization published the statement “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane.”On that same day, the CDC published new data indicating that the death toll from gun violence in our nation continues to rise. As we read your demand for us doctors to stay in our lane, we awoke to learn of the 307th mass shooting in 2018 with another 12 innocent lives lost to an entirely preventable cause of death–gun violence. Every medical professional practicing in the United States has seen enough gun violence firsthand to deeply understand the toll that this public health epidemic is taking on our children, families, and entire communities. It is long past time for us to acknowledge the epidemic is real, devastating, and has root causes that can be addressed to assuage the damage. We must ALL come together to find meaningful solutions to this very American problem. We, the undersigned – physicians, nurses, therapists, medical professionals, and other concerned community members – want to tell you that we are absolutely “in our lane” when we propose solutions to prevent death and disability from gun violence.
The letter was referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) authored by Scott R. Kegler, PhD, Linda L. Dahlberg, PhD, and James A. Mercy, PhD. The report showed that from 2015 to 2016 there was a total of at least 27,394 firearm homicides (12% of which involved teenagers) and at least 44,955 firearm suicides (5% of which involved teenagers) among U.S. residents. While previous reports from 2006–2007 and 2009–2010 had reported declines in firearm homicide rates, the 2015-2016 statistics revealed that rates have risen back to levels seen in 2006–2007. Yes, things have gone in reverse in recent years.
The letter then listed a range of things that health care professionals regularly do to help victims and their loved ones deal with gun shot wounds, such as repairing the resulting physical damage, repairing the often devastating mental and emotional damage, and planning and training people on how to respond to mass shootings.
The letter continued by stating that “Our research efforts have been curtailed by your lobbying efforts to Congress. We ask that you join forces with us to find solutions. Help us in our non-partisan, physician-driven research efforts at AFFIRM Research.” It concluded by saying, “We are not anti-gun. We are anti-bullet hole. Let’s work together. Join us, or move over! This is our lane.”
In an Op-Ed in the USA Today, Drs. Ranney, Sher, and Kass mentioned that this letter had already been co-signed by more than 10,000 people. In other words, over 10,000 people put their names, titles, and emails in the “lanes” provided by the Google form accompanying the letter.
No one can deny that bullet holes in people are a problem. Anything potentially preventable that has ended up in many thousands of deaths a year is indeed a problem, a health and medical problem. No one can deny that many doctors have to regularly deal with the impact of bullet wounds. No one can deny that many doctors have unique expertise, experience, and knowledge that can help find ways to prevent gun violence. Nothing can replace years of medical training and experience. If you want to find the right solution to a problem, you need real problem-solving dialogue and people who really understand all aspects of the problem.