“We have decided as a country not to do research on this problem, so we don’t understand it,” said Dr. Wintemute, a leading researcher on gun violence who identified himself as a member of the N.R.A.
But recently, mass shootings — at schools and music venues and houses of worship — have rocked the American consciousness. Though public mass shootings make up no more than 1 percent of all firearm deaths, Dr. Wintemute said, they have changed the dynamic of the conversation.
“I’ve been working on this problem full time since the early ’80s and there has never been a time like the present in which everybody feels some personal sense of risk,” he said.
This spring, student activists led March for Our Lives protests across the country, after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., left 17 dead. More recently, doctors weighed in after the N.R.A. took aim at their profession in a tweet: “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane.” Physicians, in turn, shared painful stories about treating gunshot victims.
In an interview at the Tedmed event in November, the surgeon general, Dr. Jerome M. Adams, defended the right of doctors to talk about gun violence.
“It is absolutely within physicians’ lanes to talk to their patients about ways that they can be safer,” said Dr. Adams, an anesthesiologist by training who has worked on gunshot victims and is a gun owner himself. “And that includes seatbelts, that includes bicycle helmets and that includes having a discussion about whether or not you have firearms in your home and whether or not you’re keeping them safe.”
Despite the recent increase in firearm deaths, Dr. Wintemute said he had reason to be optimistic for the future.
“For the first time in our history, everybody has a sense of personal involvement,” he said, adding, “That universal sense of personal risk might just lead to an increase in willingness to do something about the problem.”
Source: The New York Times