stay in my lane this is my lane doctor gun violence
courtesy twitter.com

In today’s “stay in your lane/this is our lane” news…

“Doctors don’t have a gun problem; they have a bullet hole problem,” [Dr. John] Fildes said, adding that a renewed focus on firearm safety, prevention and enforcing existing gun laws would go a long way toward saving lives.

This focus on prevention is also well-trod in the field of medicine, with doctors using similar methods to tackle past public health crises, such as HIV, smoking, motor vehicle deaths or environmental hazards and pollution. First, they study a problem to identify its patterns and root causes. Then they work to design policies in an effort to reduce those negative effects, rather than just treat them as they arise.

When it comes to the issue of firearm deaths and injuries, the political polarization has made many doctors hesitant to speak up, said Lu, the New Mexico trauma surgeon. By not speaking out, he said, doctors may have unintentionally sanitized the shootings that rip through American streets, homes, schools and ultimately hospitals tens of thousands of times each year.

“Americans are shielded from death in general,” Lu said, adding that it’s one reason for the lack of compassion and empathy in the gun debate.

Yet it’s people who lack this exposure, who likely have never seen a gunshot up close and hopefully never will, who are now telling doctors that gun violence is none of their business.

“Unless you’ve had someone die in your hands, that’s easy to say,” Lu said.

– Dr. John Fildes in You Can’t Understand The Brutal Reality Of Gun Violence Until You Hear It From Doctors

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

75 COMMENTS

  2. I don’t need to be a doctor to understand how brutal gun violence can be. Anyone with a basic understanding of physics or history can easily understand the brutality of gun violence.

    I expect gun violence to be brutal. I put my faith in the fact that gun violence is brutal. I want to know that I have the option to be immediately, unforgivingly, and lethally brutal in the efforts of self defense. I want to know that my daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother also have the simplest and most effective option of self defensive brutality available to them in the horrific case that they need it.

    Sure, I would love to see a decrease in the brutal results of accidents and criminal activities, but I am not about to give up the effective self defense of my loved ones in order to protect some theoretical person from the consequences of their theoretical actions.

    • Everyone has the capacity for extreme violence… but not everyone can admit it to themselves, or others for that matter.

    • Agree completely! Along with your loved ones needing the ability to defend themselves, I became very aware of my need to defend myself if something happens. After 4 knee replacements I seem to be permanently attached to a walker. I feel like a walking target every time I go out. But carrying at least gives me the option of protecting myself instead of calling the police to fill out the forms needed. They sure can’t get to a crime scene quick enough to stop a crime in progress and IMO it only happens if they happen upon a crime when it’s getting started and even then it’s a crap shoot whether they will actually stop it. As some people have found when taking the police to court for not intervening in stopping a crime, the courts say police are not required to stop a crime. It’s a sad situation.

  3. Anyone with half-way common sense should know/already know that gun violence is just that – violent. If it wasn’t guns/bullets aren’t doing their job as they were designed to do. Bullet technology has advance to be “more violent” in a sense. That being said, it’s up to the individual to be self-aware of one’s surroundings and become profficient in using one’s self-defense firearm/weapon of choice. I love the fact that when I daily carry I don’t have to worry about my S&W M&P Shield 2.0 and the self-defense ammo I have chosen aren’t going to do their part…

  4. “First, they study a problem to identify its patterns and root causes. Then they work to design policies in an effort to reduce those negative effects, rather than just treat them as they arise.”

    Alrighty then. If you actually studied violent crime, you would not reach the conclusion that the tools used by criminals are the “root causes.” And if you actually studied the “solutions” that you propose, you would discover that such “solutions” have been tried before many times and have never worked to reduce violent crime.

    I don’t mind doctors trying to do preventive medicine. But it requires scientists who can objectively study a problem and evaluate the efficacy of preventive measures, not activists who react emotionally to tragic events.

    • That quote stood out to be as well. Not at all the same approach as exploiting tragedies to push for a number of political “solutions” that have been proven to be inneffective at addressing the problem, and refusing approaches (such as loosening restrictions on law-abiding gun use) that appear to have merit.

    • +1. A proper root cause analysis would recognize most modern gun violence as a problem that’s actually a symptom of several larger “root cause” problems, including mental health/treatment and culture. Spend some quality time in Kensington in Philly and I doubt one would come away from that experience thinking the REAL problem is guns.

      • “Kensington in Philly etc”

        A leftist would. In fact they’d come away thinking it was guns AND white people. So just white people, since we make and sell the guns.

    • I went to my doctor for a hang nail. He wanted to amputate my hand. No hand, no hang nail. Easy. *sarcasm off

  5. Once again the tool is being blamed instead of the criminal/person doing the deed. A prime example of this can be found on the BBC website under the news heading. Where they are dealing with knives being the weapon of choice for criminals to commit everything from robbery to murder. Criminals will always commit crimes and will find the best tool to do the job regardless of the law. Until we as a society deal with the idea of personal responsibility in regards to criminal activity. Nothing will change. The time has come to seriously look at the death penalty for all violent crimes. Only when the thugs/criminals know that their illegal activity will result in death will they begin to question the value of that activity. I know many people will think this is too harsh a punishment. Which is more important the lives and rights of law abiding citizens or the rights and lives of dangerous criminals? I choose the law abiding citizen. What you choose is up to you. Just don’t wait until someone you care about is the next victim. Because then it’s to late. Keep Your Powder Dry…

    • There is no statistical evidence that the death penalty reduces violent crime; it only removes one single offender at considerable cost. Thousands of years of human history teach us this. Criminals always believe that they will get away with their perfect crime, and persons committing crimes of passion are not considering the consequences of their acts. And the criminally insane do not care. I would suppose that all or nearly all societies on earth have had capital punishment, yet crime and violent crime persists because violence is an innate human characteristic. No matter how many laws are passed and criminals executed, you will never root out the base cause of violent crime until you wipe out the species.

      • Once the perp is dead it’s a guarantee that they won’t kill again. Thus proving it is an effective deterrent. While putting them in prison allows for the continued ability to commit crimes up to and including murder. So Yes the death penalty does deter crime. If it takes the elimination of every criminal so be it. Better them dead than the innocent citizen. The only problem is bleeding heart liberals who think they can save them and make them better.

  6. It’s interesting that Dr. Fildes doesn’t direct his comments to the “usual suspects” in large urban cities which are the perpetrators of the majority of the “bullet hole problems”. Of course his ideas would find zero traction there.

    • But that’d be raciss Ranger Rick😋As someone who lives a scant 10 miles from Chiraq I concur…chain gangs and hard labor would “cure” our boo-lit hole “problem”.

  7. Americans are shielded from death in general. Probably one of the reasons why so many Americans believe legislation will change behavior. They haven’t yet been face to face with the embodiment of from what they are so shielded.

    This clean, safe, abundant modern society is little more than a collective delusion.

  8. Doctors don’t have a bullet hole problem either. They have an ass hole problem. Some ass holes keep shooting their patients.

    • Sometimes their patients are the “ass holes” that needed to be shot because they were attempting to victimize someone else. But for some “odd” reason I never see that distinction made by the (pound)mylane “scientists” ignoring critical variables in their “observations.”

      For some “odd” reason, I just cannot respect someone who is so belligerently “blind” to such important distinctions.

  9. As I’ve heard it there are treatments that prevent HIV and doctors haven’t banded together against big pharma to have studies funded and released where there are signs that people are resistant to HIV. So maybe they should focus on that part of their job. They should also work to prevent medical errors, more of a chance in the US of getting killed by a doctor, who wont go to jail, than getting shot to death…

    • There’s one really effective HIV prevention technique that everyone knows but doesn’t want to talk about: don’t bang other dudes in the butt.

        • Most MDs are decent people. Most had good intentions going into the profession. The debt levels MDs incur and the pharmaceutical industry control of both their education and incomes leaves the vast majority of MDs very vulnerable to doing what they’re told.

  10. This doctor is a great example that a degree doesn’t make you wise. She’d see a great increase in violence without the citizens of this country being able to defend themselves against a criminal element that she, herself, promotes through her political beliefs. Even the threat of a citizen being able to defend themselves is enough to deter some crime. What about all the people NOT in the ICU (or a morgue) because they were able to defend themselves with guns? Banning guns because someone gets hurt is like banning scalpels because someone died in surgery, or because some thug used a knife in a crime.

    Why is this doctor shocked and appalled by someone shot with a gun but completely at ease with babies being cut up by physicians (“first do no harm?”), or by ANTIFA’s domestic terrorism?

  11. I’d be willing to give up all my handguns if “liberals” gave up all alcohol and cigarettes. I won’t give up rifles since essentially no murders are committed with them relative to knives and fists and clubs of various sorts. Handguns kill a lot though. I’m negotiating in good faith if they will. Which they won’t.

    • Maybe. As in sometime after they start holding hockey games in hell. Give up your handguns then they will want semi-automatic rifles, then semi-automatic shotguns, then pump action guns, then lever action guns, then any gun that fires a cartridge. Take a look at gun laws in Australia & the UK over the past couple decades.

  12. Civilian disarmament twisted strangely with secular humanism. The only universal bond all critters have is that along with a day of birth we all receive a day of death. Motorcycle accident, heart attack or a swarm of buckshot, how and when we die is part of the package. Medical care is upside down. More money is wasted in a persons’ last year of life than is spent throughout the rest of their life. These people, myself included know how foolish this is. We didn’t get this old by being stupid. If this money spent on medical elder care went to provide the same level of treatment from conception to the end of college it would be a definite game changer. It will never change, the majority of the money at the end of life is spent on high dollar (which many on fixed incomes can’t afford) prescriptions that can’t change the coming of death. The insurance companies and big pharma control everything. Congress rubber-stamps laws written and approved by the real power in this country. The unelected and permanent government of staffers and aides. As long as this part of the swamp remains, in the long run, we are finished. Many of us have held the freshly dead in our arms, most of us learn from it. I guess the rest go on to become doctors.
    30-

  13. adding that a renewed focus on firearm safety, prevention and enforcing existing gun laws would go a long way toward saving lives.
    Not having minorities would go a long way towards saving lives.
    Think a gun crime rate the same as Finland.

  14. Knife violence is just as bad and sometimes far worse than guns. Getting cut and bleeding out is a horrible way to go.
    Hong Kong had a journalist for the Apple daily carved up with a machete years ago. He lost his arm in the attack. Damn near died.
    Violence is violence. Self defence defeats it.

    • Yeah. the difference with being attacked with a gun and being attacked with a knife are starkly different.

      If some rando tries to kill you with a gun, he’s going to take a few shots and then run away.

      If he tries with a knife, you’re probably going to have 20-30 new leaky holes.

    • Yes, a man may pull a gun on me, even take a shot at me, and both of us live through it. If he cuts me with a knife one of us is going to die.

  15. I’ll listen to what doctors have to say about public policy issues when they stop killing their patients.

    • Never going to happen. The more you analyze and critically think about what we call medical health care, the more you come to the unavoidable conclusion that it’s modern population control. There is no other credible explanation.

  16. My doctor likes guns and actually escaped the commies in nicaragua, he said they used to collect israeli 20mm shells from the planes strafing the city during the revolution and now he collects firearms here

  17. Trying to restrict people’s Gun Rights is the fastest way to experience bullet holes.

    Liberty is worth the Risk of Death.

  18. These a-hole doctors aren’t just blaming a tool, they’re blaming all of us. They make absolutely no distinction between the 150-200 million citizens who legally own guns and the small number of repeat offender criminals who are responsible for most of the murders in this country – none of whom are NRA members.

    It’s what the whole gun control lobby does. They’re nothing but a bunch of bigoted control freaks.

  19. Docs r losing money on patching people up that, won’t, can’t , pay the medical cost. It’s not about lives, it’s the money. Now delete.

  20. Just because you, Dear Doctor, spent a lot of time and money going to school does not mean you came out of that experience any smarter than when you went in. I know this to be true because you just attributed malice to an inanimate object. You just blamed the tool for the actions of the tool user.

  21. Gun Violence does not exist. There is no such thing as a gun ever having harmed anybody. Nor has any other weapon ever done any person or animal an injury.

    There is only Human Violence, that is real. Humans have intent, volition, ability to move things and make things happen. That is where efforts to prevent all forms of traumatic injury must focus, on the humans doing the harming.

  22. This is what I love about this kind of subject. Someone that is an expert in firearms is to be ignored and any fact the discuss is discarded. Someone that has no clue about firearms is to be listened to, placed in the public eye, and lauded for an opinion devoid of facts, filled with emotion, and lacking any critical thinking of the subject.

  23. “Unless you’ve had [a tyrant seize your country and ship people off to slave labor camps and/or extermination camps, made easy because they lacked firearms to defend themselves], that’s easy to say,” Lu meant to say.

  24. “Unless you’ve had someone die in your hands, that’s easy to say,” Lu said.

    So what about the thousands of us who have had someone die in our hands and it’s still easy to say? Well I can’t speak for others, unlike the good physician here does but I can say my reply would be:

    F off. If you paid more attention to your job and cared less about politics, you would let the firearm experts and industry handle their own issues without your biased opinion. The exact same biased opinion that contributes to the hundreds of thousand of medical related death each and every year!

  25. I’ve had people die under my hands, from six months to 90+ years, from all manner of issues, including what I’ll call “prior medical provider inattention to details.”

    So now what would you like to say, Doctor?

  26. This is the issue that doctors finally decide to take a stand on? Not the ever increasing costs of healthcare or prescription drugs, the over prescription of opioids (by doctors) or the stranglehold that the AMA has on who can be a doctor and who can’t. They most definitely need to stay in their fucking lane if they don’t have the backbone to fight against any of the aforementioned that I’m pretty sure kill more people than guns.

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  28. We know medical/pharmaceutical care is deadly. So much so that it’s the documented 3rd leading cause of death in the USA, possibly the leading cause of death of death if all the cases were reported. But untested vaccines are magically safe and effective, the science is settled….says the unthinking moron.

  29. Let’s talk about enforcing existing laws, policies and protocols:

    http://projects.sun-sentinel.com/2018/sfl-parkland-school-shooting-critical-moments/

    Adults literally running away from their responsibilities to save children from gun violence. Security choosing not to call code red to save children and choosing not to stop the “crazy boy” before he can get to the kids. Majority of staff refusing to take security advice on how to keep kids safe in their classroom during a school shooting by using designated hard zones so kids can’t be shot from the doorway. School leadership refusing to heed detailed warnings of impending gun violence from the kid that everyone thinks will some day shoot up the school. Law enforcement choosing to be derelict in their sworn duties and refusing to follow their training by protecting their lives instead of the children even as the kids flee screaming for someone to save them and another department runs past them.

    The adopted mother of the shooter knew he was crazy and dangerous. People at his work knew he wanted to shoot up the school because he said so. For years, he told various different people he would murder them. His adopted mother warned other people if she was ever murdered he would be the one to do it. He killed many small animals, disrespected their remains and took pictures to send to people. He brought a dead animal to school to show a girl and others, seems he thought it was funny to shock the anti hunters. He was being treated for his mental problems since a very young age, but was not diagnosed with a mental illness. He stopped his mental treatment when he turned 18 because he can now refuse as an adult and his adopted mother is dead. The adopted mother left him with thousands of dollars knowing he wanted to buy guns and had already threatened to shoot people including her.

    The shooter was into the alt right and Trump. He didn’t like his mother’s politics to the point he would put his MAGA hat near her ashes to disrespect her memory. He wanted all Jewish people dead. He hated black people and wanted to shoot them. He was happy that Muslims terrorist killed all those homosexuals at the Pulse nightclub in Florida. He identified as a white male, although (far as I remember) his actual mother was Jewish. He was interested in Nazis [white nationalist socialism] and the KKK. He would put swastikas on his stuff and he put them on his AR mags he used at the shooting.

    He liked looking up Columbine and Virginia Tech videos for inspiration. He used the song “Pumped up Kicks” to hype himself up, it was like his theme song.

    Yeah, he found a six shooter gun
    In his dad’s closet, in a box of fun things
    And I don’t even know what
    But he’s coming for you, yeah, he’s coming for you

    All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
    You better run, better run, outrun my gun
    All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
    You better run, better run faster than my bullet

    There are so many other things:

    http://www.trbas.com/media/media/acrobat/2018-12/70135058816260-12074125.pdf

    I guess we just blame the 2nd Amendment now, right docs?

    • Makes me think of this song by Faithless, CZJay.

      With a long range weapon or suicide bomber
      Wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction
      Whether your stowaway’s son or BBC 1
      Dis-information is a weapon of mass destruction
      You could a Caucasian or a poor Asian
      Racism is a weapon of mass destruction
      Whether inflation or globalization
      Fear is a weapon of mass destruction

      https://youtu.be/uzgBD2wysuI

    • Where are you getting l the stuff about Cruz being alt-right or into Nazi shit? I’ve never read that and you’d think it would be all over the news.

      Also, you have to follow that thread just a little bit further: the FBI was tipped about him twice, and did nothing. Israel’s boys knew he was a menace and did nothing.

      Somebody decided to just let that shooting happen.

      • I linked the report.

        You can read a lot about him and the entire situation. They even list some of his internet search history. He liked to look up things like: anime, porn, school shootings stuff, Russian stuff, airsoft.

        The Mandalay Bay shooter didn’t get the same treatment because all his hard drives disappeared from his computers after he died. So I heard… With no physical evidence, they claim no possible motive. Although you can look at his actions and equipment to bring you to the most likely motive. You can’t prove without a shadow of a doubt when you don’t have his computer history. Therefore the government can simply chalk it up to “crazy man does bad things because crazy.” Now move along.

      • if cruz were alt right the media would STILL be blasting it 24/7!! BTW, nazi is the complete opposite of right wing! Nazi is an acronym for National Socialist German Workers Party. It’s, actually the opposite of alt right!

  30. “In effect, the NRA wanted these doctors to shut up about an issue that touches their lives daily, ….”

    Actually, I’d rather surgeons look at the issue as they would examine new surgical techniques. Does it work? How long has it been used? Can you do it? What are the outcomes? Can you imagine a surgeon who does several bowel resections daily insisting on doing each ligation by hand versus a CO2-powered ligating stapler? (For the non-OR people, that’s about 2-3 minutes versus 2 seconds).) And, if the stapler were shown to produce failed ligations, it would get dumped and fast. (No surgeon wants to reopen an abdomen.) (N.B., I’m a retired OR nurse.)

    “It’s something I wish I could do something about, but I feel helpless.”

    Funny, I feel the same way about being a victim of the violent crime to which the doctors refer. Oh, wait! I can do something about it. I can have the option to have a tool with which to protect myself. And you politically-biased doctors could, too.

  31. She’s a resident, not even an attending M.D. yet. Stay in your lane sweetie, and get off your fucking phone when you’re on the floor.

  32. According to a couple doctor friends of mine, what really bothers these doctors is bullets that fragment. They don’t like the tedious job of picking out the fragments. The fact that they may be working on a bad guy that may have killed multiple people if not stopped by that bullet does not seem to enter into the equation.

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