Just over a week ago, the NRA tweeted an article mocking doctors and physicians for voicing opinions on gun control, and doctors responded.
The tweet in question, which was a link to the NRA’s Institute of Gun Laws was titled “Surprise: Physician Group Rehashes Same Tired Gun Control Policies” and captioned “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.”
Their feed was quickly filled with carnage. Images of bloody scrubs, sneaker prints in blood-streaked floors, an x-ray of a bullet in a rib cage came back captioned #thisismylane. One doctor replied with a selfie of blood from a gunshot victim splattered on his surgical mask. Another told a story of removing a bullet from someone’s spine. Stories of doctors having to tell parents I’m sorry, your child was lost to gun violence came flooding in.
“Two signs of the times: another mass shooting and more Twitter outrage,” read the first sentence of the CNN article on the issue, hauntingly devoid of all feeling on such an emotional response.
This cynicism is nothing new. For the past two years, the Onion has been sporting headlines such as: “No way to prevent this, says only nation where it ever happens” and “Nation goes whole week without mass shooting,” with the body of the article reading “update: never mind.” The Weekly optimistically published the editorial “Where will you be when gun control bites the bullet?” last year after the Parkland shooting. About 300 students participated in a national walkout against gun violence this past February (was it really less than a year ago?). A bus took students down to the March for Our Lives in Washington. Students gathered in solidarity after the shooting in Pittsburg, hoping that would be the last time.
We always ask “Is this finally enough? Will this be the one to stop it? Will this finally push them over the edge?” The reality is, it won’t. If the death of 25 kindergarten kids wasn’t enough, if the death of 48 at Pulse nightclub wasn’t enough, what is 10 more. Fifteen. Twelve. You have to be cynical at this point.
Print or digital, the tone has become one of exhaustion: “It happened AGAIN?” has been replaced with “Oh, it happened again.”
But never to me, everyone likes to think. Never to me. I have the solution. And it’s cocked and loaded right next to me.
Tamaqua Area School District, less than an hour from Muhlenberg, became the first school district in Pennsylvania to allow teachers to carry concealed rearms, according to an article from the Morning Call on Nov. 4.
The school board passed the proposal unanimously. Created by 29-year-old chairman of the board of security Nicholas Boyle, the policy states that teachers who volunteer for the program will receive a $2,000 stipend, a $250,000 life insurance policy, and, if needed, the district will provide them with a rearm. He went on to say that armed police on the perimeters of the buildings were ineffective, citing the shooting in Parkland, Fla., stated the Morning Call. Parents and students, obviously, were nervous about the situation.
Muhlenberg, on the other hand, has almost the complete opposite reaction. Muhlenberg threatens confiscation for possession of rearms found belonging to students, and faculty and staff are not allowed to carry weapons. Only campus safety and other officers are allowed to carry firearms on campus. And with a history of two armed robberies in seven years, perhaps there’s little reason to worry inside the Muhlenbubble.
So which one is the right solution? We don’t even know. As a matter of fact, we won’t.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC), which studies a number of public health crises, was forced into an agreement with the NRA in 1993 after it released a single study linking a higher chance of homicide in the home to presence of a gun in the home, reported Healthline. As a result of lobbying by the NRA, the CDC agreed that “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” which came to be known as the Dickey Amendment. That same year, according to Healthline, Congress cut the CDC’s budget by the exact amount they had spent on research on gun violence.
Nothing can be done without research to diagnose the cause. If we had calls to repeal the Dickey amendment, we might get somewhere. We might, with a Democratic house, be able to fix these bullet wounds. And, more importantly, prevent any more.
