What about the more than 250,000 people who die each year due to medical malpractice? Perhaps doctors should be concerned with those numbers.
“’Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly,’ wrote a San Francisco-based forensic pathologist. ‘This isn’t just my lane. It’s my f—ing highway. Who do you think removes bullets from spines and repairs (or tries to) livers blasted by an AR-15? The tooth fairy? This literally is medicine’s lane,’ wrote another doctor. Some doctors said they own guns but still understand the need to treat gun violence as a serious public-health issue. Indeed, as one doctor noted, if a virus killed the way guns do — randomly, unpredictably, 20 children in five minutes in one place, 58 people in 15 minutes somewhere else — people would be screaming for action from the medical and scientific community.
“Not all deaths or injuries can be prevented, but there are policies that could reduce the carnage. Fund national research, ban assault weapons, keep guns out of the hands of domestic-violence offenders, require safe storage of firearms: Those are among the recommendations of the American College of Physicians in the recently published paper that provoked the NRA.” – Washington Post Editorial Board, It’s Time to Follow Doctors’ Orders On Gun Violence