In light of the recent shootings throughout America, many people are unafraid to come forward with their anti-guns viewpoints. Everyone is sharing their opinion on how they believe that there should be stricter gun laws. Doctors have also entered the gun debate. The NRA (National Rifle Association) was quick to fire back at doctors who entered a debate about gun control, and they told them to “stay in their lane.” Doctors fired back, stating how their voice is important, they see first hand what gunshots do to people and how gruesome it is trying to resuscitate gun victims in the emergency room. Judy Melinek, West Coast forensic pathologist, was on her way to the morgue to examine the body of one of the country’s many forgotten gunshot victims when she tweeted “Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly? This isn’t just my lane, it’s my [expletive] highway.”
Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore who suffers from a paralyzed vocal cord after being shot with a stray bullet in the neck almost 25 years ago, shared his own outrage. “I have Two Words for you Hell No! #Hell No for #ThousandOaks #Hell No for all black men that die & no one hears about it. #Hell No for all those that we still may be able to save,” Sakran wrote.
They write of delivering a shattered baby that saved its mother’s life by stopping a bullet, and of hiding blood and brain matter from parents. They show how the stunned public responses to the October 27th carnage in a Pittsburgh synagogue and then the November 7th shooting in Thousand Oaks, California at a country music bar fail in comparison of having to resuscitate shooting victims in the emergency room.
Melinek and Sakran are among countless medical professionals who have taken to Twitter in the past few days to fire back at the NRA — creating a viral response that has ricocheted around the Internet under the hashtags #thisisourlane and #thisismylane. Doctors have tweeted about their experiences, including photos of blood-drenched scrubs and gloves. Through these tweets, the doctors have shown that they have every right to contribute to the gun control debate because they see first hand what happens to the victims. Many doctors have pointed out they are not anti-gun, but anti-NRA because of their refusal to acknowledge the severity and increased number of mass shootings in recent years.
Heather Sher, a radiologist who has worked in Level 1 trauma centers for almost 17 years and has cared for patients with gunshot wounds from two separate mass shootings, writes “It is not an ‘us versus them’ issue. What we are truly asking for is a coming together of both sides to find a solution to this national health problem.”