Category Archives: Gun control

Doctors clash with NRA over gun deaths – #thisisourlane

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald
[Editor: For fuller coverage and graphic images, see the Chicago Tribune.  – RS]

Doctors clash with NRA over gun deaths

By Lisa Marie Pane, The Associated Press, November 22, 2018
Dr. Deborah Greenhouse of Palmetto Pediatric in Columbia, S.C., works on her laptop. Greenhouse is one of several doctors joining a social media storm over guns and doctors, sparking a fight between the physicians and the National Rifle Association.  BRISTOW MARCHANT — THE STATE VIA AP

The photos from doctors came quickly and in succession: blood-stained operating rooms, blood-covered scrubs and shoes, bullets piercing body parts and organs.

The pictures on Twitter were an emotional response to a smack down by the powerful gun industry lobby, which took issue with the American College of Physicians’ call late last month for tighter gun control laws. The recommendations included bans on “assault weapons,” large capacity magazines and 3D printed firearms.

“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,” the National Rifle Association tweeted.

Physicians across the United States seized on the phrasing, taking to Twitter with 22,000 comments and the hashtags #thisismylane and #thisisourlane, posting photos of their encounters with gun violence and offering their own personal stories of treating such
wounds.

The debate gained new urgency this week with the shooting death of an emergency room doctor outside the hospital where she worked, as physicians argue shootings are a public health crisis that they must play a key role in trying to stem. Dr. Tamara O’Neal was killed Monday outside a hospital in Chicago in what police say was a dispute with her ex-fiance. The shooter and two other people — a responding police officer and a resident in the hospital’s pharmacy — also died.

“It just shows that not only is this is in our lane, but this happens to us,” said Dr. Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore who as a 17-year-old was shot in the throat by a stray bullet fired during a dispute at a high school football game.

Sakran created a Twitter account @ThisIsOurLane which in just two weeks has attracted nearly 15,000 followers. They include Dr. Peter Masiakos, a pediatric trauma surgeon in Boston, who wrote “The Quiet Room” just hours after the mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, about breaking the news that a loved one has died.
“We need to start talking about this as a public health issue. Politics aside, we have a problem that no other country has, and we shouldn’t,” Masiakos said.

About 35,000 people each year are killed by guns in the United States, and about two-thirds are suicides. That’s about 670 people per week and among the largest number of civilian gun deaths in the world.

The world’s highest rate of gun deaths is in El Salvador with a rate of 72.5 per 100,00; the rate in the U.S. is 3.1 per 100,000. Among all European countries, the rate never breaks 1 gun death per 100,000, according to Small Arms Survey, a Switzerland-based research organization that examines firearms and violence.

Coverage of local protest against Trump firing of AG Sessions

Repost from The Vallejo Times-Herald
[Editor: Thanks to the Vallejo Times-Herald for it’s front-page photo of yesterday’s local protest against the ouster of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  The Trump administration cannot be allowed to work this outrageous obstruction of justice!  Coverage of the MASSIVE nationwide protests was buried this morning by news of the California wildfires and mass murders in Thousand Oaks.  NOTHING in the SF Chronicle, but here’s the East Bay Times coverage.  (See also Google’s full coverage.)  And, oh by the way – that’s Benicia’s own Lee Wilder Snider, Susan Street and Donna Shehan front and center in the photo!  And I’m sure that’s Craig Snider behind Susan’s right arm.  See also “Oh, please – not again…”  – R.S.] 

Rapid Response

By Chris Riley, November 8, 2018 at 5:55 pm
Dozens of Vallejoans took to the street in front of the ferry building to take part in ‘Nobody is above the law-Mueller protection rapid response’ a nation-wide peaceful protest on Thursday in Vallejo. (Chris Riley–Times-Herald)

Oh please, not again… (32 mass shootings in California in 2018)

By Roger Straw, November 8, 2018
[See also, Gun Control Links, from last May.  – R.S.]

Respectfully and profoundly, the Thousand Oaks, CA mass shooting is first and foremost about human lives, carnage, grieving, bullets and fear.

THE NUMBERS aren’t nearly as staggering as the personal loss and our common grieving.  But the numbers tell the larger story of legislative and executive governmental inaction.  The numbers may not have the passion, but they have the fact-based, incontrovertible, insistent, deadly proof that sensible gun control in the U.S. is needed NOW and long overdue.

California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.  And yet, California recorded 32 mass shootings in the first 312 days of 2018, one every 10 days.  49 individuals are dead with grieving families and friends.  Another 131 were injured.  (Mass shooting is defined here as 4 or more shot or killed, not including the shooter).

Nationally in 2018 to date, there have been  307 mass shootings, (just shy of ONE EVERY DAY), killing 328 (OVER ONE A DAY) and injuring another 1251 (OVER FOUR EVERY DAY).

These numbers are a call to action:

MASS SHOOTINGS IN 2018 – CALIFORNIA
Incident Date City Or County # Killed # Injured
Source: gunviolencearchive.org/ (GVA defines mass shootings based on the numeric value of 4 or more shot or killed, not including the shooter.)
7-Nov-18 Thousand Oaks 13 10
2-Nov-18 Long Beach (North Long Beach) 0 4
30-Oct-18 Vallejo 2 3
30-Oct-18 Los Angeles 0 5
29-Oct-18 Riverside 0 7
14-Oct-18 Palo Alto (East Palo Alto) 2 2
6-Oct-18 Oakland 0 6
30-Sep-18 Compton 1 3
23-Sep-18 Bakersfield 1 4
23-Sep-18 Baldwin Park 0 4
12-Sep-18 Bakersfield 6 0
2-Sep-18 San Bernardino 0 8
12-Aug-18 Clearlake 4 1
11-Aug-18 San Francisco 1 4
31-Jul-18 Gardena 2 3
28-Jul-18 Los Angeles 2 4
26-Jul-18 Oakland 2 2
5-Jul-18 Los Angeles 3 3
27-Jun-18 Oakland 1 3
21-Jun-18 San Bernardino 1 3
20-Jun-18 Modesto 0 5
14-Jun-18 Union City 0 5
14-Jun-18 Tracy 1 4
10-Jun-18 Valley Village 0 6
13-May-18 Stockton 3 2
13-May-18 Los Angeles 2 2
7-May-18 San Diego 0 5
20-Apr-18 San Francisco 1 5
9-Apr-18 Vallejo 0 4
21-Mar-18 San Francisco 1 5
12-Mar-18 Modesto 0 4
27-Jan-18 Los Angeles 0 5
TOTAL 49 131

What do do?  Protest in the streets, phone and write our state and national elected officials.  Weep.  Try like mad to stay hopeful…

Roger Straw
Benicia, California

Gun control links – renewed call to VOTE THEM OUT!

By Roger Straw
[Originally published in the spring of 2018 following the Parkland, FL mass shooting, republished here in November 2018 following mass shootings in Pittsburgh, PA and Thousand Oaks, CA.  – R.S.]

School shootings and other mass murders will never stop until we elect new leaders who are willing to stand up to the NRA.  Below you will find links to organizations dedicated to ending gun violence.  Many are focusing on electing new leaders who stand for change.  Please click on at least one today – sign a petition, make a contribution, join or start a new group.  Renew your commitment to resist!

National

Everytown For Gun Safety (everytown.org/throwthemout/)

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Guns Down America (gunsdownamerica.org/)


States United to Prevent Gun Violence (ceasefireusa.org/)

States United to Prevent Gun Violence


Indivisible (indivisible.org)


The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus (keepgunsoffcampus.org/)


Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (lawcenter.giffords.org/take-action/)


Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (csgv.org/)


California & Benicia

Bay Area Student Activists (bayareastudentactivists.org/)

Bay Area Student Activists


Benicia March For Our Lives (facebook.com/groups/529647794085732/)


 

North Bay|#NEVERAGAIN (twitter.com/nbayNEVERAGAIN)

North Bay|#NEVERAGAIN


northbayneveragain (instagram.com/northbayneveragain/)


Women Against Gun Violence (wagv.org/)


Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, California Chapters (bradycampaign.org/)

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence logo