The Cure to Gun Violence Begins at the Ballot Box, Not the Trauma Bay

Among the world’s high income countries, the impact of gun violence is uniquely American. Firearms claim more than 48,000 lives per year in our country. They are one of the leading causes of premature death, and have supplanted motor vehicle crashes as the Number One killer of children and adolescents. With a responsibility to promote long and healthy lives for our communities, physicians and public health professionals recognize that deaths from gun violence are a public health crisis that is well within our lanes.

While we have been sounding the alarm for decades, we know that the most impactful solutions extend beyond the clinical walls to the halls of government where policy decisions are crafted. These decisions are made by the people we vote into office, making participation in our elections vital to creating a healthier and safer America.

The victims of gun violence all too frequently arrive in our nation’s emergency departments, where we are tasked with saving lives after irreparable damage has already been done. Our ability to address gun violence in the clinical setting is reactive. Yet, we know from a public health perspective that the more effective way to save lives from this, or any other epidemic, is to be proactive. This is because, like many other facets of health, deaths from gun violence are overwhelmingly dictated by factors outside of clinical walls.

These factors — social determinants of health — are the conditions in which members of our community live, work, learn, and play. They shape our communities and manifest in the health issues we treat. To address these issues at scale, we must take a preventative approach by addressing the social determinants of health. One of the best tools to do this is through policy.

From clean water standards to emissions regulations to seat belt laws, policy can shape the conditions of our communities in a direction that promotes health by minimizing the risks of diarrheal illnesses, respiratory issues, and injuries. These same principles apply to gun violence.

All Americans should be able to feel safe in our communities, on our streets, and in our schools. No one should be at risk of losing their lives due to a gun. While the factors driving gun violence involve complex social and economic dynamics, policy clearly has the power to prevent these harms before they ever occur. The majority of Americans recognize this and support a range of policies aimed at reducing gun violence.

Gun policy remains among the top 10 issues for voters this year. With the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was the first major gun policy legislation in decades, Americans realize meaningful legislative change is both necessary and possible. Yet, we cannot overlook the role of politics on this issue.

National polling shows that the majority of people from both of the major political parties favor restricting firearm purchases to people at least 21 years old and having background checks on every firearm transaction. Yet the mismatch between public opinion and public policy persists in many states. We must hold our elected officials accountable for their failures to protect our communities. Put simply, we need to vote.

Gun violence is not an issue we can completely fix in the emergency department, nor are the politics surrounding it something that can be separated from the harmful health impacts we bear witness to every day. Whether it is the American Academy of Pediatrics through their Vote Kids campaign, or HHS through its inclusion of civic participation as a core objective in Healthy People 2030, the nation’s agenda for health recognizes the important connection between voting and health.

As Americans across the nation will have the opportunity to register to vote and participate in the upcoming election on November 5, it is important that physicians recognize that their impact goes beyond the doctor’s office and the trauma bay. The people we elect will make decisions on policies that can shape our health and safety, and that of our communities, for years to come.

As the great physician Rudolf Virchow once said: “Medical education does not exist to provide [the] student with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community.” Now is the time to make our voices, and the voices of our communities, heard at the ballot box.

Cedric Dark, MD, MPH, is the author of, Under the Gun: An ER Doctor’s Cure for America’s Gun Epidemic, and an associate professor in the Henry J. N. Taub Department of Emergency Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Olivia S. Morris is an MPH student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the NYU School of Global Public Health.