I wrote this before the California shooting. Another tragedy on a daily basis in the US… As long as lobbying groups hold power and politicians do nothing – none of us are safe.
Gun violence is endemic in the United States. This should not be a controversial statement, and yet in 2018 we are still having disingenuous discussions about the process behind obtaining firearms, banning assault rifles and putting a “good guy with a gun” on every corner in America. None of this will work. The only hope we have is that all of us, together as a community determine that guns are a public health emergency on the same scale as the opioid epidemic. Only then may we see the decrease in daily suffering such as the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. We don’t need further research into the matter, we need action from our elected officials.
Nineteen years ago, after I graduated from high school, my family moved from Australia to the United States. Since that time I have witnessed with tremendous sadness and horror – the senseless butchering of human beings; at multiple high schools, a movie theater, an elementary school, a nightclub, churches, in Las Vegas, and now a synagogue. In approximately the same time period – my former homeland has endured zero mass shootings (Actually Australia went 21 years without one until the 2018 deaths of a family of seven in a rural area).
I’ve volunteered overseas as a physician and I’ve also traveled to a few places some would consider “dangerous.” The biggest threat to my existence in India (my birthplace), Haiti, Kenya, Myanmar, Mexico or Morocco has probably been the probability of death by automobile accident, cardiac arrest, or from an infectious disease. Yet here in the US, in my beloved adopted homeland – there is the real possibility that when I leave for work in the morning, that I too may face bullets. We aren’t just threatened as a crowd with mass shootings – the prevalence of lethal weapons in many hands causes devastation for individuals every single day. Just look at the “small” incidents that are lost in the media cycle – such as the prolonged assault on the residents of Chicago, or the 2015 shooting of a cardiac surgeon inside a Harvard teaching hospital.
Guns will likely never be eliminated from US society, but the lack of effort by politicians in trying to curtail the free flow in disgraceful. Gun violence threatens every single American; no place is safe and no group immune to the tremendous misery currently being experienced by the Jewish community. As we mourn the 11 victims from Tree Of Life – our politicians will tell us it isn’t the right time to talk about guns. They are wrong. They promised us “never again” after Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Sutherland Springs church, Las Vegas, Stoneman Douglas High School, and basically every few months whenever another similar tragedy unfolds. We need to stand united in addressing this public health scourge.
#thisismylane #thisisourlane