On Jan. 8, 2011, I was in Tucson visiting friends when U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords and 18 others were shot in a supermarket parking lot, just a few miles from us, by an individual wielding a semi-automatic pistol with high-capacity magazines.

On July 20, 2012, shortly after I flew into nearby Denver airport for a camping trip before starting medical school, 12 people were killed and more than 50 injured in a movie theater by a gunman wearing tactical gear with multiple weapons, including a semi-automatic rifle with a 100-round drum magazine.

On Oct. 25, 2023, I was receiving sign-out from my colleague at the beginning of my shift as a pediatric hospitalist at Central Maine Medical Center when we heard the overhead page summoning us to the emergency department. We quickly learned there was a mass shooting. Multiple gunshot victims were en route to our hospital. Later that evening, we saw security camera footage of the perpetrator walking into the bowling alley with an assault-style rifle. The hours that followed will replay in our minds for the rest of our lives.

It turns out, Maine isn’t all that different when it comes to guns – up until Wednesday, we’ve just been lucky.

Having grown up in Maine, I have respect for our longstanding tradition of responsible gun ownership, whether those guns are used for hunting, for sport or for personal protection. However, that respect does not extend to a tolerance of our state and federal laws that allow individuals to own firearms that have the express design to kill high numbers of people in a rapid fashion.

This past legislative session at the State House, I provided testimony alongside colleagues on bills to expand universal background checks and to impose a 72-hour waiting period on firearm purchases, a well-studied intervention to decrease rates of suicide by firearm. I later heard a senator parrot the oft-improperly quoted line “an armed society is a polite society” as justification for his hesitation. Sadly, these bills failed, despite broad support among voters.

Politicians at both the state and federal level have used Maine’s high rate of gun ownership to explain away their inaction regarding common sense firearm safety legislation. The loud voices of a vocal few – some who own these weapons of war themselves; others who adopt the lazy “slippery slope” argument – have paralyzed elected politicians into accepting the status quo. Equally paralyzing is the political heft of the gun lobby, which props up candidates who support their fight against any kind of legislation regulating the gun industry.

In recent years, firearm fatalities have surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among American children, adolescents and young adults. In response to the epidemic of gun violence in this country, the American Academy of Pediatrics supports specific, research-supported measures to reduce the destructive effects of guns in the lives of children and adolescents, including: universal background checks, increasing age limits for the purchase of certain types of firearms, instituting waiting periods for firearm purchases, establishing child access prevention laws, instituting extreme risk protection order laws (rather than the watered-down “yellow flag” law in Maine), and introducing bans on semi-automatic, military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

We are not helpless in the face of gun violence, unless we choose to be.

Copy the Story Link