This week has brought a great deal of discussion once again about gun control after another mass shooting left a dozen victims dead in Thousand Oaks, California. The NRA posted a tweet a few days ago bashing doctors for voicing their opinions on gun control, telling them to “stay in their lane.” This post quickly led to a movement among medical professionals across Twitter and they are pushing back against the NRA’s position on this front.
The NRA tweeted that someone should essentially tell anti-gun doctors to back off and stay out of the discussion on gun control. The post also said that the medical community seems to have consulted no outsiders regarding their opinions on firearm policy.
It did not take long for many throughout the medical community to step up and fire back. Several hashtags have gone viral on Twitter, such as #StayInMyLine, #StayInYourLane, #ThisIsMyLane, and #Docs4GunSense. Doctors, emergency room specialists, mental health professionals, and others are sharing their personal stories about treating gunshot victims and their families, and some are sharing heart-stopping photos.
A Twitter user named Dave Morris, who goes by the Twitter handle @traumadmo, tweeted that since he can’t post a photo of a patient, he would post a selfie. He said that this photo is what it looks like to stay in his lane, and it showed him just from the knees down, in scrubs, covered in blood.
Dr. Howie Mell tweeted about the moments one will always remember, like treating a lifeless 12-year-old gunshot victim riddled with holes. Dr. Robin Councilman tweeted about being a family doctor who got a call about a family whose children she had delivered enduring a loss after one child found a loaded gun in the home and killed the other.
Some people on Twitter shared graphic photos showing the aftermath of treating gunshot victims in emergency rooms. A mental health professional with the Twitter handle @Coco_the_Louder wrote about a time when six students raced into her counseling center covered in blood when their school had an active shooter.
Yet another wrote about a time during her intern year on Christmas eve when she treated a pregnant woman who’d been shot by her partner. Doctors shared their experiences in having to tell families that their children died from gunshot wounds, and others tweeted about the heartbreak of keeping a gunshot victim alive just long enough for their family to get to the hospital to say goodbye.
NBC News details that the tweet from the NRA came in an effort to push back against the American College of Physicians and what it has published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The ACP is an organization that represents more than 150,000 specialists in internal medicine and it has been active in putting together new guidelines to help doctors deal with the danger their patients face with firearm violence.
The original tweet by the NRA was liked by about 2,400 people, shared 952 times, and it drew more than 15,000 direct replies. While there were replies in support of the organization and its stance, the ratio clearly tilted toward those who felt that the NRA was most definitely outside of their lane in trying to silence the medical community.
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