9 minute read
Philadelphia is Ready to Overcome Gun Violence, Our Great American Epidemic
by William F. King, Jr., MD, FAAP Vice President, Medical Society of Eastern PA Board Member At Large, Philadelphia County Medical Society
Iwatched Dr. Preston Phillips work almost 30 years ago, when I was a medical student, and he was senior surgical resident at Yale Medical School. Working with Dr. Phillips was like playing with Lebron James; he was bigger, more talented, and better than the rest of the team. The other Black doctors in training at Yale admired and hoped to become as dedicated to our patients as he. Four of us, who tried to follow his example, were devastated to hear that he was the doctor who was gunned down in Tulsa in June in a mass shooting by an angry patient who purchased an assault rifle the day of his massacre. Four Black male doctors felt this loss of our brother in medicine like a death in the family. We only passed a few words of sorrow between us, remembering Preston, and mourning our violent nation. Then we each went back to work. We have patients to see, work to do, even more to do with the loss of a great man like Preston. But Dr. Phillips’ death has shaken me.
We doctors know how to focus on danger. For three years, the Covid19 pandemic has been the focus of our medical effort and energy. Yet as we fought the pandemic, the American epidemic of gun violence has been steadily tearing through our communities and flaring up into burst after burst of mass murder. A racist 18-year-old white boy drives across New York with a just purchased assault rifle, searching on the internet for the best place to kill Black people, and devastates a community in Buffalo, New York. A troubled Latino 18-year-old boy legally buys assault weapons and commits a horrific massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, devastating a Latino community that fought
for educational rights at Robb Elementary a generation before. An angry black man buys an assault weapon, and the same day kills his doctor, our friend Dr. Preston, and three others in the office, apparently because he was not happy with his surgery. And in June a group of young black men in Philadelphia got into a fight outside of a bar in South Philly, pulled out guns instead of fists, and, while trying to kill each other, killed three people and injured 11. One of my teenage patients was enjoying an outing on South Street and had to endure the trauma of seeing one of her friends die during that South Street Philadelphia shooting. During the same weekend 3 were killed, and 11 injured in Charlotte, North Carolina. Same type of chaos, same mayhem. Chaos! Chaos? Evil people? Crazy gunmen? No. These were Americans. American gunmen being Americans. What have we become… perhaps Americans.
We Americans have a gun violence problem.1 America has a lot of guns… more than one for each American; that’s a lot. America also has a lot of criminals who use guns, who can get guns, who can purchase a gun in a few minutes2 . America also has the most citizens who have never committed a crime who have caused a firearm death as their first impulse when in conflict or stress.3 America is in fact the most dangerous place on earth to be intentionally killed by another citizen who is not a combatant in a war zone. We are not aware of this fact because our disproportionate loss of citizens from gun violence has been a common cause of preventable death in the United States for almost a generation. I don’t want to return to the work of reducing gun violence in Philadelphia. I’m not tired of the work, I’m a Black male pediatrician, I love trying to keep our children happy and healthy, and keeping our youth alive is the first task of my job. I’m not frustrated by the rising number of gun homicides and injuries in 2022 Philadelphia. In the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s surges in gun violence were controlled and reversed through a combination of community policing, aggressive enforcement of gun laws, expanded programming for youth, and engagement with citizens returning from incarceration. The 2010’s violence reducers had additional tools to help victims of violence, to expand violence interruption, and teach de-escalation, the skill of turning down the heat of anger. These tools looked like a strategy to keep violence down in Philadelphia and across the country. I don’t want to return to this work because Philadelphia is in a different America. Changing a deadly and complex public health epidemic of gun crime and gun violence takes the unified attention of civil society, government, business, academia and medicine, but our United States are anything but united.
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Stopping gun violence in Philadelphia has become almost impossible because Philadelphia is in America. I am not afraid of gun violence. I’m afraid of American media sensationalism and political cowardice. I’m afraid our fractured nation is so full of argument and anger, so full of disagreement and disappointment that we are numb and unwilling to change our culture. The United States of America is not united, we are separated. We are not states, we appear to be tribes ruled by warlords. We are the land of the free, but not brave enough to stop shooting each other over petty disagreement. What are we going to do?
I’ve been a practicing pediatrician in Philadelphia for more than 25 years. I’ve worked to reduce gun violence in Philadelphia since 1998, as a faculty member, a board member, a deacon, a scout mentor, a counselor, a gardener, a teacher, a father, and a Black man. I’ve worked with the mothers, the survivors, the widows, the shattered parents, the traumatized, the peacekeepers, the violence interrupters, the BlackLivesMatter, the ThinBlueLiners, the politicians, the preachers, the reporters, the elders, and the kids. None of it is enough. Here is why. The good people are working one by one, but the forces of evil have more tools to cause chaos. It is not enough for us to try to do good. We must work together as one toward one goal. To teach the tools of peace and regulate the tools of violence.
Violence spreads like fire. It starts with anger, it is fed by selfishness and impulsiveness, but it is multiplied by guns and the industries that are enriched by violence: weapons, politics, and media.
Peace is spread like water. It starts with patience, it is fed by selflessness and generosity, and it is multiplied by forgiveness, and the industries that are enriched by peace: reconstruction, restoration, and healing.
So how do we restart the work? We must control the violence by controlling the guns. We must challenge the media that teaches boys how to become gunmen. We must challenge our neighborhoods that tolerate and shield impulsive violent neighbors. Boys must not be able to buy military assault weapons before they can drink or gamble, and guns should only be allowed to be bought with a cool head and visible sale. We must fight for universal background checks and waiting periods and safe weapons training for new owners. Neighbors and friends need to be able to speak up and help stop hurt people from hurting people. We must fight for red flag laws and community policing boards. Social media must be regulated like any other broadcaster to prevent massacre broadcasting, hate group promotion and violence profit making. These changes will need changes in laws, but also need the engagement of neighbors with their police precincts, of voters with their politicians, and viewers with their media. Americans will need to return to a balance where we value discipline and community more than individualism and carelessness. We can only be free together.
The tools of peace are everywhere but are no longer valued or used. Violence Interrupters focus on teaching patience and tolerance. Victim Support focuses on not only justice but compassion for the injured and traumatized. Healing Hurt People teaches empathy to break the cycle of violence, recognizing that the victims of violence can become perpetrators of more violence. Community policing teaches police to be more communal and the community to police their own community. Restorative justice focuses the justice system on the responsibility of the lawbreaker and society to fix what was broken by the crime, rather than simply punishing. Criminal Justice does not fix society. Guns do not protect society. We must recognize that peace requires much more conversation, more personal responsibility, and more public involvement to take back our streets with Love. Ask Stevie Wonder, Love’s in need of Love today. •
1 Small Arms Survey 2018 Estimates 390 million handguns in circulation in the US. 2 Estimate 100,000 prohibited felons US continue to own a firearm. https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/27/2/145 3 US per capita rates of firearm death from suicide, unintentional deaths, child involvement in shootings, justifiable homicides, firearm deaths from legal intervention (law enforcement), and many mass shootings represent firearm deaths by citizens who have not been or will not be convicted of a prior crime.
