In 2020, while the Covid-19 pandemic raged, a steadily growing epidemic continued to burn its path across the United States. Gun violence stole the lives of 45,222 Americans that fateful year, the worst year on record for gun deaths to that point.
The path leading to each one of these deaths is layered and complex. Each American killed by a bullet, each family grieving their loved one, deserves their own book. I never once thought that I would be one to write such a story.
I’m a gun-owning emergency physician, a father, and the cousin of a man who was shot to death. If it wasn’t for the National Rifle Association declaring in 2018 that physicians, like me, should “stay in their lane” and keep quiet about the toll of this plague, I wouldn’t have written about this subject. Yet gun violence consumes my life. I see victims of gun violence from family tragedies—children,…
