By GREGORY ZELLER //
The U.S. Congress appears ready to advance national gun-safety laws for the first time in decades – small steps that can’t come fast enough for Northwell Health.
More specifically, for the health system’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention, and for the dozens of gun-violence survivors, still-grieving family members and other gun-law advocates it welcomed this week at an event that was part group therapy and part law conference – and all about the unified demand for federal action.
Federal action is already underway. The U.S. Senate was poised to advance a major bipartisan gun-safety bill on Thursday, with the first major federal gun-safety legislation since the 1994 assault-weapons ban ticketed to become law as early as next week.
The Senate’s bipartisan legislation includes millions of dollars for mental-health, school-safety and crisis-intervention programs, plus incentives for states to include juvenile records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System – bolstering background checks on people between 18 and 21 who want to buy guns.
Gunning for change: Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling (left) makes a point at Tuesday’s event.
In a nation where 124 gun-related deaths per day stun the senses and this sickening criminality passes as a United States Senate campaign ad – a patriotic one – the compromise legislation is of course heavily challenged (or lightly, depending on your personal scope).
But it seems the May 24 tragedy in Uvalde, Texas – or perhaps one or some of the 20-plus U.S. mass shootings since Uvalde – have finally pushed the dissenters (and the bleeding-out National Rifle Association) into a corner.
That’s good news for Northwell Health, which launched the Center for Gun Violence Prevention in 2020 to focus medical, firearms and psychology experts on the nation’s gun-violence epidemic – and welcomed a coalition of survivors Tuesday to share their stories, and to magnify their pleas for federal intervention.
Among the attendees: A Shirley resident whose teenaged son, fiancé and nephew were shot to death in separate incidents and a Colorado couple who lost their 24-year-old daughter in a 2012 mass shooting, and now travel the country to support communities suffering similar fates.
Pediatric trauma surgeon and Center for Gun Violence Prevention Director Chethan Sathya said it’s imperative that mainstream healthcare address the underlying causes of the public-health crisis.
Second rate: The U.S. stands alone in gun-related deaths, by far.
“In many neighborhoods, literally every child hears gunshots every night,” Sathya noted.
In addition to the center – which has already convened three national forums and scheduled a fourth – Northwell is leading likeminded institutions in the Gun Violence Prevention Learning Collaborative for Health Systems and Hospitals, which unites researchers and providers from University of Chicago Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Medical Center and other hospitals and health systems on a massive gun-safety mission.
Meanwhile, clinicians at three Northwell hospitals have been screening patients for firearm-injury risks since November, asking questions similar to those used to screen for drug and alcohol risks – less about infringing Second Amendment rights, more about keeping families out of harm’s way: Do you hear gunshots at night? Is your gun stored safely?
Such efforts are critical, according to Sathya, who noted that Northwell hospitals have already treated more gun-violence victims in 2022 than they have in any previous total year.
“The most likely reason that your kid will die in this country is at the hands of a firearm,” the surgeon said. “That is absolutely unacceptable.”
