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Opinion: How To End The Scourge Of Gun Violence? Open Dialogue.
Joseph Sakran, Aug. 29, 2017

A high school football game: a scene common in many of our memories. But for one young man, in his senior year, it was different. After watching a football game from the stands on a Friday night, a fight broke out as he was standing nearby. The sounds of gunfire punctured the night, and an errant bullet punctured his throat. As he lay on the ground with his blood pooling beneath him, veering toward losing consciousness, he could vaguely hear people shouting and sirens blaring.

I am a trauma surgeon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, a city struggling with more than 200 homicides this year so far - on pace for the most annual murders in a city. But this is not a story about one of my patients. I was that 17-year-old with a hole in my throat and the fear of death in my mind. And it isn't just Baltimore's problem: over 30,000 people die from firearms annually. What re we going to do about it?

Every time I have to walk to the waiting room and speak with a family of a gunshot victim, I think of my own family and what must have been going through their minds at that time. By far the worst moment for me is when I see those faces of mothers and fathers anxiously awaiting for an update on a loved one who has died. I approach them knowing the news I'm about to share with them will turn their word upside down. Often, I leave numb, with the image of their faces chiseled in my memory. Today, I am on a mission to help others impacted by gun violence. As a former patient, and a surgeon who continually witnesses firsthand the effects of gun violence on victims and their families, I have a great deal of experience to draw from.

Earlier this month, I attended a hearing about gun violence at the Baltimore City Council. The hearing was controversial because many citizens felt the bill would not reduce gun violence and simply lend to unconstitutional policing. The room was packed. On the table was a proposal that would create a one-year mandatory minimum jail sentence for anyone found to be in possession of an illegal gun, throughout the majority of the city. Baltimore police commanders in white uniforms and suits, who have been working to curb the violence, sat on one side. Members of the public, including many activists fighting for fairness in a city beleaguered by a history of racial injustice, sat all around. The City Council realized the challenge that lay ahead that morning as they looked on the scene of a divided room searching for answers.

The proposal comes after an era of legislatures across the repealing mandatory minimum sentences that many say unfairly filled our prisons with African-American men, often facing drug charges. At the same time, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis believes that a major source of the epidemic of violence in the city is the light sentencing of people who've been arrested previously for carrying illegal guns but have returned to Baltimore streets, and taken their illegal guns with them.

I was there neither to support nor to oppose the bill, but as a doctor, to discuss gun violence for what it is: a public health crisis that communities all across my great city and this nation face.

As the period for public testimony opened, City Councilman Eric Costello called me up to deliver my thoughts. It wasn't my first foray into a political arena. During this last presidential election, I created "Doctors For Hillary," a grass-roots organization of doctors and allied health professionals that backed the former secretary of state because she made health issues - including gun violence - an integral part of her campaign platform.

I was surprised when, as I approached the podium, an uproar rang out. People were yelling. The podium right in front of me was overturned. A crowd began shouting, "No Justice No Peace." I hadn't yet opened my mouth, and I was completely blindsided by how chaotic the situation quickly became. I heard people yelling about "this white Hopkins surgeon," that he is "not one of our people." My heart sank.

This reaction exemplifies what is wrong with our country today: wWe are not talking to each other. We're allowing assumptions based simpy on appearance to prevent real dialogue - the kind of dialogue that can solve problems. The kind of dialogue that, based on what I have seen as a trauma surgeon, I know can save lives. How could they know based on my skin color that I am the some of immigrant parents? How could they know I bear the physical scars of bullets? How can we know anything about each other if we don't give each other a chance? A chance to speak, a chance to be heard, a chance to learn, a chance to compromise - a chance to make ourselves and our communities better. I stood before the Baltimore City Council to be part of the conversation, and even though unfortunately, certain actions precluded this conversation, I won't stop trying. As a surgeon, I strongly believe this conversation has to be centered on our nation's health - not race, not politics, not money - simply health. At the end of the day, we all bleed red. I'm still here at the table ready to talk, and eager to listen. What about you?

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I feel sorry for leftists.
I realize many of my readers are leftists. I have to make a distinction here, because “Democrat” and “leftist” are not synonymous terms, as the whole flap over the Rizzo statue makes obvious to people now.
There’s a lot of them in Philadelphia and they pretty-much signal off each other like cattle moo-ing their way across a pasture. Few of you realize what is coming, but I already see the winds blowing. You will feel that wind turn gale force as the months go by.
The people I’m feeling sorry for are you guys, gals–and other–who have been out marching in circles around City Hall hoping Trump would give a shit about your Magic Marker signs. Standing next to you in those crowds were miscreant humanities students and flunkies otherwise known as AntiFa and Black Bloc. Unfortunately for you, even though you didn’t don AntiFa garb you are going to be lumped in with them; because you’ve been winking and nodding at them and quietly accepting the normalization of extra-judicial unconstitutional violence as if it were protected speech.
That is soon going to come to an end and it’s not because of Charlottesville. Sorry, that’s how it’s going to be spun. Own it. The backspin has already started:
Exhibit A

Vox isn’t the only outlet that has had a sudden epiphany on Antifascist Action. It’s spread to the Washington Post and MSNBC.

And here’s one of America’s most televised Clintonistas…

Satirical site The Onion has also joined in…

Apparently NBC hasn’t yet gotten the memo…

I feel sorry for this author–he won’t be getting many calls to appear on network TV for a while. That is because:
The Great Disavowal Has Arrived
You see, there are quite a number of Democratic senators in Congress who are up for re-election next year. Our very own U.S. senator Bob Casey is considered vulnerable being located in a state that voted for President Trump. One of the most vulnerable Democratic senators in Congress is Missouri senator Claire McCaskill. Her state voted for Donald Trump by 57% to Hillary Clinton’s 38%. She has to desperately look as moderate as possible, her Republican attackers will put up ads “Clare’s people think every last one of you is a racist Nazi,” and pair photos of her in ballrooms with Nancy Pelosi set to dramatic music. See how this works?
This obviously has Democratic strategists in a pickle.
It’s very obvious what next year will be like. The worst footage from protest demonstrations will be put on display in campaign advertising and all the claims that Democratic pundits and authors have made claiming America is festooned with 64 million gas-chamber-murdering Nazis. Everyone who voted for Donald Trump is a Nazi. They’re all Nazis. Every fucking last one of them is a motherfucking Nazi.
There are few Republicans up for re-election in 2018 who are really vulnerable. Those 64 million Trump voters still have access to ballot machines and they can still vote. Calling every Trump voter a Nazi, as so many of you have done, is not going to be forgotten. That projection is going to come back to haunt people. It terrifies people who actually do politics as part of their career; namely pundits, campaign strategists and party officials.
Bye Bye Black Bloc
For those of you who love putting on black bandanas it’s going to get interesting as most of your conformist liberal friends grow from disagreement to disavowing political alignment and then that may even contort into a clear divide and perhaps even separation and you two blocking each other on social media. The liberal voting mass will listen to their “smart friend” who is trying to help out Senator Casey or Save Claire! and feel less inclined to march with you. It may turn into complete ostracization at political rallies and events. Political expediency will demand this. It’s a political singularity that is a certainty. You will not be able to escape it.
For those of you who are liberal and hold down a corporate job: as you’ve been more than welcoming to extremism these last few months your new-found discovery that extremism is bad and unproductive in politics will force you into logic pretzels you never thought possible. You’ll cope by ignoring most of the shit you’ve said or done because there’s a ring on the merry-go-round that needs to be grabbed. You can’t have any of your more far-left and green friends holding you back.
The mass within American Leftism will fracture over the 2018 midterm election cycle: die-hard Marxist shits will be left out in the cold and the DSA folks (I see ya, red rose labour folks… hi!

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I was surprised when, as I approached the podium, an uproar rang out. People were yelling. The podium right in front of me was overturned. A crowd began shouting, "No Justice No Peace." I hadn't yet opened my mouth, and I was completely blindsided by how chaotic the situation quickly became. I heard people yelling about "this white Hopkins surgeon," that he is "not one of our people." My heart sank.

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During this last presidential election, I created "Doctors For Hillary"

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... The podium right in front of me was overturned.

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Originally posted by Sig2340:

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... The podium right in front of me was overturned.

He also doesn't know the difference between a lectern and a podium.

I doubt the citizens expressing outrage overturned "... a small platform on which a person may stand to be seen by an audience, as when making a speech or conducting an orchestra."

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Originally posted by wishfull thinker:

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Originally posted by Sig2340:

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... The podium right in front of me was overturned.

He also doesn't know the difference between a lectern and a podium.

I doubt the citizens expressing outrage overturned "... a small platform on which a person may stand to be seen by an audience, as when making a speech or conducting an orchestra."

Absolutely. Nice call.

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Originally posted by Rightwire:
If he really understood the streets and 'thug life' he wouldn't have been there to give a speech about gun violence.

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Originally posted by rsbolo:
Apparently the good doctor has failed to learn the lessons of history.

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Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Really, the thing that strikes me about this guy is the same thing that often strikes me about liberals in general. They know the people they claim to serve very, very well - but they know them very, very well in abstract rather than as actual human beings (whether good or bad). Once they have to cope with individuals, individual communities, or circumstances that haven't been discussed by 'learned' liberal writers then they're completely flummoxed.

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fighting for fairness in a city beleaguered by a history of racial injustice