Citation

Odom-Forren J. J. Perianesth. Nurs. 2022; 37(4): 421-422.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jopan.2022.05.084

PMID

35926963

Abstract

As I was mulling over important topics for the August editorial for JoPAN, I heard the news…another school shooting….more children murdered. I am beside myself--with grief, with worry, with frustration. You may ask why I chose this topic for a perianesthesia nursing journal editorial. Not only do we perianesthesia nurses have children or grandchildren that we worry about who are in school, but your colleagues do as well. And not only that, but your perianesthesia nursing colleagues are having to deal with the tragedy of mass murders and injuries in city after city. One perianesthesia nurse wrote an editorial after she experienced the results of a mass murder first-hand. The American Academy of Nursing had just distributed a press release on May 17, 2022, discussing gun violence and racism based on the recent shooting in Buffalo, NY, that targeted African Americans and the church in Laguna Woods, CA targeted because of hate toward Taiwanese people. A week later, here we are--in the throes of grief over 19 children and 2 adults who were mowed down in an elementary school in Uvalde, TX.

Here are some documented facts. Since 2018, there have been 119 school shootings with at least one person injured or killed (Table 1). So far this year, 212 mass shootings, those in which 4 or more persons were shot or killed, have occurred. In 2020, there were 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the United States - approximately 124 people die from a gun-related injury each day. Of those 124, more than half are suicides and more than 4 out of every 10 are homicides related to guns. Also in 2020, gun-related injuries in the U.S. were among the 5 leading causes of death for persons ages 1 to 44. In children ages 1 to 19, the number one cause of death was deaths due to gun injury, 4357; followed by motor vehicle, 3639; poisoning, 1845; cancer, 1648; and suffocation, 1411. How do we compare to the rest of the western world? In the U.S., we have 4.4 gun-related homicides/100,000 residents compared to 1/100,000 in Chile, 0.7/100,000 residents in Canada and Israel; and 0.1/100,000 in Spain. Within developed countries, the U.S. has the most people who own guns with 120.5 firearms per 100 residents. This compares to Canada, 34.7/100; Sweden 23.1/100; Australia 14.5/100; England/Wales 4.6/100 and Japan at 0.3/100 persons. The U.S. has over 300 million guns with our death rate over 45,000 persons per year. Japan with less than one gun per 100 persons has less than 10 deaths in the entire country per year. When discussing policy issues, stronger gun laws correlate to lower death rates...

Language: en