In the wake of the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, an emergency room doctor says he's has seen enough and is pleading for a safer America.
In an op-ed published yesterday in The New York Times, emergency room physician and Army veteran David Newman recounts the grisly injuries he's seen from gun violence, which he calls "an American epidemic— one that is profoundly difficult, but necessary, to watch, and to confront."
Newman wrote that while he normally doesn't discuss the cases he's treated, America's growing trend of gun violence has caused him finally speak out.
From Newman's op-ed:
"There was a 9-year-old girl, shot in the chest by an assault rifle during a “drive-by” gang shooting, in a botched retaliation for a shooting earlier that day. She was baffled, and in pain, with a gaping hole under her collarbone.
Another child I will never forget was a 13-year-old who was shot twice in the abdomen by an older boy who mistook him for one of a group that had bullied and berated him a week earlier. Slick with sweat and barely conscious, he groaned and turned to look at me. Soon after, he died in the operating room. His mother arrived minutes later, wide-eyed and breathless."
While Newman says he doesn't know the best way to fix gun violence in America, he has sworn an oath to heal people and as such "guns, invented to maim and destroy, are my natural enemy."
Newman isn't the first to speak out about gun violence in the country following the Sandy Hook shooting.
President Barack Obama called the massacre "the worst day of my presidency" and vowed to support renewed efforts to reduce gun violence.
And U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has vowed to introduce an assault weapons ban bill this year.
However, the majority of Americans are still pushing to protect the rights of gun owners rather than for gun control.
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