Opinion | Where Is Our Operation Warp Speed for Gun Violence?

Sitting here in my office — heart pounding, hands trembling — I feel a sense of urgency. I must review my patients’ reports and develop a treatment plan. I have to research the latest studies about innovative cancer drug treatments proven to prolong their life, even if only by a few months.

But I feel my brain dragging me towards a different subject. Is it really a different subject? On the contrary, it has everything to do with it. There is this sense of paradox that I find myself negotiating: the value of every day of a human’s life (the time, the energy, and the healthcare expense that go into preserving and prolonging cancer patients’ lives) slammed against the daily news of the ease at which a life can end, for no reason and at the cost of a bullet.

The heat in my office is cranked up, and I have an extra portable heater next to my side, but I am still shivering with a deep cold inside. I can’t get warm. The paradox renders everything I do daily a question of the usefulness or uselessness of it all.

The headline news last week included three mass shootings in one state. But that is not all; if you widen your search to gun violence that does not meet the official definition of “mass shooting,” you will be speechless by how many people die of gunshots daily. The Gun Violence Archive reports that as of January 24, there have been 39 mass shootings in the U.S. since the beginning of the year, and at least 70 people have been killed and 167 wounded thus far. That is shocking; it should be shocking. You would think people would stop in their tracks hearing it, drop everything, burst with outrage, take to the street, and demand immediate change. But what is more shocking than the news is how normal such a thing has become, dragging with it the numbness, the paralysis, and the helplessness that we face. Nobody at work reacts anymore. Instead, we remain quiet in the face of our uselessness.

While watching the news of the shootings one night last week, I went through disbelief, profound disturbance, and then anger. In a heated discussion with my husband, I spouted all that I thought should be done: ban weapons, ban them all, why not?

“The second amendment,” my husband, the lawyer, summed it up.

“Why can’t we change the second amendment?” I demanded, and when my husband explained the laws and the politics. I fell into despair. He pointed out that changing gun-owning laws in this country has been, at best, slow and limited due to the political climate and the lobbying power.

“So what do we do?” I said. “We stop fighting?”

My agitation did not persuade his logic. “Although we should continue to push for such a change, it might be productive, in the face of slow progress, to try to understand what leads to gun violence, and try to prevent that.”

I took my husband’s remarks to bed with me and turned them over and over and over again.

We have to simultaneously tackle gun control issues (including banning assault weapons) and address what leads people to use them in the killing of others. The mass shooting frequency and the casualties it produces in this country have risen to a national crisis level that warrants the consideration of invoking the concept of a Marshal Plan-like or Operation Warp Speed-like intervention.

According to an analysis from the National Threat Assessment Center of the U.S. Secret Service of 173 attacks in the last 5 years during which three or more individuals were injured or killed, nearly all (93%) of the attackers had experienced at least one significant stressor in the past several years, such as those related to family/romantic relationships, housing, or employment. Also, more than half had exhibited symptoms of depression, psychosis, or suicidal ideas during or before the attacks.

It is true that there has been increasing awareness and discussion of the stressors confronting our nation’s population in recent years. Are we doing enough?

It is not only that stress-induced crises can contribute to the emergence of mass attacks, but also the horror of mass shootings is destined to induce lingering stress in our nation’s collective memory. This will last for generations to come.

Why are we not rising to this crisis the same way we did for COVID, when all resources were geared toward prevention and treatment? Why aren’t there tents for emotional crises that people could go in when they are overly stressed to get support for free? Why aren’t there more ads on TV urging people to call the 988 hotline or other support lines? Free support. Why do such ads not flood the TV channels like the immunotherapy drugs ads for cancer patients?

I am not a lawmaker or an expert on healthcare logistics, but since banning or controlling guns is moving too slowly, perhaps preventing the breakdown of our people and helping them through crises can come faster to slow the bleeding.

So, what does oncology have to do with it? Since the U.S. prides itself on being on the cutting edge of medical advancement and state-of-the-art research, why can’t we put greater resources toward people’s mental well-being? Otherwise, I could be spending millions of dollars, giving cutting-edge immunotherapy to prolong a cancer patient’s life by months while dozens of other lives are taken away by the low price of a bullet.

Can we find a balance? I think we can. We just need to want to.

Let’s start today, now. Get out of the box and come up with ideas. Let’s come together as healthcare professionals, and do it. If our political parties are dragging their feet over the bodies of the innocents while catering to lobbying power and their money, isn’t it up to us? We save lives, that’s what we do.

Now, as I finish writing this, I will walk into my patient’s room and talk to her about a new drug therapy for her cancer; but I am warm inside and not shaking anymore, full of hope that if I, a simple community oncologist, can put forth the effort to come up with a few ideas on my 30-minute lunch break, there must be many healthcare professionals, leaders, and organizers who are smarter and more capable of coming up with something, so we can turn some of these ideas into a reality soon, all while we keep pushing with full force for gun law reform.

At this juncture, saying we need reform is putting it mildly. Reforms come slow and sometimes too little or too late. We need a revolutionary vision that will address the two factors of this lethal combination: guns and social stressors. Every political and healthcare body has to do its part to stop the bleeding.

Rana Bitar, MD, MFA, is a physician, poet, and writer who operates a hematology and oncology private practice near Albany, New York. She is the author of The Long Tale of Tears and Smiles: An Oncologist’s Journey.