Those who know me well and even those who don’t are aware of my passion and commitment to the Kansas City Chiefs. As an avid fan who was born and raised in KC, I can assure everyone that there were many dark years and even decades prior to the current situation that have allowed us to live on high for the past few years. Football has been an outlet for me, especially over the last few years, as I have struggled with leaving the military, working in toxic and soul-crushing work environments, fighting COVID in its constant pursuit to inflict death and destruction on our patients, and ultimately leaving academic medicine and changing my life completely. I would make my work schedule and build my life around the games, and the joy I have felt because of this team is hard to explain, even if it seems a bit irrational.
Which is why the Super Bowl celebrations were so hard. So incredibly soul-shattering. I don’t live in KC. I haven’t since I was 18 years old, but it is still home. I identify with and feel like my soul belongs there; maybe that is why I migrated to a similar Midwest town a few states over. So many of my friends and family still live there and are as die-hard fans as I am. Many of them were at the parade. The parade became the latest in a never-ending string of mass shootings. A blip in time for us here in the United States. But a bit closer to home maybe than any time before. Not that it hit close to home makes me care more; I already have and will continue to work with an organization that lobbies for common sense gun laws at a federal level, but that is a reminder that every day is the day that it can and will happen to you or those you love.
A friend of mine who is a pediatrician in KC shared some thoughts this morning that stuck with me. She reminded me that just because someone is safe from the actual bullets doesn’t mean they are unharmed. She commented on the ripples something like this creates in the environment due to the bullets themselves, the witnesses to the morbid chaos, and the fear of living in a state of constant turmoil. We are never safe from the fear or the question of safety. Our joy, our escape, our shred of humanity shared through a sport we love is lost to the fear of death at the hands of a weapon that is not meant for civilian hands. The degrees of separation between us and someone directly affected by gun violence grow ever smaller each day we live in the U.S. There is no escaping the statistics. They are real. Whether any of us has anecdotal or personal experience with them doesn’t change what the data clearly shows: We live in fear and have literally changed our lives and our pursuit of joy and contentment in the hopes of avoiding being shot. As we have finally allowed for some funding of gun research, we see not only the cost in terms of morbidity and mortality but also the cost to us as humans who are lost and scared in the face of an unending pandemic and the economic fallout of a disabled and mortally wounded workforce.
Our small bits of joy and hope have been replaced with fear and a need for constant surveillance and attention to what is happening around us. We cannot let our guard down. We cannot lean into relaxation or let go of our stressors because, at just that moment, we may be faced with a situation where we need to react and respond in such a way as to increase the likelihood we or our loved ones survive. We must be led to safety by our children, who are more exposed to this situation and the preparatory work needed to avoid death than we are as responsible adults. We have asked our children to show us how to survive instead of showing them how to live. We have given up and decided that blaming it on mental health, divorce, substances, online gaming, or any other scapegoat is the reason for the ongoing slaughter of our citizens instead of understanding that the only commonality of any of these situations is easy access to weapons of war through an unregulated gun trade and intentionally obtuse background check system that benefits gun manufacturers at the expense of lives.
As physicians, we have the power to make a change. I see this every time I go to DC to speak to the offices of our representatives and our senators. We have a voice that others do not. We can move the needle, if even just a little bit, with our expertise, our data, and our passion. We can use this terror and this tragedy as an inflection point for change. That does not mean we are discounting the loss of life or politicizing a tragedy. Rather, it is using the passion and emotion of a situation to invoke change and work toward a time when we do not have to live in fear of gun violence. We do not have to constantly look around and wonder if today is the day that we become a statistic. We do not have to wonder if the ripples from what happens to us today will have far-reaching effects on the mental, emotional, and physical health of those around us.
No one is saying that we do not have other battles to fight and demons to face in this country. There are too many to count. But in the meantime, I would ask that all of us work together to acknowledge that using guns as a salve to the wounds we carry only exacerbates the pain. We do have the power to make a difference. Our voices do carry weight, and we can invoke change. But it will take a concerted and constant effort by all of us for our voices to be heard. Please say something. Please do something. Please fight with us and alongside us to do something to make this tragedy a turning point instead of merely a statistical guarantee in a country devastated by gun violence.
Nicole M. King is an anesthesiologist and intensivist.
