Being Shot With a Gun is Now the Leading Cause of Death for Children in America, Again

Yes, again.

I originally wrote the following dark satire about the predictable nature of “firearm-related death,”… and now we have another. This is what happens most days in America. We have startups with bullet vending machines now, too.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, children being shot to death is now the leading cause of death for children in the United States of America. It’s not a leading cause of death. It’s the number one leading cause of death. Number one. With a bullet. And that’s both a terrible pun and literally true. And I understand it was painful to read something that terrible, but it’s even more painful to be shot with a literal bullet. 10 out of 10 kids agree.

From the New England Journal of Medicine

Want to know how you can tell something is a Public Health emergency? When it becomes the leading cause of death.

We Have Left “Doctors Don’t Talk About Politics” Territory Definitively

Everything doctors for kids do includes:

• Pediatric surgeons dealing with life-threatening cancer

• Emergency medicine doctors saving children from drowning

• Child psychiatry, inclusive

• Every addiction treatment to prevent overdose death

• Accidental poisoning reduction

• Cardiology for rare but fatal cardiomyopathies

• Covid-19 🦠 and other infectious disease management

• Seat belts and traffic safety education

• Burn care in the burn-trauma intensive care unit

• Every acute asthma attack managed in the pediatric intensive care unit

• Every congenital abnormality fixed

• Robustly and regularly looking both ways when kids cross the street

All of those things are not the most important work for reducing mortality in children. Literally, every other thing every pediatrician does is less important than dealing with this problem at least when it comes to the absolute number of dead kids.

No, I’m not kidding. But, because America is as peculiar as it is, I am essentially left with minimal resources with which to push back on this problem. In my case, I’m going to use satire to make talking about of how common this problem is tolerable-ish. Because this Substack is where I’m trying to save lives by convincing people to act differently, to think differently, and to make different choices. And right now, this struggle is around changing behavior. This is the battle for kids’ lives. And therefore, this very grim, barely funny piece of satire is all I’ve got to deal with the problem. So I’m gonna do my best with that:

Satire, as a Public Health Intervention

A child psychiatrist reflects, in advance, about the next preventable mass shooting that will rock our nation to the core.

The nation, yet again, is reeling after the tragic events in x town/city. Although it is too soon to have a complete understanding of what happened, we do know that the families of the children/adults who were senselessly gunned down are grieving in a way few of us can imagine/so many of us know too well.

From what we know about the shooter at this time, s/he spent weeks/months planning the attack, and we do know he purchased the assault rifle/s legally, as well as the hollow point bullets that caused such horrible wounds. These purchases were made despite his history of disturbing statements and threats, both online and in real life.

Yet again, high-capacity magazines allowed one young man/woman, between the ages of 14 and 26, to take his isolation and rage and turn it into a storm of lead, against which the innocent victims stood no chance. The standoff with the police doubtless took more time, given that he was also equipped with tactical body armor, which prevented even the armor-piercing bullets of the handguns of the responding officers from taking him down before more death and destruction could be caused.

In the end, s/he either took his/her own life, or was shot by responding officers/well-armed heroes.

The young white man/woman in question had a history of mental illness/suspicion of mental illness and had participated in violent video games/online message boards. He left a number of videos/a manifesto posted immediately before the attack. In this publication, s/he expressed his anger over a world that didn’t allow him to succeed, thanks to his constant rejection by women/people of color. One thing was clear: s/he was going to make all of them pay, and people would remember whoever this guy/girl was.

A classmate from a few years prior recalled, “s/he definitely was pretty obsessed with guns; I am not surprised s/he’s the one to do this. This totally checks out.”

The close-knit community of whatever town or city this shooting happened in gathered near the sight of the violence afterward to leave handmade memorials to the dozen or so who died at the hands of the shooter. Parents of the fallen expressed their disbelief/their complete resignation over the predictable fact that their child could’ve been killed in this way: “It’s about time lawmakers do something, this killing is senseless, and we’ve had enough!” said one father.

A doctor in the local hospital commented that the efforts in the trauma bay were like a war zone, and despite their best efforts, more died after the fact. “Even with all of our knowledge after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we simply didn’t have to deal with multiple bullet wounds coming out of those theaters of war. These devastating injuries—they are on another level.”

A spokesperson for the NRA was reached and offered the following statement: “This is America, and the NRA staunchly supports the reduction of gun violence through the addition of more guns into the hands of more good guys. If only a good guy with a gun had been present/had been more able to aim accurately/had more well-armed officers been present, this tragedy could’ve been avoided. It’s about time we focus on the mental health crisis that is driving this violence and the lack of armed responders to dangerous mentally ill people. If it wasn’t for the mentally ill and the lack of suppressive fire, all of this would be fine. God bless America!”

The Governor of the state in which x city/town is located spoke on the steps of the capital: “This senseless tragedy highlights how fragile life is and how much we need to blame the mentally ill and the broken system that cannot proactively identify them and target them with suppressive fire from the nearly 400,000,000 current firearms deployed throughout the United States.”

This time, clearly, given the scope of the tragedy, it will be different, and meaningful change is definitely going to happen thanks to the actions of brave lawmakers representing this locality.

—O. Scott Muir, M.D. written, July 18, 2022. Since that time, many more children have been shot and injured or killed.¹

1. This is the list of all the incidents of children 0-11 being killed or injured by shooting between when this was first written and the first time I published this.

In a sensible world, hundreds of shot children—in just the past few months alone—wouldn’t be just a footnote. But this is not data from a sensible world. This is America…and it’s all red states now… it just happens to be red with the blood of our children.