MINNEAPOLIS — When news of yet another school shooting - this time in Georgia - reached Dr. Marc Gorelick on Wednesday, it brought back frustrating and familiar feelings for the former pediatric emergency room doctor.
"I've seen Children and adolescents who have been victims of gun violence, sometimes inflicted by others, sometimes inflicted on themselves," Gorelick said. "You don't forget those images, those, those patients have stayed with me for the last 35 years."
Although Gorelick has since risen to CEO of Children's Minnesota, those awful reminders of his past work have become more frequent.
When gun deaths surpassed car accidents as the number one killer of kids and teens in the United States a few years ago, Gorelick joined other Minnesota hospital CEO's in declaring gun violence a public health crisis.
"I think part of what makes it so gut-wrenching for someone like me is understanding that it really is preventable," he said.
Despite that belief, Gorelick says efforts to address the gun violence issue have remained largely stuck in place, which is why he decided to put his ideas into writing. His new book, Saving Our Kids: An ER Doc’s Common-Sense Solution to the Gun Crisis, was released last month.
"The goal of the book was to paint a picture of what would it look like if we acted like this is the public health crisis, we say it is," Gorelick said.
To do so, he says we first need to fight the urge to run to our political corners after every mass shooting or high-profile crime.
"Too often we frame it as a moral issue," Gorelick said. "Either you are a bad person because you have guns or you are a bad person because you want to take away somebody's guns. It is not a moral issue. It's a health issue. It's the leading cause of death in Children. We need to think of it that way."
Gorelick says that a shift in thinking would also require better cooperation between healthcare, government, families and individuals.
"A public health approach would suggest you need policies, you need education and you need community-based interventions," he said. "I think a nice example here in the Twin Cities is something called Next Step. People who are victims of violence who come into one of our emergency departments are connected with resources to both support them and their families in the immediate trauma, but also to intervene, to help prevent them from getting reinjured."
Though yet another mass shooting prompted the conversation, Gorelick points out that all of the other tragedies happening every day across the country are what is driving his approach.
"This happens in every single community in the United States," he said. "It's almost 5,000 Children and adolescents each year in the United States die of gun injury. Every one of those is a tragedy, he said.
"I know how difficult it is for our staff and for their families and for the communities. and I know that if we take the right approach, we actually can do something about this. This is not an insolvable problem."
Saving Our Kids: An ER Doc’s Common-Sense Solution to the Gun Crisis is available for sale online. All proceeds from the sales, go to support violence intervention programs at Children's Minnesota.