74 and Counting. . . Why Gun Control is a Public Health Issue
This map shows every school shooting since December 14, 2012–the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Don’t bother counting — there are 74. The only reason the map won’t break 100 in the next two months is that school is out for the summer.
Certainly, this is a moral issue. And a political issue. But first and foremost, the issue of gun control is a public health issue.
As the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research notes: “More than 31,000 people a year in the United States die from gunshot wounds. Because victims are disproportionately young, gun violence is one of the leading causes of premature mortality in the U.S. In addition to these deaths, in 2010, there were an estimated 337,960 non-fatal violent crimes committed with guns,2 and 73,505 persons treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds.” Other fun facts from the Center:
The homicide rate in the U.S. is seven times higher than the combined homicide rate of 22 other high-income countries because the firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is 20 times greater than in these … Continue Reading
You see the photo to the left? That’s a shot of a restaurant in Terminal D at La Guardia airport. In fact, the entire terminal looks like that, with iPads at every seat in every restaurant as well as most of the tables in the waiting area. So this morning, I sat down for breakfast, browsed through the electronic menu, placed my order electronically, swiped my credit card, and waited for my baked eggs and coffee. No fuss. No muss.
I’m writing this from the airport awaiting a flight to New York for a business meeting. My flight is delayed 90 minutes, but that’s ok, because before I even left for the airport I received two texts from Delta updating me on its status so I could time my departure accordingly.
I’m dedicating today’s blog to my good friend and neighbor who has just spent what I would deem the weekend-from-hell-waiting-for-Monday. You see, what started last week as bad cramps and a feeling of bloating, with the likely diagnosis of ovarian cysts, has now morphed into a visit with a gyn-oncologist today. Very, very quickly. 
My best friend’s daughter is pre-med in college. She’s brilliant, and is planning to become a developmental pediatrician (as of now, at least). By the time she enters medical school in two years, I really hope she learns not only anatomy and physiology, diagnosis, and how to insert a breathing tube, but how to consider the cost of the care she provides.
Picking up on yesterday’s blog about national health care in the United Kingdom, we now turn our attention to our northern neighbors in Canada. Where, we hear, residents are forced to flee their country and come to the land of the free and the brave in search of timely, quality medical care.
Twenty-three years ago I married an amazing man who just happened to be Scottish. Real Scottish, as in, grew up in Glasgow and attended the university there. In the process, I gained a wonderful sister-in-law and, later, her husband (brother-in-law?).