An unnamed columnist writing for the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action blog advised physicians and other healthcare providers to “stay in their lane” when it comes to advocating for gun control.
This appears to have been sparked by the position paper published in the October, 2018 Annals of Internal Medicine authored by the Health and Public Policy Committee of the American College of Physicians. The author of the blog post argues that the paper and subsequent position statement is flawed, claiming that there is “not enough evidence” to suggest that stricter gun laws would have any effect of the rates of gun violence in the United States.
The conclusion is that medical providers should keep to doing what they do best (practicing medicine) and leave the discussion of gun control to the “experts”, by which the author apparently means gun owners and the NRA.
This article would have likely been just another throw-away piece had it not caught the attention of thousands of medical providers on Twitter. Retweets carrying the hashtag #ThisIsMyLane went viral, relaying stories of gun-shot victims that physicians, nurses, EMS providers and others have had to treat. Some were accompanied by pictures of blood-stained trauma bays or operating room suites.
It seems like an odd move to criticize the very people who have to deal with the carnage of gun violence, and given the response, the NRA picked the wrong people to bully. There were more than 16,000 comments within just a few hours, mostly from healthcare providers denouncing the article and the accompanying tweet.