FED UP WITH THE CONSTANT CARNAGE HE DEALS WITH IN HIS EMERGENCY ROOM, A DOCTOR PLEADS WITH THE NATION'S YOUTH

Drop Your Guns!

he victim was a woman in her late 60s or early 70s who, in despair, had pointed a pistol at her chest and pulled the trigger. As she lay in the emergency room of a small hospital in California's Central Valley, her condition presented no great medical challenge; it was fairly straightforward compared with many of the messy youth shootings that confront E.R. doctors nowadays. Yet the woman's attempted suicide proved to be an epiphany for the young physician who attended her. It not only altered his life and career but also would affect countless other victims of gunshot wounds--and would have a major effect on the national debate over gun control.

Despite her serious injury, the woman was still conscious, expressing regret for her suicide attempt and love for her husband. Dr. Garen Wintemute, the E.R. chief, and his colleagues connected intravenous lines, inserted a chest tube to keep her lungs from collapsing and took X rays before cleaning and sewing up the small wound next to her breastbone. In the midst of their lifesaving struggle, Wintemute reflected on a disconcerting fact: how much easier it is to inflict serious--even fatal--injury with a firearm than with just about any other hand weapon.

Indeed, according to Wintemute, gunshot wounds are about 7 1/2 times as likely to result in death as attacks with a knife--and 145 times as likely as blows from feet or fists. Gunshots tear through flesh and bone with the force of a tornado, destroying everything in their path and, depending on the kind of bullet, spreading damage well beyond their trajectory.

Today Wintemute is a professor of epidemiology and preventive medicine at the University of California at Davis medical school, and he continues to put in 12-hour tours in the emergency room. But much of his energy goes into leading a crusade against the "national epidemic" of gun violence--which, with 35,000 deaths a year, he says, "ranks among the top-10 killers of Americans, after cancer, heart disease and automobile deaths." It is an extremely costly epidemic too; the annual bill for treating gunshot wounds inflicted only in assaults is more than $63 billion.