Opinion editor's note: The following article was submitted by Dr. Mary Tschida of Coon Rapids in concert with 453 other Minnesota women physicians, listed below.
•••
Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.
•••
As doctors, our work is to care for people. We hug and kiss our own children, then step into the fray to preserve life when it is slipping away, when someone has tried to take it.
When a gun is fired and a bullet tears into a person, we stop the bleeding. We remove the bullets, reconstruct shattered bones and mend as our skill and training allow, to keep a gun from taking you, too.
But sometimes, it is not enough. Then we stand with you when there are no words that make sense to speak. We meet you in horror and shock, then walk with you in the days and years that follow to find a way to continue. We know the scars borne in your body, heart and mind. We see all aspects of what a gun can do. We see this every day in our clinics, hospitals and emergency rooms. Not just after the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, or that in Buffalo, Minn., last year. Every day.
We are doctors, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, aunts and neighbors. We see the lives that guns have ravaged, and our own hearts stop when we hear of another shooter at another school. Because while we are working to save and heal victims of gun violence, we are terrified that our babies will be next.