Trauma surgeon creates Twitter account to organize doctors against gun violence

A Twitter account for “Medical Professionals who care for #GunViolence Victims” has reached over 15,000 followers since it was created by a trauma surgeon earlier this month.

The account @ThisIsOurLane has grown in popularity as health care professionals clash with the National Rifle Association (NRA) after the gun rights organization tweeted “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane.”

Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves. https://t.co/oCR3uiLtS7

— NRA (@NRA) November 7, 2018

Doctors across the nation flooded social media with pictures of them in blood-splattered uniforms after treating gunshot victims in a challenge to the NRA.

{mosads}“It just shows that not only is this is in our lane, but this happens to us,” Dr. Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon with Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore and one of the creators of @ThisIsOurLane, told The Associated Press. 

A spate of mass shootings this year has thrust gun control to the forefront of the national consciousness. Doctors have increasingly weighed in on the issue, calling the prevalence of guns in the U.S. a public safety issue. 

The Centers for Disease Control earlier this month published data that indicates gun deaths rose in 2015-2016, following a few years in which gun-related deaths were decreasing.