LTE: Survivors of gun violence

Editor, Gettysburg Times,

In the streets of Sacramento this past weekend, six people were killed and numerous others injured with the use of firearms, in this case — a machine gun. All of us recoil at these scenes repeated daily on our streets. No one of us wishes to witness this carnage; no one wishes harm to others, yet our liberal gun laws and their lax enforcement have allowed the US to become a country with the highest rate of gun ownership with the highest rate of homicides and suicides compared to other Western nations.

While the bodies are visible on the streets, while families mourn the loss of innocent bystanders — many of whom are children — we know little of the consequences to survivors, and to us as a society. Thankfully, recent research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine tells the grim story in detail.

6,498 survivors of firearm injuries were matched to 32 490 control participants and 12,489 family members of survivors matched to 62 445 control participants. Researchers wanted to know what the changes in health care spending, use, and morbidity are from preinjury through 1-year postinjury relative to control participants, on average and by type and severity of firearm injury.

Allow me to itemize the results:

• After nonfatal firearm injury, medical spending increased $2,495 per person per month (a 402% increase) and cost sharing increased $102 per person per month (176% increase) among survivors relative to the control participants in the first year after injury. All of these increases were driven by an increase in the first month of $25, 554 (4122% increase) in spending and $1112 (a 1917% increase) in cost sharing per survivor.

• All categories of health care use increased relative to the control group. Survivors had a 40% increase in pain diagnoses, a 51% increase in psychiatric disorders, and an 85% increase in substance use disorders after firearm injury.

• Family members had a 12% increase in psychiatric disorders.

• These overall clinical and economic changes were driven by intentional firearm injuries and more sever firearm injuries.

The results of the study are clear. Unless we can control the purchase, sale and distribution of firearms we will witness not only continued loss of life, but continued and substantial increases in health care spending, substance abuse disorders and family members emotionally harmed for life.

When do we learn.

Tony McNevin,
Gettysburg