Last week in Kansas City, what was supposed to be the celebration of the year for the Kansas City Chief’s Super Bowl win, turned deadly when gunfire erupted in a crowd estimated to be near one million revelers. One woman died and nearly two dozen people were injured, many of them children. Our city, indeed our nation and the world, were shocked and horrified. 800 armed officers on the scene couldn’t stop this tragedy. Lives will forever be changed by injury, loss, fear, and perpetual anxiety. I emailed my Kansas state representative, expressing my support for a bill introduced in the state legislature to enact a law for safe firearm storage. His reply: “I certainly support the Safe Storage Act but it doesn’t seem like the legislature is interested at all in addressing firearm safety”. Just days after our local children’s hospital was inundated with a dozen children injured by a firearm and a Kansas woman died by firearm violence…no appetite for change.

I am stunned. Horrified. Angry. Confused. How in the world can there be no action following such an event!? The evergreen Tweet from 2015 comes to mind: “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

And so it goes for many issues I feel passionately about: the rise of Christian Nationalism, reproductive freedoms, immigration, racism, and discrimination of our LGBTQ+ friends and family. It’s so clear to me the “right answers” to solve these problems. As a surgeon-scientist, it seems obvious that data should inform us. We can simply persuade people to see the “truth” with enough evidence to support our perspective. It works in medicine. We study an intervention, prove it’s superior to old methods, and we change our practice. We improve patient care and outcomes. Done.

Particularly when it comes to firearm violence, this has been our method for many years. Study it. Follow the data. The numbers reveal the truth and an intervention becomes clear. This is the public health approach. “Public health promotes and protects the health of all people and their communities. This science-based, evidence-backed field strives to give everyone a safe place to live, learn, work and play.” But this is simply not working. Firearm injury is now the leading cause of death in children ages 1-19. Things are getting worse, not better, despite the data.

There has to be a better way.

I recently read a few books that have significantly challenged my thinking and approach to this and many other issues. In “What We’ve Become”, author Jonathan Metzl challenges us to rethink the standard public health paradigm to address firearm injury. It failed us during COVID, where despite mountains of data proving their success, Americans refused to accept vaccines and other public health measures, with thousands paying the ultimate price with their lives by ignoring the recommendations. Why? That doesn’t make sense! Metzl’s book “Dying of Whiteness” explores why people vote against their best interests when it comes to education, firearm policy, and healthcare. Data is often not persuasive enough. There are deeper issues at play and to make any changes, we have to explore those issues, feelings, and beliefs.

One of my many character flaws is my profound sense of righteous indignation. I have to work hard to check it each day. My blood boils when I think about the dangers of Christian Nationalism and I am shocked and saddened by friends and family who subscribe to such a thing. Twitter (yes, I will always call it Twitter) is a toxic place for my indignation as 280-character quips and one-line stingers are clever and true, but also all too often insensitive and derogatory. And who among us has ever changed our mind on a subject because some witty person on Twitter made a brilliant point? I venture to guess nearly none.

Can’t people see that Trump is an authoritarian who aims to round up and deport our neighbors using the same Nazi rhetoric we saw kill millions of Jewish people less than 100 years ago? Can’t people see that guns are killing us far more disproportionately than in any other developed nation? Can’t people see that extreme abortion and contraception bans are inching us ever closer to the horrors of The Handmaid’s Tale? Can’t people see that bans on transgender care and drag queens are literally killing people who die of isolation, depression, and anxiety who take their own lives in moments of desperation?

Of course, people can see these things. But they interpret them differently than I do based on their life experience, their deeply held beliefs, and their community or family.

So if talking over one another on these issues is not working, what will? I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I have decided that I must change my approach. I have to begin by being curious. Questions like: “Why do you believe that?”, “What makes you sad or anxious or afraid?”, “What beliefs and perspectives do we have in common?”. Seeing one another as the enemies of our perspective will always drive a wedge and will never solve a thing. (Another recent good read about this approach: “The Outward Mindset” which reminds us to “see others” first.)

I have a sense of justice and want to always have the “right way” prevail. But what I am learning is that my insistence on my version of the “right way” makes me just as much of a bully and an enemy to those who disagree with me. There are 8 billion of us in this world trying to get our way. It’s not working. We have to first see each other with more humanity, more dignity, more patience. Surely that will be a better way.

Disclaimer: My viewpoints are not necessarily reflective of my employer, or any local, regional or national organization that I belong to. As a matter of fact, I pretty much just speak for myself. Please keep that in mind.