KALAMAZOO, MI – Doctors at Bronson Methodist Hospital are seeing a higher proportion of gunshot wound victims from high velocity firearms.
They’re seeing patients with wounds from weapons such as AR-15-style rifle, Dr. Oreste Romeo said during a news conference Jan 18. Romeo is the medical director of trauma surgery at Bronson.
“If you’re starting to put on the streets an AR-15, if you’re starting to put high velocity rounds … that will create very, very significant wounds,” Romeo said. “Even if you can manage the interventions that you need to manage, I do think that times where patients will never return to normal life.”
Romeo spoke Wednesday at a news conference hosted by End Gun Violence Michigan at Kalamazoo First United Methodist Church, 212 S. Park St. One of seven events statewide, the Kalamazoo news conference focused on the effects gun violence has on healthcare workers. He did not cite specific numbers regarding the rise in assault rifle shooting victims.
“We don’t need to minimize the impact of what gun violence does to our community and what it does to our healthcare teams,” Dr. Bob Beck said. “Every one of our health care team, whether it be respiratory therapist, nurse or physician are impacted many times detrimentally with each of these cases.”
Beck is a pediatric intensiveist at Bronson Children’s Hospital.
He’s seen numerous colleagues leave bedside care because of the stress, especially in the last three years as gun violence increased during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The impact goes beyond the patient, extends to the family, friends and larger community as well as deeply impacts health care teams, working for the best possible outcomes and gun violence cases,” Rev. Heath McDougall-Walsh said.
McDougall-Walsh is a member of the Eng Gun Violence Michigan steering committee and a reverend at Michigan United Methodist Church.
Gun violence became the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 19 in the United States in 2020, surpassing deaths from motor vehicle crashes, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Michigan, 52% of those children’s deaths are from homicides, meaning the rest are from accidental shootings and suicides, Romeo said.
Around 80 to 90 shooting victims end up at Bronson hospital every year, an average of almost two a week, Romeo said. For every person the hospital sees die from gun violence, there’s around three gun violence survivors.
“It’s not just the wound and it’s not the pathway but that bullet it’s going through sends a shockwave,” Beck said. “So, you get injuries, a distance away from where the actual gunshot is.”
Gun violence was decreasing in Kalamazoo in the last five months of 2022, Kalamazoo Public Safety said. That in part is because of a stepped-up outreach to youth in the community and the Group Violence Intervention program.
Related: Why public safety officials say gun violence is decreasing in Kalamazoo
Lori Kline-Closson attended the news conference and held a sign in remembrance of her friend and colleague, Barbara Hawthorne, one of the victims in the 2016 mass shooting by Uber driver Jason Dalton.
“She would want us to do something, so here we are,” Kline-Closson said.
She attends anti-gun violence events to raise awareness and create change.
“There’s no excuse for doing nothing,” Kline-Closson said. “Just because it’s a multifaceted, extremely complex issue, there’s no excuse not to start somewhere and do something. We all deserve a common sense of gun laws.”
Mass shootings get the majority of the attention on the news and in social media, but shootings of multiple people are more common in Kalamazoo. Bronson Hospital sees multiple people shot at the same time about every six weeks, Romeo said.
The goal of the seven news conferences is to spur the legislature into passing multiple bills that have not had a vote or hearing in more than a year, McDougall-Walsh said.
The group is asking for a change to the universal background check law, amending it to require checks for “firearms,” instead of “handguns.”
They also want safe storage laws that would require guns in homes with children to be locked away safely.
Another bill would create gun ownership restrictions for people convicted of domestic violence and sexual assaults. The main reason for that ask is because lethality is five times more likely when a gun is involved, McDougall-Walsh said.
The final ask is to create protection orders, where a judge can temporarily remove firearms from a person who has a risk of harming themselves or others.
McDougall-Walsh’s daughter was part of a walkout at Portage Northern High School, protesting gun violence. She graduated in 2019, and nothing has changed, McDougall-Walsh said.
“Gov. (Gretchen) Whitmer you campaigned on this issue,” McDougall-Walsh said. “Many of your newly elected legislature campaigned on this issue. And there is no more clear message, that it is our generations responsibility, not to my daughter’s, and the time for change is now.”
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