ORLANDO, Fla. — In the span of a little over a month, Central Florida has been left reeling by a spate of several gruesome gun deaths, many of them young children.
The shootings also have medical leaders pleading for gun violence to be treated like a nonpartisan public health crisis rather than a political issue.
In mid-February, a 3-year-old died in DeLand after shooting himself with a gun found inside a nightstand. Days later, Nathacha Augustin, 38, Spectrum News 13 Journalist Dylan Lyons, 24, and T’Yonna Major, 9, were killed during a February shooting spree in the Pine Hills community that also left two others wounded. A couple of weeks after that, a 4-year-old fatally shot himself in the head with a handgun in Kissimmee.
As the only level 1 pediatric trauma center in Central Florida, Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children treats victims of gun violence ages 15 and under from across the region. Pediatric Trauma Director Dr. Don Plumley estimates Arnold Palmer sees a child with a gunshot wound about once a week. T’Yonna’s death, on top of other cases, has left staff devastated, said Plumley.
“The Uvalde shooting, the school shootings, they get the attention, but what you really are missing is it’s happening a lot,” Plumley said. “It really not only takes a toll on the family and the community but ... it takes a toll on me, takes a toll on my team. We care about kids a lot and that’s why we do what we do.”
The American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Psychiatric Association have for years advocated for a public health approach.
“Gun violence should be considered a public health issue, not a political one — an epidemic that needs to be addressed with research and evidence-based strategies that can reduce morbidity and mortality,” reads a joint statement from the organizations.
A proposed public health approach to gun violence is often modeled after the U.S.’ decades-long public health campaign to reduce motor vehicle deaths, which decreased nearly 80% from 1967 to 2017.
Per-mile driving deaths were reduced by measures such as public education, improving car design and setting manufacturing standards like seatbelts and headrests, enacting and enforcing traffic safety laws, requiring car registration, requiring licenses and regular renewal of those licenses, and allocating funds to research motor vehicle deaths.
Similarly, a public health approach to preventing gun violence would include more robust education, regulation, registration, licensing, manufacturing requirements, and monitoring, according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
Unlike car regulations, however, research on gun violence is still playing catch-up. A 1996 amendment banned the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from using its funding to “advocate or promote gun control.” Congress only recently reallocated CDC funds toward gun research.
In addition, measures to monitor and regulate guns — such as Florida’s 2018 “red-flag” law, which allows authorities to take guns from people found to pose a “significant danger”— receive heavy pushback from Second Amendment advocates.
Dr. Rich Carmona, trauma surgeon and former U.S. Surgeon General during the George W. Bush Administration, contends that gun regulations do not impede on the Second Amendment.
He spoke on the issue last month at the annual Lake Nona Impact Forum, which covered health, wellness, scientific and medical innovations.
“People do have a right to own arms safely, and that’s not the debate we need to have. Nobody’s trying to take anybody’s guns away,” Carmona said in an interview after the conference. “But clearly there are identifiable, scientifically supported ways to incrementally start dealing with this, to ensure that only certain people have weapons that have earned the right to have the weapon.”
Since 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death in U.S. children and teens. In 2021, firearms killed about 2,500 children and nearly 50,000 people total through suicides, homicides, domestic violence, police-involved shootings and unintentional shootings, according to CDC data, amounting to the most annual firearm deaths on U.S. soil since the civil war.
The Orlando Police Department has taken about 40% more guns off the streets over the last seven months, Chief Eric Smith reported during a meeting of the Orange County Citizens Safety Task Force, which met in late March in response to February’s Pine Hills shooting.
Gun violence in Orange County increased from 2018 to 2022, even as overall crime fell, reported Orange County Sheriff John Mina.
Each victim takes a toll on hospital staff and resources. When a gun wound patient is admitted to Arnold Palmer, the emergency room is temporarily locked down in case whomever shot them comes to find them again, Plumley said. After surgery comes an onslaught of additional demands.
“The ICU takes on a whole new set of complexities when you start dealing with the aftermath of what happened— dealing with the family, dealing with the press ... the whole social situation of ‘why did this happen? How are we going to make your child better?’ ... ‘What’s going to be their new normal following this?’” Plumley said.
Plumley is urging people to stay aware of their surroundings and store guns in locked safes separate from bullets. He doesn’t want Orlando to suffer the fate of cities like Baltimore or Detroit, where gun violence among youth is even more prevalent.
“This isn’t a house on fire problem like it is in some cities in America, but we don’t want it to get to that point,” Plumley said.
