EP33 - The Impact of Gun Violence Through the Eyes of Physicians and Victims with Dr. Jillian Ploof

In every operating room, in every ward, in every clinic, and every team meeting, a silent battle brews. Conflict, negotiation, identity. Welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast, where I, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst, Explore the hidden negotiations behind modern medicine. Let's trade burnout for boundaries and learn the art of healing with precision and power. You've spent years making careful decisions with lasting impact. When it comes to investing, the same principle applies. Lightstone Direct gives you access to institutional-quality real estate investments. With decades of proven experience behind them. Invest directly, no middlemen, and a $12 billion plus AUM real estate firm in your corner. Visit lightstonedirect.com. All investments involve risk. Please visit lightstonedirect.com for a full list of disclosures. Hello, my peaceful warriors. Welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast. I am your host, Dr. Lee Sharma, and I am so excited to have on the podcast today Dr. Jillian Plouffe. Dr. Plouffe is a pediatric neurosurgeon at Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She did her undergraduate studies at Temple University and her medical school and residency training at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She did her fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery at the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. She is somebody I am proud to call my friend, and we are both participants in the Physicians Foundation Leadership Institute for the '25 to '26 year. Jill, it is awesome to have you on the pod today.

Happy to be here.

So I have this really clear memory. I think it was the 3rd or 4th day that we were out running and we were talking about daily schedules and talking about surgery schedules and what our lives were like. And I think one of the biggest aha moments that gave me insight, not only into what you see on your job, but what's powered your policy passion, is the fact that you spend 2 days a week on emergency call taking care of the victims of gun violence.

Correct. Yeah. At least one weekend a month. So it's usually, you know, most of the week that, that I'm on call and on trauma call and it's Unfortunately, not an infrequent occurrence that we see children who are victims of gun violence.

I think that's something that's really important for us to realize because sometimes I think we get very desensitized to what we see on the news. You know, we see shootings so much and that's beyond horrible that we have seen so many of these that we literally don't even sometimes pause. But this is something that you are seeing so frequently that you are having to take children to the operating room. And in doing so, you are getting to see firsthand what the implications of our current policy are. When did it really become something very personal and something important to you to become involved in this on a policy level?

You know, it's tough to go day in and day out and see children suffering. It's not just the deaths that occur that are so dramatic because it's heartbreaking, but it's also the survivors and what they have to live with, you know. I operate on patients and in many cases some do survive and then we follow them outpatient long-term and it's the struggles that they deal with, the disability, it's their families that are affected, it's their siblings who are affected, and it's not just the child that's harmed in that scenario, it's everybody around them and it's tragic to see. And so having seen that frequently, it really weighs on your heart and it makes you wanna stand up and say something needs to be done.

Oh my goodness, absolutely. And one of the things that you just said, I think, is something that's really important for all of us to have insight into, that the implications and tragedy of gun violence, it is not just the physical cost, it's the emotional cost for the people witnessing it, it's the social cost and how that affects communities, but there's also a very deeply personal cost For you, because you are the person who is part of that team providing care for that child. And one of the things that you said, and I kind of want to lean into this, not from the standpoint of how painful it is, but from the standpoint of making people understand what an important and vital issue this is, that they don't always survive.

Yeah. And it can be so devastating for the treatment team, right? Like we go into this field, we go into medicine wanting to save lives and being so empowered by that. And then you see the child come in and you do everything you can and your ICU doctors, your nurses, your ER doctors, the trauma surgeons, we were all, you know, throwing everything we can into helping this child survive and then they don't and then you're just devastated. I mean, the mental toll it takes on the healthcare providers is heavy.

And so heavy, in fact, that it has encouraged not just you, but there's so many people in the surgery, pediatric surgery, pediatric neurosurgery field. That have become activists just like you trying to make change. There was an amazing op-ed piece in Time magazine. It was written in June of 2022 by Dr. Jay Willems, who's a pediatric neurosurgeon at Vanderbilt. And the title of this article is, If Politicians Could See What We See. And so he starts this article by talking about taking care of a child who was shot on a playground. The child was not in a dangerous part of the world. The child was on a playground and got shot. In Baton Rouge, one of the things we were talking about before we started recording is that you and I live in a part of the world in the South where gun culture is a very important part of what goes on in this society. How does that make it different for us when we are working for gun safety in our part of the world, how is that different for us in terms of where we are?

Yeah. And actually I'm a transplant, so I'm from Pennsylvania originally. And don't get me wrong, I'm from a small town in Pennsylvania. People were hunters, people had guns. I think it's just when I moved to the South, there's definitely a cultural shift. People are proud gun owners. Louisiana is a sportsman's paradise. Everybody's a hunter. We have extremely lax gun laws. In fact, in 2024, the current governor of Louisiana made it that You don't need a license to carry a concealed weapon. Guns are just very freely out in the world in the South, and it makes it difficult, right? Because people don't want their gun rights taken away. And I understand that. That's a cultural thing. However, I think the culture does need to shift that. Yes, gun ownership is an important part of society here, but we need to shift that focus to, okay, well, gun safety needs to be our priority now. Like, what can we do to protect the people in our community while also still protecting our right to have guns?

Absolutely, and I think that's one of the biggest things in terms of working for policy change that tends to be an obstacle. When I talk about one of the groups I've worked with is Moms Demand Action, which is part of Everytown, and so I have a Moms Demand Action t-shirt that I wear on Wear Orange Day. I have my hoodie that I wear when I'm doing work with them, but I have a lot of friends and colleagues that are gun owners, and so my colleagues that work in medicine, I don't have to really convince them about gun safety. I think that's something because of what they do, they have seen it themselves. I don't think they see it to the degree that you see it, but they have been witness to that gun violence. But you will also see people who will say, you want to take my guns away? And right from there, in terms of engaging with them and trying to build a coalition to build policy change, you're already hitting a wall because they're not wanting to listen to you. And sometimes the hardest thing I have to say in terms of having that conversation is like, I'm not trying to take your guns away. I'm trying to keep it safe so that if a child is in your home, there's not going to be an accidental shooting. That's what I'm trying to prevent. I'm trying to prevent someone who's getting a gun illegally actually causing a mass shooting somewhere and having those patients of all ages end up in our ER. That's what I'm trying to prevent. So I think that is a big policy push. One of the things that we talked about before we started is that there was a state house bill in Louisiana right now that has failed twice. to talk about gun safety. Tell us about that law a little bit.

Yeah, there's a secure gun law, and basically it's just saying that if you have children in your home or expect to have children in your home, that you need to have your guns securely locked up so that a child cannot access it and accidentally, unintentionally harm themselves or another person. And when you look at the statistics, and Everytown is a great source for this, if you go on Everytown, you'll see which states have secure gun laws. And you can also see that those states tend to have a lower incidence of unintentional gun injury.

Right.

And so the goal is to just protect children. You know, the idea is that we get people more aware that they need to put their guns away and lock them securely whenever you have children in your home. And even if they're older children, you know, teenagers, the issues is that accidents do happen. Children don't really have fully formed frontal lobes. They don't have fully formed limbic cortex at that point. They have a lot of hormones, they have a lot of different things are acting on their brain at that age, they're still rewiring. So their decision-making skills are not great. And so even when you have teenagers in the home, you need to make sure that your guns are locked up because you never know what can happen. When it comes to things like teen suicide, which is so tragic, kids don't really understand the concreteness of their actions, right? If you shoot yourself, then you're dead and that is it. there's no coming back from that. And it's hard for the adolescent brain to fully understand that. And it just takes one lapse in judgment in a child to cause a horrible, devastating consequence that affects everybody in their lives. So having secure gun laws really helps prevent those sorts of things from happening. And so that is the goal, to try to get that law passed here in Louisiana.

That's amazing. And one of the biggest things that I love about what you just said in terms of really explaining to people the basis behind gun safety laws, and especially when it comes to children, that there are so many things— children are not little adults. Children are children. They have different physiologies. Like you talked about, their brains are not fully formed. They have no prefrontal cortexes fully formed until they're what, I think 25 or 26 is when that actually happens. We are safeguarding these unformed prefrontal cortexes by making it difficult, if not impossible, for children to have access to these weapons. And I think that's really, in terms of a Policy argument. One of the things that we tend to forget: there was a great piece that was done by Dr. Stephanie Chow. She's at Stanford, where they did publish a study in 2021 talking about accidental shootings being one of the leading causes of death in children from firearms. But we don't talk about that very much. We see, unfortunately, the mass shootings on the news, but we don't often have that sort of insight. There was an accidental shooting of a child in a town just north of me, and this was been about 12 years ago, and it was a. 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old boy, and they were getting ready to go hunting with older people in the family, and the guns were out. And one of the boys picked up the gun and accidentally shot and killed the other one. And what I kept going through when I heard the story was, how do you mentally recover from that as a child? How do you mentally deal with that?

There's actually a CDC article that said that they did one particular study that said 3 quarters of the unintentional pediatric gunshot wounds occurred, they were shot by another child. And then in 3 quarters of the unintentional gunshot wounds being caused by a child and potentially injuring somebody like their sibling. Like you said, how do you come back from that?

And this is the reason why we need to actively advocate for policy change. As you have started this journey, you know, one of the things that we were talking about before we started is that being part of Physician Leadership Institute has really been such an inspiring experience. Definitely for me and for you as well, it sounds like, in terms of wanting to get out there and putting ourselves out there to be a strong advocate. As you are doing this, and especially being a physician out there doing this, how have you found your voice? And how powerful has that voice been? Like when you've gone into legislatures and you've talked to people about this, do you find that being a doctor gives you much more power in that space?

Yeah, so the Physician Leadership Program has been phenomenal. It's always great to be around very similar, like-minded people who want change in the world. And for me, leading up to that point, I felt a little apprehensive. I was like, who cares about what my point of view is? How, how can I help here? You know, I'm just one person. But after doing that program and seeing other people who are actively involved in their local politics and in their medical organizations, it was really inspiring. And so that prompted me to reach out to some of the organizers who are involved with this bill, and they were excited about having me on board. So that was kind of eye-opening and just like, oh, these people do want help. They need help. And having the medical aspect of it and my experience with seeing the effects of gun violence in our pediatric population, I think it's just really important that we as doctors get involved. And I see that more now than I ever have before. So really the Physicians Leadership Program has really inspired me to take those steps. And now that I've started to Walk that line, I feel more empowered than ever.

That's amazing. I love that. And I definitely agree with you. I feel that that encouragement is just overflowing out of that program. So there are a lot of doctors who are listening to this and they're wondering because they've maybe started these conversations, maybe they're afraid to start these conversations. I think part of the fear in starting those conversations sometimes, especially if you're trying to reach out to legislators for something you're really passionate about, Is they don't really know how to talk to legislators. They feel like, I don't know anything about this process. I don't know anything about testifying in front of a committee. I don't know what to do. And yet, the stories that you tell, like when you're talking about operating on a child who's just had a gunshot wound, and you're having to walk out and possibly tell this family that their child didn't make it, that's a potential that you may have to have. Is it going into technicalities about the legislation or is it really just telling our story?

Yeah, I think a lot of it is telling our story. You know, you cry with families, you hold their hands, you pray with them, and it's so heartbreaking. And it's funny, I say to my husband all the time, I'm like, I just wish that every day people could see what I see every day because I think their perception of our gun culture would be very different. You know, you hear, oh, this child died from a gunshot injury, but seeing it is wild, right? It can be gruesome. It can be disfiguring. It can have long-term disability and wheelchair-bound, nonverbal. It's just hard. And I think if people saw that and knew that, perhaps their hearts would warm a little bit more to having a few more protections to help our children. I always think back, there is one particular case that I think of all the time that I think really has stuck with me in my career. And it was a toddler found a gun in the couch cushion while family was sleeping and he shot himself in the head. And he survived for a short period of time. We operated on him and he survived for about a year after injury before succumbing to the downstream effects of his brain injury. But having to hold the family's hand and say, Your child's not gonna be the same person they were before. It's so hard. And they're not gonna get to see him graduate. They're never gonna get to see him go to college or get married, have a job, none of that. And it's so sad. And I think people need to know.

And that's the stories that you tell and the lived experience you have as a pediatric neurosurgeon, but also as a human being, as somebody who's actually Held and prayed with these families as they have had these experiences. Your voice is the voice that needs to carry when it comes to making laws and legislation, because your perspective is the perspective that we all need to have. Just you telling that one story, I want to put my head down and cry because that's one of many. I think That beyond the fact that this is one story that you're telling, the truly unfortunate thing that needs to snap our heads up and make us work for change is the fact that's one story of many. That we could sit here for 2 hours and you could tell story after story after story like this. In the Constitution, working for smoking cessation and those kinds of things. There are some public health issues. We're not fighting something that's constitutionally guaranteed. When you're talking to legislators and when you're trying to work for this issue, is that something you come across where people hold this up to you and say, but this is my right to bear arms?

Yeah. It's not just legislation. It's not just our local government or our federal government. It's not even that. It's just the everyday people that you talk to where you even mention The topic of passing a gun law and people get very defensive. It's very polarizing in this country. I think the thing that has been most effective for me, even just talking to my friends and my family and other people who live in Louisiana, is coming from a place of heart, right? Like, we may not have the same political views. We may have widely varying political views, and that's okay. I'm not coming after you in ideology. It's nothing like that. It's that expressing that this comes from a place of love, that this is my state, these are my people. We need to do better. We need to take care of each other. And part of that is protecting our children and preventing harm. And it's such an important thing. And so I think when you come from a place of love, that hits harder than coming at it from a political aspect, if that makes sense.

Yeah. First of all, I want to high-five you through the screen. For being that, because in terms of resolving conflict, I think one of the things that gets us in trouble with any policy debate is people very easily get in this headspace of winning and losing. It's my way or your way. I'm right and you're wrong. And one of the biggest issues we get into with politics in general, I think, is fostering this competitiveness. And of course, parties do it because parties want to win.

Yeah.

The victim of that is the people. And the vehicle through which that victimization occurs is policy. So, if you are using policy to win something, unfortunately, the loser most often is going to be the people for whom you're trying to represent. So, when you are walking into this conversation and you are really trying to talk about a policy issue, and you can actually say to the person you're having the conversation with, It's not about me winning or you winning. It's about the fact that we love these people and we want what's best for them. And we'd like for as many of these children as possible to see tomorrow. And if the way to do that is to pass laws to keep guns locked up and safe so children can't get to them, then can we agree to agree on a path on that? Not because it's about me winning or you losing, but because it's about we want the best thing for the people we serve. And as soon as you do that, I think 2 things happen. Number one, you start to find common ground, and commonality is always the fertile soil for resolving conflict. But the other is that you have found a way to reach out to this person that makes them maybe not as defensive about defending a position. I love these people, and you do too. Can we love these people in a way that we can both find a place that we can at least meet a little bit? And it becomes very hard for people to fight you on that. I think they become less defensive. And so I love how you do that. That is incredible. I love that so much. One of the things that's also happened in this country, and I think since 2022, you know, we had Uvalde, we had a lot of things happen in 2022. But I think one of the things, when you look at the timing of Dr. Wellum's piece in Time magazine, which was also in June of '22, is there started to be a bit of a shift in where we were pushing legislatively. And I think that's when you saw groups like Everytown really start to push this idea of gun safety. One of the things that you talked about, and I want to circle back to this because I think this is such an important metric to talk about, that there is a direct correlation between states that have gun safety laws or gun safety regulation and the rate of children who suffer gun violence, that those two are absolutely connected.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting too, because when you think about it, And you think about laws and creating laws, something happens and you react, right? So there is a child gets shot because they found an unlocked weapon and then somebody gets in trouble for it, right? And so I do find it interesting because you wouldn't think that like a reactionary set of laws would necessarily prevent, right? It would just mean more people would be punished, would go to jail, right? Have to pay fines, whatever. But it's worked, right? And I think that has to do with people Realizing that, okay, there are consequences now. So now we need to think about this more on an everyday basis. And I think that's where that shift happens. And I don't know if you agree with that, but to me, that's what makes sense the most.

Yeah. When you look at like, even internationally, look at Australia, you know, Australia had one mass shooting. And after that one mass shooting, they said, okay, no guns. That's it. That was a very reactionary law passage, but it's worked for them. It has worked for them in terms of not having the rates of gun violence, and there is a place to be reactionary in terms of understanding the gravity of the problem. You know, reactionary policymaking may not be the greatest thing to do in terms of smoking cessation. I kind of come back to that because I think that's a large policy issue that we also have had legislation for, and a lot of that legislation is directed at children in terms of advertising and not advertising to kids, and especially with things like vaping. I don't know how I mean in Louisiana, but vaping is huge. Alabama, so a lot of legislation about age and enforcement is a big deal. But at the same time, there is an immediacy and a gravity to gun violence. You know, yes, I remember when Shosh and I, my husband's pulmonary critical care. When we were dating, one of the random stupid things we used to do because we were poor residents is we would go to tobacco shops and we would leave his business card in tobacco shops. And the tobacco shop owner would like, oh yeah, we'd be striking up a conversation with him, and he'd be you know talking to Shosh, and they'd be getting along great. And Shosh is like, can I leave my business cards? The guy's like, yeah. Yeah, sure. And he would look at the business cards, and both business cards said Pulmonary Critical Care. And the guy would kind of look at them, and Shosh would go, people who come in here are going to need me someday. You should go ahead and put that out there.

Yeah.

And I remember thinking, it was very subtle, but it was a very good way to get his policy point across, that this is something that's going to kill them or hurt them at some point. Can we go ahead and educate them now? But That's a very different issue from gun violence in terms of the immediacy and in terms of the people we're talking about, which are children. Children are not going to be able to drive themselves to a place to buy a gun. If the guns are there, the guns are there because somebody has it in the home, and it is accountability on that person who has that weapon in the home to keep it safe in a way that these children are protected. So no, I think this is one of those things that having a stance that recognizes the gravity and the immediacy of the policy problem is very appropriate. I mean, I think that's the reason why when we were in Boston for our first meeting for the Leadership Institute, one of the things that we all did was we walked around the room and we all put our policy ideas up on the walls and we all had stickers and everybody could go around and put stickers on Which issue they really felt needed to be pushed. And Jill, your on gun violence protections and safety for children got the most stickers of anybody in that room. And I think that's because we all recognized that while we all came into the PFLI with very clear ideas of what issues were near and dear to us, we recognized the importance and immediacy of yours and It's the whole reason why I'm so glad you're here, because I think this is one of those things that physicians, all of us, it's not just an issue for pediatric neurosurgeons. Although I think the pediatric neurosurgeons have been at the forefront of establishing policy pushes, and that's on the state level, that's on a local level, and that's on a national level. You know, I think the Pediatric Neurosurgery Professional Group now has a task force that's headed by Dr. Wellams that is actually talking about What they can do as a policy push. And the biggest thing that I see that you guys are pushing for is gun safety. So you have a huge number of very vocal, passionate doctors that are with you that are pushing this, but it doesn't need to be just the pediatric neurosurgeons, right? It needs to be all of us, right?

Everybody, pediatricians, all primary care doctors, you got your trauma surgeons, your cardiopulmonary ICU doctors. Everybody. And I think that this will carry over if we can implement some changes on gun safety to help protect our most vulnerable, our pediatric patients. I think that's also gonna carry over into the adult world as well. I think that you make some moves in one area and it's gonna help create a cascading effect in other areas as well. And so then you're looking at improving everybody's lives and not just kids, but the whole country.

Oh, 100%. So let's say you're talking to me. I'm a GYN. I'm definitely concerned about domestic violence. That's something that we screen for. That's something we talk to patients about. We have rescue plans for patients if they come in and they're in active danger. We have ways of getting them out because unfortunately, we know that having available guns does increase the risk of escalation. And for these women, that's a very dangerous space, of course. So I want to go talk to my legislator. about gun safety. I want to go lobby them. What would you advise me to talk about and what talking points could you give me that I could take with me?

Yeah, for sure. First and foremost is that everybody should, at least for me, going onto the local state government website, you can pretty much look up any bill. You can look up all the bills that have passed, things that didn't pass, historical things. So you can start there. Any bill that you see that piques your interest, There's always a writer of that bill and you can find that person and then you can track them down through the internet, which is what I did. I basically just followed the names and their emails are all listed. It may take a little time, but once you get that information, it's easy to contact people. And I would say that some talking points would be that we as members of your city are seeing the everyday effects of gun violence. It's not just people that we know, it's not our immediate friends and family necessarily, but we still feel the effects. of our entire community being affected by this. And so I would ask my legislator, what are we doing right now to improve the problem that we have? We have a gun violence problem. What steps are actively being taken to help with this? And then you listen and then you take in what they have to say and then formulate your response and kind of go from there. I don't know if that answers your question exactly, but—

Yeah.

And I would focus on your own personal insights on the matter, even if you've never had anybody directly affected by gun violence or a death or domestic violence in that scenario. I mean, I feel like in some way we're all 6 degrees of freedom. Somehow our lives have all been affected. No man is an island. And you got to take that personal note when it comes to talking to people and try to get some understanding. Sort of what we talked about before.

Yeah. That's amazing advice. I think giving people a path, you know, it's like, go look up what legislation is in front of your state house right now. Go find your local legislator, go find the sponsor of that bill. Reach out to them. I don't think doctors realize how readily legislators will take them up on an offer of contact or conversation. When I talk to doctors about being active in terms of advocacy, that's one of the things that always shocks me. It's like, you mean I can just call my legislator? Yes, call them and give them your cell phone number and tell them that you're a constituent and tell them that you are a doctor and you would like to talk to them about X. You will be shocked at how often they will will call you back. And then you can give them your cell phone number and say, if you have questions about this, please call me. And again, how often it is that they will take you up on that, because they do recognize that a lot of times when it comes to these kinds of policy issues, and especially something like this, that you are the expert. Dr. Plouffe is the expert when it comes to gun violence in children. You are the person they need to call, and they recognize that. So I think that's the first thing that you said, which is so cool. The second thing you said, that I love is the fact that you, as part of this process, you talked about listening. And I think that's such a big part of advocacy because a lot of doctors will walk in, they have their talking points, you know, their state medical society or their professional society has given them, these are your talking points and you need to have these talking points when you go in and talk to your legislators. And that's great if you want a jumping off point, but talking points Will come across as talking points. They will not come across as a personal vignette. They will not come across as a personal story. So if you're sitting there, you're talking to a legislator, and you actually take the time to listen to their concerns and listen to what their position is, you are more likely to number one be authentic when you're lobbying because again, you want to be you. You don't want to go in there and I'm going to recite what my professional society says. No, you want to go in there as. You, because that's where your power is. And then actually use that as a personal point of reference. This is what I've seen. This is what I do. I had to tell a family of an infant who died from gun violence. I had to hold their hand while they cried. This is how we move the needle, is that you actually give that personal heft to what you're talking about. And that's what they're going to listen to. I think that's fabulous advice. I love that.

And I also think it's funny, the Physicians Foundation, we keep going back to this, one of their big things during our residency in Boston was pausing, right? So I do also think that when we're communicating with people and oftentimes having very differing opinions or views on things, we're very reactive and we can get a little heated and we'll hot under the collar very quickly.

Yep.

So I think it's important just to stop and listen and then Just pause, organize your thoughts, take a breath, and then respond so that you're responding in a place of composure and you're not coming out fighting and arguing. It's gotta be a conversation. It can't be an argument.

100%. It's amazing in terms of doing this work and having amazing guests like you on the podcast, how often that becomes sort of a through point, how often this concept of pausing and reflecting and listening becomes something that's such a vital skill for us as doctors. And it's not something we're taught to do. And the idea this plays into conflict and advocacy, that this one little skill of being able to pause and take a breath has showing up in so many different arenas in medicine as something that's going to help us not just as clinicians, but as advocates. I think that's such a profound point. I think the fact that you've brought that into this arena as well. I think says a lot about how important that skill is. That's so cool. So, Jillian, if people want to reach out to you and if they have questions about your work, if they have questions about gun safety and advocacy, how best would they reach out to you?

Probably through my email. I'm on social media, but I'm not like super, super active. So yeah, probably best through email.

Okay. If you'll give me your email that you want me to post, I will put that in the show notes.

Yeah. All right.

Jill, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for sharing your time. You've definitely inspired me as an advocate in this area. I'm going to go look for the gun safety laws in Alabama, and I'm going to reach out to those legislators. I feel like I have been inspired by the stories that you're telling and by looking at what's going on in the world around us. This is more important than ever. And for those of us who are in this part of the world, those of you who know anybody in Auburn-Hopewell-Eco who's listening to this podcast, this podcast for me is for Ms. Shirley. Whose son Marcus was killed in a shooting in Tuskegee 2 years ago. He was at a fellowship hall with his friends for a birthday party, and gang members came in and 4 young men died. And Ms. Shirley wears his face on a button every single day at work. And she has good days and she has not so good days. And every time I'm over there in surgery, I hug on Ms. Shirley. And I did not tell her I was doing this, but I wanted to make sure that people like her— these are the people that you're fighting for, Jill. These are the people that we're all fighting for. We don't want anybody else to have to wear a button with their child's face on it who died from gun violence. And I, more than you know, appreciate the work that you're doing, the advocacy that you are doing, the lives that you're saving through the advocacy. You're going to bless a lot of people. And you've already blessed me. So thank you.

There's one thing that I would like to say at the end, and this is sort of my motto, but something that I read when I was a child that has stuck with me forever. And it's John Donne, Meditation 17.

Yeah.

It's every man's death diminishes me because I'm part of mankind. So never ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. We are all one in this community, and it is really important that we recognize that we're all interdependent from one another. We all need each other. And the only way to make change is for all of us to get out there and have our voices heard so that we can fight for each other. Because otherwise, what's the point?

Yeah. Thank you, Jill. That was incredible. Thank you so much. For all of us who have been here today, for all of you who have joined us on the Scalpel and Sword podcast, thank you so much for being here with us. And until next time, be at peace. Every episode is an invitation To speak, to negotiate, to choose. I'm Dr. Lee Sharma. Join the dialogue by subscribing to Scalpel and Sword. Until next time, peaceful warriors, may your choices be sharp and your voice be even sharper. This podcast is a reflection of lived experience and research in conflict resolution. The Scalpel and Sword is not intended as medical or legal guidance. For personal matters, please consult a qualified professional.