Oct 23, 2026 · 25 min
Doctors frame gun safety as a public-health challenge
Two doctors offer new ideas to prevent gun violence in America
The discussion focuses on practical ways to prevent firearm injury while identifying common ground among gun owners, non-gun owners, clinicians, retailers, and communities.
- 1Secure storage can reduce unauthorized access while addressing concerns about firearm availability for self-protection.
- 2Crisis intervention, including extreme risk protection orders, can create temporary safeguards when someone poses an imminent danger.
- 3Retailer partnerships and hospital-based programs extend prevention beyond policy debates into everyday community and trauma care.
Don't miss
Sakran explains how extreme risk protection orders can provide a temporary safeguard when credible evidence indicates imminent danger.
The brief
Pediatrician Sandra McKay and trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran approach gun violence as a public-health problem, arguing that protecting children, people in crisis, and communities offers common ground.
Their practical starting point is secure storage: firearms locked, unloaded when possible, and inaccessible to children or unauthorized users, even as owners weigh self-protection concerns.
The conversation turns to crisis intervention, including extreme risk protection orders, and to the difficulty of temporarily removing firearms when credible evidence signals imminent danger.
McKay describes working with firearm retailers on storage and suicide-prevention education, while Sakran explains how hospital programs address the physical and psychological aftermath of injury.
The guests acknowledge the scale of firearms already in circulation but point to effective programs, community partnerships, and declining violence in some cities as reasons for measured optimism.
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