June 2, 2022

The day after the horrific events in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed after a gunman entered Robb Elementary School and opened fire, the American Nurses Association (ANA) renewed its calls for immediate action to address America’s ever-growing epidemic of gun violence.

The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) joins ANA, and thousands of other health care groups and associations, in their calls for immediate, bipartisan action to address gun violence.

For decades, ANA and ONA have advocated for common sense policies to help address the underlying issues that may lead to gun violence, alongside powerful prevention measures like universal background checks and improved access to mental health services. ONA has worked to close loopholes for the sale of weapons at gun shows in Oregon (2000), prevent domestic violence offenders from gun possession (2015), requiring convicted domestic violence abusers to relinquish guns (2019) and community violence prevention measures (2022), among other statewide efforts. ANA declared gun violence a public health issue in June of 2017 and supported a range of legislative policies like universal background checks, closing in-person and gun-show purchasing loopholes, a permanent ban on assault weapons, instituting a waiting period, and dramatically expanding access to mental health services.

It is tragic that nursing associations like ANA and ONA have been calling for these steps for decades, and yet meaningful action at the Federal level has still not happened.

“Nurses across the United States know the horrors and chaos of gun violence intimately; we treat victims of gunshot wounds every single day,” said Lynda Pond, RN, President of the ONA Board of Directors. “Yesterday, June 1, 2022, another horrific mass shooting took place at St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma where two physicians, a receptionist and a patient were killed. This epidemic of gun violence is also taking place inside our hospitals, clinics and facilities. Nurses, in addition to treating the physical wounds, also understand that addressing gun violence means preventing gun violence. Enough is enough. ONA is calling for immediate, meaningful action.”

ONA urges Congress to pass legislation requiring universal background checks on all firearm sales, increasing the minimum age for gun purchases, closing loopholes related to private or gun-show sales, passing “extreme risk” laws that allow law enforcement to remove firearms where there is a risk of violence, denying firearms to perpetrators of domestic violence, and banning the purchase, possession and manufacture of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

“As we look across Oregon, we also see more and more hospital systems making decisions to close mental health clinics and reduce access to mental health services,” said Pond. “Bay Area Hospital in Coos Bay has just announced that they intend to close their behavioral health unit meaning that residents of Coos Bay have even fewer resources available to them for mental health treatment. This is not the direction we as a state, or as a country, need to be moving.”