OK. I'm going to put my 2 cents worth into this discussion. I occasionally peruse this forum, but seldom contribute because many of the subjects are in areas that I have no expertise and I usually think that if I have no expertise, I have no business offering an opinion because it would be..well, an uninformed opinion.
However, in regards to fire arm injury, I believe I have some expertise.

Many of you may know that I've made my living as a surgeon. I am board certified and re-certified (several times) in General Surgery and I have also trained in Vascular Surgery and held certification in that field. I have been a part of Community trauma programs since I began my hospital training in 1974 and I also hold an academic appointment as Professor of Surgery. I have been Associate Surgical Program Director for the training of surgical residents, as well as Program Director.
I have taken trauma call for all of my surgical career until a few years ago and, by my estimation, have consulted on and treated in the neighborhood of 500-600 gunshot wounds. That's NOT a huge number of gsw's for a surgeon to treat in a training program and as a Community Surgeon during his or her career. Surgeons 20 years younger than me that trained in large urban hospitals and that have continued to serve on trauma services in urban area have seen or will see 3-4 times as many gun shot victims in their careers as I have.
We live in a very dangerous country and it's been estimated that the United States has 25 times more firearm injuries than the average developed country in the world.

Full disclosure. My practice of surgery is in Midland/Odessa Texas. My academic office is directly across the street from Medical Center Hospital in Odessa where the brunt of the most recent mass shooting in Texas was felt. One of the people killed was my daughter's math teacher when she was in Jr. High School. My vascular tech is best friends with the mother of the 17 month old girl that was air-lifted to a pedi-trauma hospital after being shot in the face. I know and work with the surgeons, nurses, techs, administrators and first responders that put themselves on the line to care for these local victims. I am in awe of the job that they did.
My family laughs when I tell them that I am "heavily armed". I have 2 shot guns (no shells) that I haven't fired since the days that I had time to go bird hunting (35 years ago). Those guns are locked up in a closet in my house. I have never fired a hand gun.

My request in posting this is to ask you to go on-line to: The Committee on Trauma. Summary of Final Results. COT Firearms Injury Prevention Survey.

The COT is a part of The American College of Surgeons and is made up of about 250 surgeons that are experts in all areas of trauma care and from all over the United States. They are the men and women that are responsible for setting the standards for trauma care in this country. This Survey is a survey of the members of the Committee. It's not a survey of the general public, although I think that may be in the works. The wise leaders of this committee recognized that they needed to find out what the make-up of the members was... before making a report. Not surprisingly, the demographics of the committee were almost identical to the general public. There were avid gun owners. Avid hunters. Members that had previously served in the military with extensive firearms training and experience. There were also members that had never owned or used a firearm.
Please take a minute or two to read The Summary and then read The Recommendations. I can guarantee that none of you will agree with all of them. But it's important to look at the percentages of the committee that agree with each point. I think it's probably a decent representation of what you might get in a survey of the general public.
To me THE MOST IMPORTANT recommendation is number 6: "...making funds available for research on gun violence and how to prevent gun violence."

No matter where you come down on this mass shooting epidemic that we have, I know you all have an OPINION....but in reality most of it is uninformed opinion. Because we have not had any federal funding for meaningful research since the mid-90's (Google The Dickey Amendment if you are into head-scratching congressional goings-on) into things like suicide prevention, firearm safety improvement, large capacity magazines, detailed comparisons of what other countries have done successfully, innovation (why not a develop a gun that's impossible to use on yourself? Sounds easier than developing a driverless 18 wheeler that can cruise into downtown Chicago...), etc etc
I think that the COT is honestly trying to make an effort to move the needle a little bit and emphasize that firearm injury is a PUBLIC SAFETY ISSUE. And we should try to cool off the rhetoric, quit calling each other names and find out what the data actually shows about all this stuff we keep quoting... and yet have no idea if it's true.

We've got to bridge the gap between the "own every gun" and the "destroy every gun" group. (One of the authors of the paper told me that when polling a large group of people, it was asked, what does the phrase "owning a gun" mean to you? One group said "danger". The other group said "freedom")
I refuse to believe that we, as United States Citizens, are willing to accept that what we are experiencing is the "new Normal".

Finally, the morning after the shooting occurred, I called my Junior partner, who had been on call taking care of many of the victims. To my surprise, he picked up the phone after one ring...not after 10 rings, like a guy who had been up all night slogging through blood and gore should sound. I asked him, "How are you feeling and what are you doing?". He answered. "I'm fine. I'm just sitting here making a list of things we can do better. "

As I said, I'm in awe of these people. And I know we can do better.