Why would an organization like Stormont Vail Health let its name be associated with gun shows?

For 130 years, Topeka’s Stormont Vail Health has been providing health care in Kansas. According to its mission statement, it is committed to improving health in our surrounding communities, and I am thankful that they helped my own father recover from a massive heart attack.

I’m sure other Kansans are thankful for the dedicated care given to them or family members during the COVID pandemic, when almost all of Stormont Vail’s 586 hospital beds were full, and staff were at risk but kept showing up to treat and save those who were suffering.

Let me ask, then, why would an institution so devoted to health let its name be regularly associated with potential death? On Sept. 10 and 11, the Topeka Gun and Knife Show displayed its wares — once again — at the Stormont Vail Event Center.

For $12, an adult could see and buy an array of lethal weapons, including shotguns, rifles and handguns, the weapon most often used in murders and suicides.

For only $4 a child could enter as well. That includes a 6- or 7-year-old like the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School or a 9- or 10-year-old like the 19 killed by a shooter in Uvalde, Texas, in May.

We all have access to these guns, including people with a history of mental health issues or violence, and we don't have to worry about missing the September show. We can come back to the Stormont Vail Event Center on Oct. 22 or Dec. 10 for further shows, buying guns at a facility named for our main Kansas health care institution right through the end of 2022.

Guns aren't bringing better health to our communities. Ask such emergency room physicians as Garen Wintemute at University of California Davis School of Medicine, who researched gun deaths in 2008, alarmed by the gun violence he was seeing.

In 2008, Americans owned between 220 million and 280 million firearms, and 11,512 gun homicides were recorded, including suicides. Alarming, yes. But by 2021, the number of guns owned had jumped to 400 million, and the CDC reported that nearly 49,000 Americans were killed, which is four times more than in 2008.

And those are only the people killed.

The University of Penn Medical Program reports that over 120,000 people are injured every year by gunshot, which is nearly 400 per day. In another couple years, we will be wounding enough people to fill the Stormont Vail hospital every day of the year.

We can argue endlessly about the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms in America, but the fact that it is legal doesn't make it healthy. Take a look at the statistics.

A study from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics showed that even in 2016, before a recent two-year spike in gun sales, the U.S. gun death rate was 10.6 per 100,000 people, five times higher than Canada (2.1 per 100,000) and 10 times higher than Australia, Germany or Spain.

If the shooter, not the gun, is the problem — as many American gun advocates would argue — then we clearly are more imbalanced mentally than those other countries. However, the more obvious cause is that we simply have too many guns accessible.

According to the most recent survey, Americans now own 120 guns per 100 people, while Canada owns only 34 per 100, Germany only 19 per 100, Australia only 14.5 guns per 100 and Spain only 7.5 guns per 100.

Selling more guns is not going to bring more health to Kansans, yet Kansas has no law requiring firearms dealers to initiate background checks prior to transferring a firearm, meaning that it is up to the licensed dealers whether checking occurs.

What’s more, Kansas doesn't require private unlicensed sellers to initiate a background check at all.

The most sobering rise in our American statistics today is that of active shooters trying to kill multiple people. In 2000, only three incidents were recorded, but that number has risen exponentially — to 40 incidents in 2020.

In reality, however, active shooter incidents are only a fraction of the larger carnage in the U.S. We are dealing with a growing epidemic of individual shootings and suicides by gun.

If Stormont Vail really wants to improve health in our communities, then they should cut any association, real or imagined, to gun shows.

Tim Bascom, director of the Kansas Book Festival, is the author of five books, including a memoir about experiencing the violent Ethiopian Marxist Revolution, where he saw more than his share of guns. 

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Stormont Vail Health should avoid event center link with gun shows