We must not forget that the dead are not the only victims of gun violence

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Jooyoung Lee is an associate professor of sociology and faculty member at the University of Toronto, and the author of The Walking Wounded: Festering and Ricocheting Trauma After Gun Violence.

I still remember the magic of my first Salsa on St. Clair festival 14 years ago. I had just moved to Toronto from Philadelphia, and my then-girlfriend – now my wife – invited me there to see how the city comes alive during the summer. Even though it’s been more than a decade, I can still recall the effervescent crowds, the vibrant music and the tasty street food. It was one of the first moments where I truly got the hype about Toronto, which has since become home.

So I was in disbelief when I read about the shooting at the festival on July 11. The reports highlighted that two people were killed, in their grimly familiar tally. And the stories of the two young men who died are no doubt tragic, as any story of any life ended by gun violence always is.

But we seem to overlook the other victims of gun violence in these events: the five people who were also injured that night, either by bullets or in the rush to escape, who will likely suffer from deteriorating health over time; the hundreds of others who witnessed or heard the shooting that night who will bear mental scars; the survivors’ and witnesses’ loved ones, who will also bear some of the emotional burden left by this event. Too often, our methods for quantifying the true impact of gun violence fall short of appreciating just how many people are victimized by shootings.

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This is a story I’ve spent years researching, just on the other side of the border. My work began in the outpatient trauma clinic at the University of Pennsylvania hospital, and led me into the everyday lives of victims and their families. I came away seeing how shootings destroy the health of people who survive with injuries. In addition to sometimes being forced to live with the pain of bullets that cannot be removed, I saw gunshot victims suffer from early onset arthritis, irreversible nerve damage, and a litany of other assaults on their bodily autonomy. I saw how surviving a shooting ages a person rapidly.

Shootings also damage the mental health of family members and close friends who rush to the aid of the wounded. This experience is what I call “ricocheting trauma,” a term that can help us appreciate the much broader, shared impacts of gun violence on people’s mental health.

This suffering was easy to diagnose in Philadelphia, where most gunshot victims were uninsured and lacked regular access to health care; in the U.S., a hospital visit can devastate both physically and financially. But what surprised me most about living, teaching and researching in Canada was realizing the limits of this country’s “universal” health care system.

For instance, provincial health care such as OHIP covers a person’s routine visits to a doctor or drop-in clinic, but does not cover long-term counselling, prescription medications, alternative therapies, and long-term treatment facilities. Victims recovering with injuries and bystanders who witness shootings suffer from a myriad of long-term mental health care needs. And unless they have strong employer-based insurance, these people are likely to have to pay for such services out of pocket.

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As I’ve spent more time in Canada, I’ve come to realize that the U.S. and Canada can be more alike than we sometimes want to admit. While both countries have built world-leading emergency care systems that save people from the brink, both stop short of providing the long-term care that survivors of gun violence need to heal.

In 2019, Heidi Illingworth, the federal ombudsman for victims of crime, wrote to the government to outline the lack of adequate long-term mental health services for victims of violent crime in Canada, noting that “…victims face a fragmented mental-health system in which the care patients receive is too often determined by what they can afford, or where they live.” The same letter noted that victims in rural areas, and especially in Indigenous communities, face added challenges accessing mental health care. One of her chief recommendations was for Ottawa to fund universal mental health care in Canada.

As the dust settles from this latest spate of shootings in Toronto, the news cycle will undoubtedly pivot away. We will be bombarded with other breaking news that will compete for our attention. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In the wake of this latest shooting, let’s not forget about all of the victims and their unmet care needs, both physical and mental.