The bullet went through her shoulder, as well as the sofa, and lodged in the nearby wall. Morris thinks that when her husband pressed the handgun against her stomach, she pushed his arm away, knocking the handgun upward as he fired. And I looked and I could see out of the corner of my eye there was smoke coming out of my jacket." "And at that moment I could smell gunpowder. Her husband fell to the living room floor, drunk and despondent, shouting, "I killed her, I killed her," she says. "And I thought, 'Oh, my God, he actually killed me.' And I just, I remember just sitting there thinking, 'OK, what happens now?' And all the thoughts go through your head: Who's going to find my body? What's going to happen to my son? You know, all these things," she says. Morris is not really sure what happened next. "He pushed me on the sofa and put the gun to my stomach and said, 'Gut shots hurt the worst,' " Morris says. But this time he brandished an unregistered handgun he'd bought for $25 at a local bar. One night after heavy drinking, he returned home and, as usual, began threatening and assaulting her. "He would beat me and berate me," Morris says. The physical and emotional torment, she says, steadily got worse, especially when he was drunk or high. In her 20s, Laura Morris was married to an abusive man with alcohol and drug problems. Today she helps others who've survived gun injuries and domestic abuse. One night he shot her through the shoulder. Laura Morris was caught in an escalating cycle of abuse at the hands of her former husband. And so that's the first thing that we need to fix." ![]() "The best policy comes from having great data. "Nonfatal injuries do not get the attention that they deserve," she says. ![]() She welcomes the renewal of federal gun research but says it needs to grow far beyond the initial funding. Among her top state priorities are disability rights and public health-based gun violence prevention. Today she is the assistant Democratic minority leader in the statehouse. Longdon was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2018. This will allow doctors and epidemiologists to potentially identify trends and craft swift interventions, as they have done to contain the coronavirus pandemic and other national health emergencies. The CDC and the National Institutes of Health, for the first time in nearly a quarter-century, are funding new research on guns to help reduce firearm-related injuries, deaths, crime and suicides.Īmong several other gun research projects, the CDC is now providing funding to 10 state health departments so they can start collecting data in near-real time on emergency room nonfatal firearm injuries. The CDC is now hoping to get a fuller picture of the data and long-neglected details on the impact of daily gun violence. And that happens to children across our country every single day." And the thing that I always remember is that he was so afraid and so brave. And he's stroking my hair that's just full of blood, telling me it's going to be OK. And his face is so pale and his eyes are so wild. "And there's my little boy," she says, her voice cracking. ![]() Nonfatal injuries do not get the attention that they deserve. With her survival questionable, her ex-husband brought their then-12-year-old son to her bedside in the hospital trauma room. ![]() Longdon still finds it hard to rethink some details from the night of the shooting. Their lives were soon consumed by surgeries, outpatient therapy and adjusting to life with a disability. "You know, you can theorize a million different ways what was the cause," Longdon says. No one has ever been arrested there are currently no suspects despite rewards and an investigation. The shooting was totally random and inexplicable. There was no discernible why to the shooting: no road rage or drug deal gone bad. She is now paralyzed just below her collarbone. The last bullet fired from the pickup truck struck Longdon in her back. His hearing is diminished, and he has a very significant brain injury that impacts how he thinks," Longdon says.
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