Matthew G. Masiello, MD, MPH, is a pediatrician and public health practitioner who works in the Mass General Brigham healthcare system.

This is a message for Graham Platner and his campaign team.

A brief introduction, if I may. I am a pediatrician and public health practitioner, and I am writing because I want you to win — and because winning will require the courage to lead on a critically important issue.

I recently published a book, “American Solidarity 2026: A Message from History, A Call to Action.” In it, I reflect on the brilliance of the Founding Fathers, the defining challenges of the past 250 years and the solidarity we must summon to move forward. That context shapes everything I am about to say.

First, thank you for your service. My father earned the Silver and Bronze Stars in World War II. My older brother came home from Vietnam carrying the mental health wounds that never fully healed. Twenty years ago, my youngest son was shot and wounded by a drunk man with an unlicensed firearm while playing soccer with dozens of other children on a sunny July afternoon.

I have spent my career in pediatric firearm injury prevention — publishing research, winning grants, receiving awards and delivering lectures across the country. And I will tell you plainly: I have failed. The children are still dying.

Today, firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in the United States. That sentence should stop anyone who aspires to write laws in their name. Pediatric firearm deaths surged more than 40% between 2018 and 2021, peaked in 2022, and remain far above the levels of a decade ago.

When roughly 1,500 children are killed by guns in a single year, a conservative estimate is that 15,000 to 30,000 parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, classmates and teachers are pulled into the immediate radius of that loss — each year. They do not appear in a mortality table, but they are marked all the same: by empty desks, shattered families and the knowledge that this was not inevitable.

We do not even maintain a national mortality system precise enough to tell the public how many of these children were killed with assault-style weapons, which is itself an indictment of our collective failure. But the data we do have is telling — pediatric firearm death rates declined during the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban, then reversed course after it expired. The evidence strongly suggests these weapons are not incidental to the crisis. They are part of its architecture.

I understand that you support universal background checks and other gun-safety measures, but do not currently support a federal assault weapons ban.

I, and many others, respect incremental reform. But this moment demands more than incremental language. The media rewards rapid, confident answers — the kind packaged to fit a news clip — but those answers demonstrate political fluency, not moral seriousness. They allow for a performance of conviction without demonstrating the hard work of honest explanation.

As the country approaches its 250th year, many of us are asking a simple question: What kind of leaders are we willing to send to Washington? Those who calibrate their positions to political comfort, or those prepared to speak with clarity and courage about the extraordinary lethality of assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines — and to pursue policies equal to the scale of the harm?

I will support your campaign. But I need to know whether you are willing to move beyond careful generalities. The Founders did not win independence by softening their convictions to fit the politics of the moment. Voters are searching for that same fearlessness now. Your position on assault-style weapons is one clear measure of whether you are prepared to offer it.