Change the Ref's Unwinnable Board Game Highlights the Devastating Impact of Assault Rifles

The medical community sees firsthand the catastrophic damage a single bullet from an AR-15 can inflict on organs and tissue. Too often, their expert opinion is disregarded and legislative change stalls in favor of powerful lobbying groups. To draw attention to the medical side of gun violence, medical professionals against assault rifles have united with Change The Ref — founded by parents of a Parkland school shooting victim — to create Impossible Operation, an unwinnable board game modeled after real reports of mass shootings.

Dr. Joseph Sakran noted: “It’s called Impossible Operation because with assault rifle injuries, there are just some patients we cannot save. And this is a game we’re losing every day in trauma centers across the US.”

In the disturbing and absolutely not-child-friendly game, players are asked to be the doctor, and are challenged to save a victim of a school shooting in an operation to remove game pieces of her organs that have been damaged beyond repair (eg, liquefied lungs, slaughtered stomach, blasted bowels). However, any attempt to save the victim sets off an alarm and the victim flatlines. According to Manuel Oliver, “The system has ignored our voice long enough. If we want them to pay attention, maybe we have to do something a bit ridiculous or shocking”.

The physical game, created by Area 23, an FCB Health Network company, has been sent to key members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Change the Ref asks the general public to visit the site, where they can tweet the game directly to their respective senators and demand a change.

Specifically, they are trying to gain support for is bill S66 — The Assault Weapons Ban of 2019 — being released from committee potentially to be voted on in the Senate.

Prominent physician advocates Joseph Sakran, MD, the founder of the #ThisIsOurLane movement, and William Begg, MD, the ER physician who treated victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012, are being joined by ER doctors and trauma surgeons across the country in a show of support for this initiative.