Emergency room doctors and trauma surgeons have a unique and unheard perspective on gun violence. In treating the people wounded in mass shootings, physicians know firsthand how radically different assault weapon injuries are from those caused by handguns. However, due to political pressures and the self-interest of industry-backed lobbying groups, their voices have been stifled or, in some cases, silenced altogether. The result: Americans have been deprived of physicians’ powerful and unique perspective on this uniquely American problem.

Our charge was to call attention to this unheard medical point of view and activate Americans concerned about gun violence to call on their political representatives to ban assault weapons.

Despite the ambition of the project, the budget was very limited—only $3,000.

An ironic twist on the classic American board game Operation, Impossible Operation symbolizes the frustration physicians feel when faced with treating assault weapon wounds. The game was designed with input from vocal, renowned physcian influencers and intended to be a lightning rod for drawing attention to the experience of physicians who deal with gun violence in the United States.

Impossible Operation came to life as a board game and online game that allows the public to experience firsthand the impossible task physicians face when trying to repair assault weapon injuries.

The gameplay mirrors that of the original game but features a liquefied lung, split spine, blasted bowel, slaughtered stomach, and pulverized pancreas. Contact with these pieces or the wound itself triggers the audio of a heart rate monitor, which ends in a piercing flatline.

To drive coverage and conversation, we enlisted influential medical experts with large online followings to be the face of Impossible Operation.

Our leads included:

• Dr. Joseph Sakran (Emergency Surgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital; founder of This Is Our Lane, a gun safety physician group with 30K followers)

• Dr. William Begg (treating physician at Sandy Hook)

• Manuel Oliver (parent of a Parkland shooting victim; founder of Change The Ref, a gun safety activist group with 40K followers)

• 10 medical groups

The plan was to have our influential physicians and experts share the social film with their existing communities, driving them to ImpossibleOperation.com to tweet the game at their senators. This would be coordinated with delivery of game boards to news outlets and key senators.

The social film would launch the initiative and was designed for media pick-up by featuring these influencers and dramatically speaking to their previously unheard

Impossible Operation launched while the US Senate was in session to bring attention to Bill S.66, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019.

Impossible Operation kicked off influencers Dr. Sakran, founder of This Is Our Lane physician gun safety group; Dr. Begg; and Mr. Oliver, founder of Change the Ref gun safety activist group sharing the social film online.

Through shares and retweets, Impossible Operation quickly reached celebrity gun-safety activists, medical organizations, and other gun-safety organizations (including March For Our Lives), who shared our film.

Physical versions of the Impossible Operation board game were delivered to influential politicians on Capitol Hill.

Online news immediately picked up the story. Within a week, Impossible Operation national broadcast news picked up the story with coverage including a 10-minute national broadcast segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, a program watched by millions daily, including the President of the United States

Impossible Operation successfully activated our target audience to contact all 100 US Senators via tweet and demand the ban of assault weapons.

Five thousand doctors participated in the campaign, collaborating on the game, tweeting out the social film, and sharing photos of themselves with the game.

Impossible Operation was picked up by national broadcast media and news outlets, securing a 10-minute feature on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and a feature on ABC News, further fueling the campaign CTA.

Online, Impossible Operation reached more than 63,000,000 people, with more than 41,000 retweets and 54,000 likes.

Gun-safety organizations and celebrities spread our message online, including March for Our Lives, Alyssa Milano, and Susan Sarandon, garnering more than 4,200,000 engagements in its first week.

Overall, Impossible Operation reached 100 million people, meaningfully changing the substance of the assault weapon ban conversation.