This story was updated at 12:15 p.m. with comments from Dr. Alex Eastman.

Alex Eastman is anti-bullet hole.

As a Dallas trauma surgeon and a member of the Dallas Police Department SWAT team, he's pulled so many bullets out of patients that he can't remember the first time.

That's why after the National Rifle Association and conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted that doctors should butt out of the gun debate, Eastman fired back on Twitter.

Alex Eastman is a trauma surgeon and part of the Dallas Police Department SWAT team. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

"There are plenty of doctors out there who are pro-gun," Eastman said Monday. "There are plenty of doctors who are members of the NRA. This doctor's job requires him to carry a gun every day. I will not be put in the 'anti-gun' camp. But I am 100 percent anti-bullet hole, and I have no idea why anyone in this country wouldn't be the same way."

First, the NRA tweeted that doctors should "stay in their lane" in response to a medical journal article about reducing gun violence. The article called gun violence "a public health crisis in the United States that requires the nation's immediate attention."

Then, doctors nationwide responded, saying they aren't anti-gun. They just don't like seeing their patients riddled with bullet holes.

The response from doctors prompted a snarky tweet from Coulter:

"Emergency room doctors pull cue balls, vines & gummy bears out of human orifices every week. That doesn't make them experts on pool, horticulture or chewy candy."

A serious question for you @AnnCoulter ? I’m a trauma surgeon & a police officer. I’ve been bled on by my patients in the OR at @ParklandTrauma AND by my friends injured in gunfights w/@DallasPD SWAT. You sit in front of a camera & talk. What EXACTLY are you an expert on ma’am? https://t.co/If3woHKSLj — Alexander Eastman (@PMHTrauma_ALE) November 10, 2018

This was after the NRA had tweeted: "Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves."

Eastman, a Parkland Memorial Hospital trauma surgeon who joined the SWAT team in 2004, said he was stunned by Coulter's tweet and the NRA's response to the study. So, he tweeted a response:

"A serious question for you @AnnCoulter? I'm a trauma surgeon & a police officer. I've been bled on by my patients in the OR at @ParklandTrauma AND by my friends injured in gunfights w/@DallasPD SWAT. You sit in front of a camera & talk. What EXACTLY are you an expert on ma'am?"

It doesn't appear Coulter replied.

Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves. https://t.co/oCR3uiLtS7 — NRA (@NRA) November 7, 2018

Eastman said he is speaking out as a trauma surgeon and not on behalf of the Dallas Police Department.

Eastman said the NRA's response to the American College of Physicians' position paper, "Reducing Firearm Injuries and Deaths in the United States," proved just one thing:

"They're not ready to be part of the mature, scientific, educated and rational conversation about how to make this country a more safe place to live," he said. "My question is: What does it take? I mean, dead children don't seem to do it. Mass shootings don't seem to do it. Shootings in churches don't seem to do it.

"To tell us to stay in our lane? I mean, this is our highway."

Saving lives

Eastman mostly carries out his SWAT duties out of the public eye. But his actions have not gone unnoticed and he's been part of some of the most difficult times for both the police department and the city.

He responded with SWAT to the July 7, 2016, ambush in downtown Dallas when five officers were killed. Eastman was inside El Centro College where the gunman holed up. The shooter was eventually killed by a robot carrying explosives.

When a Dallas cop was shot in 2010, Eastman saved the officer's life immediately after he was shot. Eastman was with officers raiding a home to serve a warrant on the shooter's boyfriend.

Carlton Marshall was paralyzed when he was shot by Marisela Villa in 2007.

1 / 2Dr. Alex Eastman was all suited up during a raid at The Gentleman's Club on May 12, 2005. Eastman was the first doctor to be part of the Dallas Police SWAT team.(File Photo / Staff) 2 / 2Dallas Police lieutenant and lead medical officer Alex Eastman answers a question during a July 7 Anniversary panel discussion at Dallas Police Headquarters in Dallas, Friday, July 7, 2017. DPD and DART police discussed the progress they've made since the ambush shooting in downtown Dallas a year ago. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

She then used her 4-month-old baby as a shield when officers pointed their weapons at her. Eastman testified at her trial. A Dallas County jury sentenced Villa to 45 years in prison.

In 2006, Eastman pulled four Dallas officers to safety after they were shot during a drug raid. He sprang into action even before the shooting stopped. A bullet grazed one cop's ring finger. Another clipped an officer's ear. One officer was shot in the chest but was unscathed because he wore a bulletproof vest. A fourth cop was shot in the thigh.

'Your own private graveyard'

The NRA's response to the American College of Physicians' position paper wasn't anything particularly new. In 2015, the NRA dismissed and derided "grandstanding doctors and lawyers [who] strained their credibility and made fools of themselves with a call to action in favor of gun control."

Those insults fell mostly on deaf ears three years ago. But this time — in the aftermath of almost daily reports of mass shootings, with Twitter amplifying the hurt and outrage — the doctors weren't going to just let this lie. This time, Eastman said, things are different.

"I want to give someone at the NRA a hug," he said. "Never in my nearly 20 years have I seen surgeons, internists, nurses, radiologists, gynecologists, even hospital chaplains saying the same thing. They have galvanized the house of medicine behind getting rid of this problem, and it's not exactly what they intended.

"Being a trauma surgeon in the U.S. and at Parkland, it's like walking around with your own private graveyard," Eastman said. "There are just some people you can't save."

Eastman is the former medical director and chief of Parkland's trauma center and taught surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

He and his colleagues are tired of burying people full of bullets.

Over the weekend, doctors said on Twitter that if bullets were a virus, if we were losing dozens of people each week to illness, medicine would be scrambling for a cure. But we do nothing about guns —because doctors are not allowed to do anything, except tend to the wounded.

That has been the case since 1996, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was forced to stop firearm research, lest it lose federal funding.

Eastman said this isn't even about disease. It's no different than regulating the auto industry, no different than putting air bags and safety belts in cars or lights along the highway, he said.

"That stuff isn't designed out of thin air," he said. "There are scientists and surgeons looking at how people are injured. ... When facts are on your side, you pound on the facts. When science is on your side, you pound on the science. And when neither are on your side, you pound on the table. And people are tired of hearing the NRA pound on the table."