Doctor and hospital visits for gunshot wounds rose sharply last year, Axios Future author Bryan Walsh writes from electronic health records.

• Why it matters: The findings bolster preliminary data showing a surge in gun violence across the country.

What's happening: There are three big factors, with the weight for each in dispute — there are lots of politics around it.

1. Some experts point to the pandemic's unique social and economic pressures and disruptions.
2. The initial surge coincided with last summer's protests over police violence. Many in law enforcement point to changes in policing following the protests, including a pullback amid declining trust. This created an environment where shooters could feel more emboldened.
3. Gun sales have increased throughout the pandemic. Firearms background checks spiked in spring 2020 and haven't come down.

The findings: Firearms injuries that resulted in a documented health care visit began spiking in late spring 2020, according to data compiled by the Epic Health Research Network. They peaked in October.

• After dipping last fall and early winter, firearm injury rates surged again in the spring, with June 2021 levels 64% higher than in 2019.
• People of color were particularly vulnerable — firearm injury visits increased by 76% for Hispanic patients and 89% for Black patients, while rising 40% for whites.

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In 40 stunning minutes Friday afternoon, we learned:

1. A U.S. drone strike in Kabul last month had not, in fact, taken out "an imminent ISIS-K threat," as the Pentagon said at the time, but instead had killed as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children.
2. France recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia for "unacceptable behavior between allies and partners," after President Biden blindsided Paris with a nuclear sub deal with Australia. The pact marked a new Indo-Pacific alliance that infuriated China.

How to think about it: The global drama exposed two of the Biden administration's foreign-policy vulnerabilities.

1. Biden is banking on conducting counterterrorism in Afghanistan without elements you’d normally need — human intel, reliable partners on the ground, nearby bases, etc. Members of the intelligence community derisively label Biden's "over-the-horizon" strategy as "over the rainbow," Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu presciently reported.
2. The Biden team is supposed to be experts at multilateralism and especially at managing the Atlantic alliance. But the rollout of the AUKUS security partnership — Australia, UK, U.S. — was so botched that France, an ally of 240+ years, called it "a knife in the back."

Between the lines: Foreign policy is about tradeoffs, and the Biden administration sees China as "the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century." As The New York Times' David E. Sanger put it (subscription):

Biden’s decision was the result of a brutal calculus that nations sometimes make in which one ally is determined to be more strategically vital than another — something national leaders and diplomats never like to admit to in public.

And it was a sign that as Mr. Biden begins to execute what the Obama administration, 12 years ago, called the "pivot to Asia," there is the risk of stepping on political land mines as old, traditional allies in Europe feel left behind.

The Biden administration plans a wide-scale expulsion of Haitian migrants from the small Texas border city of Del Rio by putting them on flights to Haiti starting tomorrow, AP reports.

• Why it matters: It's a swift and dramatic response to thousands who suddenly crossed the border from Mexico and gathered under a bridge. The vast majority are Haitian.

The airlift will likely involve two to eight flights a day, with San Antonio as a potential departure city.

• The size of the fast-track expulsions hinges on how Haitians respond: They can stay put at the risk of being sent back to their impoverished homeland. Or they can return to Mexico.

This art installation on 20 acres of the National Mall includes 660,000+ white plastic flags, commemorating Americans who have died of COVID.

• "In America: Remember" — by artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, a South Dakota native — will be on the Mall through Oct. 3.

Flags will be added each day.

• Go deeper ... Dedicate a flag.

Americans of color are much less likely than white Americans to enjoy good air quality or tap water — or enough trees or green spaces, Axios managing editor Margaret Talev writes from an Axios-Ipsos poll.

• They're also more likely to face noise pollution and litter.

Our national survey shows Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than their white counterparts to live near major highways or industrial or manufacturing plants — and to have dealt in the past year with water-boil notices or power outages lasting more than 24 hours.

• Most Americans are oblivious to the disparities: 57% of all respondents — and 42% of Black respondents — said all Americans suffer pollution and environmental contamination equally.

The poll was conducted for an Axios Deep Dive coming to you this afternoon as part of our "Hard Truths" series.

• Keep reading.

Passengers on SpaceX's Inspiration4 float in the Dragon capsule. (From left: Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Chris Sembroski and Sian Proctor.)

• Splashdown is targeted for 7:06 p.m. ET today. Read the release.

🎧 Hear our podcast docu-series, "How It Happened: The Next Astronauts," taking you inside the Inspiration 4 crew's selection and training.

In Axios PM, we showed you the base of the world's largest tree, the General Sherman sequoia, wrapped in a fire-resistant aluminum blanket to protect against wildfire. (See it here.)

It turns out that foil is now a thing for houses, too.

• Photo above: Martin Diky encased his house near Lake Tahoe in $6,000 of fire-resistant aluminum foil as fire approached Meyers, Calif.

The company where Diky bought his wraps, Firezat Inc. in San Diego, gets 95% of sales from the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, AP reports.

• The Forest Service has wrapped 600 to 700 buildings, bridges, communication towers and other structures this year alone.

A first-edition print of the Constitution will be auctioned by Sotheby's in mid-November, with value estimated at $15-$20 million.

• Selby Kiffer, Sotheby senior specialist for books and manuscripts, said the printing was "done probably on the evening of the 16th of September, 1787, only for the use of the delegates to the Continental Convention and for the use of the Congress of the United States."

Copies from that first printing, bearing no signatures and believed to have originally numbered about 500, were furnished to delegates of the Constitutional Convention, Reuters reports.

• Two surviving copies are housed at the Library of Congress.
• Sotheby's said the Constitution's first printing is considerably rarer than the first edition of the 1776 Declaration of Independence,

This copy of the Constitution last sold for $165,000 in 1988, to the late S. Howard Goldman, a New York real estate developer and private collector.

• His wife, Dorothy Tapper Goldman, is selling it, with proceeds to a foundation in her name to further public understanding of democracy.