Reason #95: Assault weapons
Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?
Have you ever seen what a bullet from a military grade weapon will do to the human body? I am sorry to say that I have. Although I never practiced medicine in a foreign war zone, I have practiced surgery in the war zones of New York City and Los Angeles.
Forget all of those stupid movies you have watched, with the inevitable probe for the bullet and remove it with tweezers scene. That‘s not how it is at all. Modern military grade weapons cause enormous, unimaginable damage. Even though the bullets are relatively small they have very high muzzle velocity and “cavitate” organs. They also tumble as they pass through and produce an enormous exit wound where they leave the body. If they hit anywhere near a vital organ, it is all over.
On an occasion in the early 1980s I raced to an emergency room in Southern California, escorted by multiple police cars. A policeman had been shot in the line of duty. When I reached the operating room to assist, I was horrified to see that the liver, a huge organ, had virtually disappeared. The situation was hopeless, we could not stop the massive bleeding. He died. I will never forget the chaos of the scene, the profound sorrow that a young man, father, comrade, husband, friend was suddenly gone. What a tragedy.
Now try to wrap your mind around a similar situation, but instead of just one person, tens, or even hundreds have been shot. Can you do it? Is it too painful?
A few years ago, we visited the Lyndon Johnson Library at the University of Texas in Austin. Standing outside, I had a view of the flag, flying at half-mast, honoring those who had recently been mass murdered in Uvalde, Texas on May 22, 2022. Then I noticed a tall building in the background right behind the flag. It looked vaguely familiar; where had I seen it before?
The flashback came quickly. Why was it in flickering black and white? It was from television news in 1966, reporting on an unbelievable event. A young man, Charles Whitman, had climbed to the top of the Texas tower on the UT campus and begun to kill those below indiscriminately with a military sniper rifle. It was perhaps the first mass shooting event in U.S. history covered on television.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting
What had happened in Uvalde, Texas was much clearer in my memory. An eighteen-year-old had entered the Robb elementary school and shot thirty-four children and two teachers; nineteen died and many others were terribly injured but survived. The myth that such shooting deaths were preventable was belied by videos of multiple local police officers who failed to intervene, until it was far too late.
https://www.propublica.org/article/uvalde-releases-missing-police-videos-robb-elementary-shooting
Why had absolutely NOTHING been done between 1966 and 2022 (56 years!) to prevent gun massacres in Texas? Absolutely nothing. As tragic as these two events are, they represent only a tiny sliver of the magnitude of the problem.
Mother Jones has made available a grim data base of all mass shooting events in the U.S. from 1982 to today. Trump voters laughably tell us that they “want to do their own research”. OK, here is your opportunity. Put on your white lab coat and look at the data base. Come on, its not that complicated; you can figure it out.
What it shows is that almost every case has striking similarities. They typically involve men, often very young men, most often white, nationalistic, sometimes with a track record of criminal behavior, mental illness, hate, racism and violence and – most important – armed with military grade assault rifles and lots of ammunition.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
This is a good example why Republicans consistently block efforts to collect data for research on gun crimes.
We simply cannot continue to let slaughter of the innocents continue. And yet we do – endlessly.
When I say we, I refer to Republicans, because all reasonable Democrats have tried on thousands of occasions to attempt to take legal measures to try to control gun violence. On each and every occasion, they have been stalemated by a Republican President, legislature, a governor or a Republican-appointed right-wing judge. Their right-wing media spokesmen go so far as to say that accounts of murdered children are hoaxes.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042423742/alex-jones-sandy-hook-hoax-conspiracy
What we might do to prevent mass shootings is logical, simple and clearcut. Guns should be treated like cars. You need to be trained to use one, pass a test that provides you with a license to own and a registration for every weapon you possess. Just as a license for a motorcycle or large truck is far different from on for just driving a car, the license to own a military grade weapon should require more knowledge and proficiency. Just as the driver’s license requires fingerprinting, each weapon must be registered so that forensics experts can rapidly identify its origin and location.
You cannot drive a car if you have blackouts or a long history of drunken driving. Why can similarly impaired individuals be considered safe to own and allowed to operate an assault rifle?
A more core question is why any private citizen should be able to own a weapon capable of killing 17 children within minutes? “Well-regulated militia”, my ass. We have well-regulated militias. They are called the U.S. Army, U.S Marine Corps, National guard, SWAT team etc. etc.
And I also don’t want to hear any crap about how you love to hunt. No state in the Union allows you hunt deer or pheasant with a machine gun. We don’t want to take away your hunting rifle or your shotgun. Our VP candidate is an avid hunter.
More information on the atrocity at Uvalde is available at the following source.
https://www.propublica.org/article/uvalde-releases-missing-police-videos-robb-elementary-shooting
The full Justice Department report on the incident is available at
It should be required reading for any legislator voting on a gun control measure – and for anyone voting for a presidential candidate.
Don’t you care whether your children will be killed by a nut-case with a grudge and an assault rifle? If the answer is YES, how can you even consider voting for a Republican candidate on November 5?
Please share this message with your friends and please, add your thoughts, to expand upon what are only brief sketches here.
To date, I have written 95 Reasons NOT to vote for Donald Trump . They are archived at my Facebook page
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Fred Grannis
October 17, 2024