National Poetry Month: Gun Violence

Guns Don't Kill People

Guns don’t kill people

people kill people with guns

it’s their constitutional right to own

the more the merrier

there’s little barrier to lethality

that’s the reality

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The advantage that a small or light bullet has over a heavy one when it comes to wound ballistics, is that it tumbles once it hits flesh. Bullets are stabilized to fly through the air, and not through water, or a body, which is approximately the same density as water. Bullets, like the .223 Rem fired by the AR-15, are stable as long as they are in the air. When they hit something, like a child, they immediately go unstable. This is what makes a small bullet so lethal in wound ballistics.

Heather Sher, a radiologist in one of the busiest trauma centers in the United States for 13 years, wrote this in a 2018 Atlantic article:

"I was looking at a CT scan of one of the mass-shooting victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, and was bleeding extensively. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?"

"The bullet from an AR-15 passes through the body like a cigarette boat traveling at maximum speed through a tiny canal. The tissue next to the bullet is elastic—moving away from the bullet like waves of water displaced by the boat—and then returns and settles back. This process is called cavitation; it leaves the displaced tissue damaged or killed. The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. Exit wounds can be the size of an orange."

Thoughts and prayers.