Guest post: It’s the smell
Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on Celebrating.
Warning: graphic. Brutally, necessarily, truthfully graphic.
It’s the smell. That’s what forces its way into my thoughts every time there’s another mass shooting. I guess it’s part of the PTSD associated with 25 plus years of trauma surgery trying to undo extremes of violence. It’s left its mark. Iron. Metallic. If you are winning the fight, that’s what you smell. If you’re losing it shifts to an indescribable stench of corruption as cells begin to die and normal organ barriers begin to fail. In the OR you smell death well before the monitors slow and the EKG begins to widen. Still you try. Last night I couldn’t sleep because to this day I can still see the face of my youngest GSW patient, hit in the abdomen by a high velocity slug like those used in Texas. From her diaphragm to her pelvis every organ was shredded. Her liver burst from the supersonic shock wave that followed the bullet. So much blood that you have to throw your socks away. Three trauma surgeons worked on her for hours. It wasn’t enough. I remember the smell.
One of my aunts had to quit trauma surgery after just a few months. I think it was the kids with gunshot wounds.
I’m so very, very sorry; if there were any way to shoulder at least part of the burden, I would. I have no words of comfort except gratitude that you exist, and tried so hard even for the ones who couldn’t be saved. I know the smells from veterinary work, and cannot bear to imagine what it must be like to work on people, especially children, who are so very badly, lethally, damaged.
I’m also so very, very sorry for the children, their families, the medical and surgical teams desperately attempting to save lives against all the odds, and for a society so broken that it allows this to continue in the name of freedom, that the people saving lives are the ones being kept awake at night by PTSD waking nightmares, and not the arms manufacturers.
I have a bit of a tool fetish, from shovels to cellphones, from crockpots to canoes. Guns as tools have only one purpose, to kill. Their intended purpose is neither for nonlethal defense or target shooting. Just as the fact that I can whack someone over the head with a shovel doesn’t change it’s intended purpose. Funny how they can sue big pharma executives for producing things who’s intended purpose is to cure or relieve suffering, yet companies that produce things specifically intended to kill are untouchable.
1.
Publish the crime scene photos.
Along side home videos of the victims laughing and playing.
Force the NRA folks to defend that their right to own guns unrestrictedly is worth this result.
2.
The United States Constitution. The framers were literate men. I believe they were as precise as possible with their use of language.
2nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
I have constantly heard from the NRA that this means that no restrictions whatever as it specifies that a “A well regulated Militia” is specified but not defined, and uses the term “People”.
The United States Constitution.
Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 1: “The Congress the Power to -”
Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 15: “To provide for organizing, arming, and or governing the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according the discipline prescribed by Congress”
When referring to individual rights the Constitution uses “person”, or “persons”. When referring to the public at large it uses “the people” as a collective. So, the second amendment refers to the public at large, as a collective, not individual. The Constitution sets a bare bones outline for the militia’s organization. Keeping for its self the organizing, arming and governing of such. The army is addressed as a separate entity elsewhere, so this description fits the national guard.
Broadly speaking, you’re correct, of course.
Some guns’ final cause is target shooting. They’re still tools capable of killing, but their design is somewhat from other firearms. (They’re also hella expensive.)
Some bow and arrows also are made for highly ritualized target shooting, and some swords are exclusively for ceremonial display and so on. There are also non functional ‘toy’ versions of each. All of these weapons were conceived as weapons, and whether or not they function well, or at all, the intention behind the creation of them was specific, with firearms in particular.