Friday, October 06, 2006

Guns, Guns, and more Guns

What is with the city these days. My normaly quiet southern town is being riddled with bullets. We are literally treating several Gunshots a day here. As in more than one. In the past few weeks we have had at least nine deaths due to the growing violence in the city. And thats just the ones I have heard about, or have been witness to. We had a gunman open fire on a club on one of the islands I think 8 were shot total there, one maybe two deaths from that. A possible gang related shooting where five were treated for bullet holes, one shot fatally. A step father executed his family in a trailer in the north district. Five from that, including the four kids ranging in age from 6-16 years of age. And most recently a robbery gone bad at a resteraunt, also in the north district, were the manager was fatally shot in the head. Then there was the taser death in which a cracked-out man decided to go after police. Now I ve already written about the tasers, but A recent artical in the paper, just really chapped my ass. The man that died, I am very sorry for that, but he went after one of the officer's gun. That actually justifies using deadly force. But instead of using his gun, the officers decided to use the non lethal weapon of choice the taser. Because of the drug use, the man was out of control, and I feel the officers did exactly what they should have. Had they used a gun and shot the man a diffrent debate would be going on. But I won;t get started on the Tasers again. I've already made my point with that one. But the gun violence is new to this city. We have had our share of violence, however it has been getting increaseingly bad. I am getting tired of having to pronouce dead children. A six year old should not have to worry about getting shot in the head while playing.

Being a medic I really have no control over the law enforcement side of things and all I know about forensics is what I see on CSI. I am here only to patch-up the injuried and stabilze them during thier trip to the trauma center. I have no idea how to fix these things. I don't know if gun contol in the answer because they will just find new ways to obtaine weapons. Maybee Chris Rock has the answer. He proposed in an old stand-up routine to instead of making guns harder to get, just make the bullets $15,000 a piece, that way, maybe, these people will think about what they are wasting their 15 grand peice of lead on. Would you really think that a bullet that expensive would be used in a robbery where you might get 300 bucks. I don;t think so.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw that Chris Rock movie! Yep, I agree. I'm originally from England, where regular folks aren't allowed to own guns. In fact, cops didn't even carry guns until fairly recently, and only in big cities like London and Bristol. But that doesn't stop outlaws from obtaining guns somehow. But if the bullets were more expensive, it might be a deterrant! ....My best friend is coming to visit next summer. She's never been to Oregon. It'll blow her mind to see little ma and pa stores called "Good Guys Guns," or to walk into Walmart and go to the gun section!

Anonymous said...

I thought a long time before I wrote a comment. I thought about a lot of things I might like to say. I think all I'll say is this: I enjoy the shooting sports and I'm not a criminal so I'm not much of a gun control fan. I think we'd help save a lot more children if we all worked harder to reduce motor vehicle related deaths.

No

painter in hiding said...

No...I agree with the MVA, I have seen far more deaths related to MVA than anything else trauma-wise. But there was just somwthing about seeinf 4 dead kids. I'm not normally a fan of gun contol myself, I havea very good friend who is a gun collector. But At the moment I worte the post, I was pissed. How can we fix this?