Doctor shows heartless GOP Senate video of what assault rifles do when bullet explodes inside you

[FourScore]

Tue Mar 26, 2013 at 09:36 AM PDT
Doctor shows heartless GOP Senate vid of what assault rifles do when the bullet explodes inside you
by MinistryOfTruth

Senator Diana Feinstein had a Doctor who witnessed the horror of Sandy Hook testify before the Senate, and he brought a video that every American should see.

This is the difference between a hunting gun and a gun for war.

First, watch the video. They used a test rifle, the Bushmaster, to show how injuries from such a weapon are "unsurvivable".

. . . Here is a short transcript

Sen. Feinstein: "Did you actually treat Sandy Hook victims?"

Sandy Hook Doctor: (((clears throat))) "Yes, I was, I was, I was in the ER that day when the victims came in."

Sen. Feinstein: "Can you describe the kinds of wounds and the number of bullets in these small bodies?"

Sandy Hook Doctor: "There's privacy rules that prevent from detailing the type of wounds or, but, most of it, most of them, the victims that actually didn't come in, and we had such horrific injuries to little bodies, that's what happens. They never even make it in the hospital. The coroner from the State of Connecticut, when he did his review, and this is public knowledge, stated that each body had three to eleven bullets, okay, when the child has three to eleven bullets in them and it is an assault type bullet that explodes inside the body, it doesn't go through a straight line, it goes in and then it opens up, that, that, that's not a survivable injury. So, with respect to the families who lost loved ones and had them come into the emergency room for (inaudible) rules I, I, I can't describe the specifics but I hope I have at least painted a picture of what went on."

Sen. Feinstein: "Thank you very much. Did you have something that you wanted to show us?

Sandy Hook Doctor: "There was a very brief video, about one minute, and the point of the video is to highlight the difference between a bullet that goes into a body that's from a .22, and I'm not a ballistics expert, but just like basically a handgun versus an assault weapon, and it just highlights the difference in damage inside a person's body, so, if we may . . .

(((Video Begins . . . )))

SNIP

...Here's a thought. If you support the wars and want a gun designed for war join the armed forces, and if you can't do that you are a coward. You can have guns for hunting and guns for self defense, but guns for war are for soldiers and you shouldn't be allowed to play soldier in your backyard while we are fighting the war YOU demanded overseas with someone else's kid in harms way.

Here's another thought to all those anti-abortion fanatics, if you are brought to tears over a clump of unformed cells but choose your precious gun over someone else's fully formed child you aren't allowed to say shit about abortion anymore.

And how appropriate that the video ends with Senator Feinstein turning to her side and saying "Um, Senator Graham?"

I leave the floor to you.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/26/1197067/-Doctor-shows-heartless-GOP-Senate-vid-of-what-assualt-rifles-do-when-the-bullet-explodes-inside-you

[Kingofalldems]

1. Look out

[guardian]

2. There is no difference.

"This is the difference between a hunting gun and a gun for war. "

'Hunting' bullets make the same sort of wounds by design. Additionally the doctor's testimony references a .22 caliber bullet and the damage. I'm sorry but a little 6 year old child shot three to eleven times at point blank range it a .22LR are "unsurvivable." So the testimony in the video clip, while emotional, does nothing to bolster the argument for AWB.

[Thinkingabout]

3. I attempted several times to explain to very pro anti abortionist to leave these weapons

Available to leave carnage like Sandy Hook can not remain against abortion and be for guns to be available for abortion of lives. I ask him one time if he was willing to put his wife, children and grand children up for target practice and he thought I had lost my mind but this is what could happen with the high power, high capacity weapons available. There was 20 children killed with three to eleven bullets in each, this has to stop. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!

[guardian]

6. non sequitur

The existence of something potentially dangerous doesn't mean it will assuredly be used to kill. Your post/argument makes no more sense than saying

I ask him one time if he was willing to run over his wife, children and grand children with a steamroller and he thought I had lost my mind but this is what could happen with the steamrollers weapons available.

[TroglodyteScholar]

14. Talk about your non sequitur!

Did you type this load of horseshit word substitution with a straight face?

A steamroller isn't designed to kill. But guess what is....

[GreenStormCloud]

4. Any rifle chambered for .223 can do that.

It is the cartridge, not the rifle that makes the difference. The Bushmaster is no more deadly than any other .223 rifle.

The .223 is a low powered cartridge, illegal for use on deer because it is unlikely to cause quick death. Hunting rifles are chambered for more powerful rounds that do more damage so that the deer will drop dead quickly.

Almost all center-fire rifle cartridges will do more damage, especially if loaded with soft point bullets. There is nothing magical about the AR-15 that makes it super-deadly. The doctor may know medicine, but he doesn't know guns and bullets.

The handgun bullet that was used was from a .22LR, which is the lowest powered handgun cartridge normally used. Compare his handgun in ballistics gelatin video of the .22LR to this video of a .45 jacketed hollow point and of a 9mm JHP.

The .45 does almost as much damage as the .223.

[One_Life_To_Give]

5. Then we bought a flawed weapon

One of the supposed benefits of the 223/556 was to produce wounded instead of dead enemies. Simply because it takes more enemy away from the fight if they a wounded rather than killed. Perhaps we should return to the M14 and it's 30cal round if the 223 is more deadly.

[Recursion]

7. That's true for adults

And that was one of the reasons for the military switching to a less powerful round.

[guardian]

8. So you are in favor

of shooting children with M14s?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

11. There is no preferred caliber for shooting children.

What a ridiculous question.

[guardian]

12. Of course

It was meant as a counterpoint to a ridiculous post.

[X_Digger]

15. Yet the point was factually correct.

Adoption of the 5.56 round was in part because a wounded soldier requires more resources than a dead one. From a strategic standpoint, the military would rather occupy two other enemy soldiers caring for or carrying their wounded cohort than kill one soldier.

One wounded enemy soldier + 1/2 people attending to him > one dead soldier.

[GreenStormCloud]

10. That isn't the reason that we switched to the 5.56 from the 7.62.

Amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics. - military proverb

The 7.62 has a longer range, greater penetration of cover, but is larger and heavier. The 5.56 doesn't reach as far nor will it penetrate as much but it is smaller and lighter. A soldier can carry about 2.5 times more rounds of 5.56 than he can of 7.62. Most rifle combat takes place at under 300 meters so the extra range of the 7.62 doesn't help. The extra rounds that a soldier can carry mean that he can sustain combat longer without resupply than the 7.62.

It means that less logistics transport has to be dedicated to rifle ammo and can be used for other war-fighting material.

[Xithras]

9. The doctor actually missed one important point. The bullet he used would have been illegal in a war

The rifle round he used was a conventional American soft tipped hunting rifle bullet. They are designed to fragment on impact so that the target animal will bleed out and die as quickly as possible. Believe it or not, this actually reduces the animals suffering. Most of the AR-15 clone ammo sold to consumers in the U.S. is of this type, but so is every bullet sold for every .30-06 bolt action deer hunting rifle. Bullets designed for animal hunting are designed for maximum lethality.

Ironically, the actual bullets used by our military in actual military assault weapons do LESS damage. Bullets of the type he demonstrated are banned on the battlefield by the Hague Convention, and all major armies use FMJ (full metal jacket) ammunition instead. FMJ stays together in one piece and creates more surviveable bullet wounds. In fact, most of the time FMJ ammunition will simply pass right through the body of the target in one piece, without fragmenting or expanding at all. FMJ ammunition was mandated by the Hague Convention because the use of soft-tipped ammunition against human targets was considered cruel and inhumane. It's a war crime for an army to deliberately deploy it onto the battlefield.

So, if the intent was to demonstrate the danger of guns meant for war, this guy missed the mark. He demonstrated the dangers of a hunting bullet that would be illegal on any battlefield on the planet. He did, however, brilliantly demonstrate why you should avoid walking through the forest during hunting season.

[Clames]

17. I'll have to look for it when I get home...

...but I have a book published by the military some years ago about terminal ballistics of small arms and other conventional weapons. One diagram shows the 5.56mm vs 7.62mm gelatin tests and the 7.62mm was basically identical to the 5.56 except scaled up almost 2x.

[progressoid]

19. So you're saying that these bullets are illegal in warfare but legal in our backyards.

Yeah, no irony there.

[hack89]

20. Any hunting cartridge or police handgun cartridge is illegal in warfare

the 5.56 is not unique in this respect. Expanding bullets have been the norm for hunting for decades while hollow points have been the standard for pistols for just as long. This is nothing new.

[Xithras]

26. Yep.

Shoot a deer with the .223 FMJ round used in AR-15's by our soldiers and it might take it HOURS to die. Shoot a human with that bullet and it might take several hours as well.

Shoot a deer with a .223 softpoint and it will probably be dead within a few minutes. Ironically, most serious hunters don't even like the .223 for deer hunting because it doesn't do ENOUGH damage. The ammunition of choice for a deer is still a .30-06 softpoint, which will kill a deer (and a human) almost instantly from organ trauma and blood loss alone.

It's an interesting dichitomy. With humans, we mandate the use of a bullet that causes the least amount of damage possible, because we want to give the human soldiers to have a chance at being saved. With animals, we use (and often mandate) the use of a bullet that causes the most damage possible, because we want the animal to die instantly to reduce its suffering.

Clearly, it's a problem when someone uses animal ammunition on a human. You end up with a level of lethality that even a soldier isn't allowed to use.

There's no way to fix it without banning hunting though. That won't happen in our lifetimes.

[X_Digger]

13. What a mish-mash of mis-statements and half-truths.

What the doctor describes and the video shows is the difference between a round-nosed bullet of 22lr caliber and a hollow-point bullet of 5.56 x 45/ .223 caliber.

For size comparisons of the ammo:

(first from the left versus third)

Any comparison between a 22lr and .223 is an apple to an orange. A .223 travels at 900 - 1100 m/s, a 22lr at 350 - 400 m/s and depending on bullet weight, has about 6-8 times the kinetic energy of a 22lr.

Secondly, No, 22lr is not the same as 'handgun' bullets- handguns come in many different calibers, so lumping all handguns into a category similar to 22lr is disingenuous at best.

Third, ammunition of the same caliber is interchangeable. So called "assault weapons" don't take one kind of bullet, as compared to "hunting rifles"- the same hollow-point .223 ammunition used in a hunting rifle is just fine for an AR-15, and vice-versa.

Police use hollow-point ammunition because it is less likely to go through a perpetrator and into someone else. The same applies for those who carry for self-defense. This is also the same ammunition that hunters use when hunting wild game, for similar reasons- it stops inside the animal and stops the animal quicker, with less pain and suffering.

The doctor is correct- he's not a ballistics expert.

[hack89]

16. "I'm not a ballistics expert" - he definitely proved that.

why did he use a .22 for comparison as opposed to an actual bullet used for hunting?

You say I can have a gun for hunting - well, that hunting rifle will shoot a bullet that weighs twice as much and will hit the target with 2.5 times the energy of a .223. And it will use a bullet specifically designed to expand to maximize damage.

There is a reason in many states it is illegal to use an AR-15 for hunting. The bullet isn't lethal enough.

[Thinkingabout]

21. The dr may not be a ballistic expert but as a dr in an emergency room does have experience

In attending to gun shot victims. I think he was trying to explain the difference in a .22 shot wound and wound from a .223. It was not a pretty scene.

[hack89]

22. Any bullet would not be a pretty scene compared to a .22

it was a deliberate attempt to paint 5.56mm as some super deadly, military super killer bullet that has no place in civilian hands. Which is pure bullshit considering civilians routinely use bullets for hunting that make the 5.56mm look like the .22 in comparison.

[Thinkingabout]

23. Point made, dr is perhaps more experienced in gun shot wounds and this was his testimony.

[hack89]

24. I think Feinstein was merely using him to score cheap political points.

I don't question his sincerity and I can't imagine the horror he went though that day.

[Thinkingabout]

25. He was an eye witness of those who came into his emergency room, who else would you suggest

To testify?

[hack89]

28. An actual expert on guns and bullets

that wouldn't make a hash of basic facts and leave listeners with an incorrect and distorted impression on the power of the AR-15.


He should have stopped talking about ballistics after admitting that he was not an expert on ballistics.

[Thinkingabout]

29. The dr was testifing to what condition the victims were in when they arrive in an emergency room.

Unless a ballistic expert is also an emergency room Dr then that person would not be able to testify to the condition of the victims. You can call it political all you want but facts are facts and the condition of the victims is important at these hearings, it is not the gun which was the victim.

[hack89]

30. The point of the hearings was to get those guns banned

it was not an inquiry into the shooting. It was to further the Feinstein's AWB. It was stage managed by Feinstein to inflame public opinion. And it worked - look at the OP's comments. The poster really believes that there is something special and unique about those bullets.

What is your take away from the Dr's testimony? Do you think AR-15s are uniquely lethal rifles that have no place in civilian hands?

[Thinkingabout]

31. In the hands of those incapable of possessing or having the weapons available this is what happens.

Do you have a solution to stop the gun violence?

[hack89]

32. Universal background checks, limits on mag sizes, crack down on illegal gun sales,

single payer health care with mental health coverage (since the majority of gun deaths are suicides) and focus the justice system on violent criminals (put people away for a long time for illegal use of guns).

Something for you consider. About 325 people are murdered by rifles every year. Handguns kill 30,000 between crime and suicide. So why are we talking about rifles?

The fact of the matter is that the genie is out of the bottle - you are not going to see a handgun ban, especially after Heller. So stop focusing on the guns and let focus on the people that use them

[Thinkingabout]

34. Maybe in the case of Sandy Hook with 20 children and 6 staff members dead with from

Three to eleven shots in them might be a problem when this happened in a short time frame.

[hack89]

36. Have you forgotten Va Tech?

the worse school shooting in American history done with a pistol. A semi-automatic pistol shoots just as fast as an AR-15 and is just as lethal.

If any gun control law would not have prevented Va Tech then it will not stop mass shootings.

[Thinkingabout]

37. No I havent, neither have I forgotten many others, my point was to show how many rounds was

Fired in a very short period of time. The availably of high capacity options allowed this to occur, its about responsible sensible people, it has not occurred by natural means and doesn't seem something NRA pushes for so it has become something we will need to regulate. This is not the fault of the victims. Gun violence has gone too far.

[hack89]

38. I support a ban on high capacity magazines.

but until the conversation focuses on handguns, talk of banning specific types of weapons is just feelgood conversation that does not make anyone safer.

[jmowreader]

33. AR-15s are lethal rifles that have no place in civilian hands

Not because they are "uniquely lethal," whatever in hell that's supposed to mean (almost any hunting rifle on the market is "more lethal" than an AR-15) but because they are not lethal enough.

They are okay for killing coyotes and bobcats, marginal for deer and wolves, and totally worthless for anything larger than a deer.

They are, however, good for killing people.

And the twenty dead kids should be inflammation enough for anyone.

[hack89]

35. What about AR-15s in different calibers?

a 6.8mm or a 6.5 Grendal for example. Excellent deer hunting rounds. One reason ARs are popular is because they are very flexible.


In 5.56 they are the standard for competitive target shooting. That is what I use mine for.

[sikofit3]

18. OMG

I hate all the gun threads on DU and elsewhere.... all details becomes a tedious fight over the craziest shit which evolves into an off the topic irrelevance of what is the real issue. Death, of lots of children, elderly and adults. I always here, well with this regulation and that regulation lives can be saved and then fucking freedom shit just gets me every time. Yeah I know, I enjoy what freedoms we have left and half of them aren't even real just displayed on paper or cheap sound bites for the NRA and the anti gay people etc.... the society that we have today doesn't deserve these freedoms because they can't handle them (however this is not me saying they should be gone). These freedoms were given and based on people making a rational decision and following rules of safety which we see works so well. No one will take these guns away, no one, it is all just another noise machine and we now have another larger issue to divide the American public which will keep our broken political system in business.... I am an optimist at heart but this stuff kills any optimism I have about humanity... un-fucking believable what we have become, soulless individuals too selfish to change ways to save innocent lives cause god forbid bullets are rationed and some rules are put in place to keep combat weapons in combat. Flame away at me people I really don't care..

[kudzu22]

27. Doctor, is it your testimony that being shot does damage to the body?

Ok, thanks. We didn't know that. Thank you, doctor. Next!

[OldDem2012]

39. Most people don't know the extent of the damage done after a round impacts a human body....

....and to that point, the doctor's testimony was quite good.

[kudzu22]

40. Ok, but most people know that guns are for killing, right?

I don't see how the extent of damage is relevant to this discussion. The argument wouldn't be any different if guns tickled you to death.

[CTyankee]

41. Oh, I think you know full well that it makes a great deal of difference.

Seeing the remains of little children blown to pieces would indeed be a terrible shock to anyone's sensibilities. You understand that, of course. That is why you try to minimize the issue with such a statement as the last sentence of your post. Well, you can't do it and you know you can't. If those pics were out and abroad in the land, there would sickened outrage by many, many more people. You attempt to sanitize this argument. It won't work...

[OldDem2012]

42. Thanks for your concern. Duly noted and appropriately filed. nt.

[NutmegYankee]

43. The family of teacher Victoria Soto are right behind the Doctor.

I'm glad they got invited to this hearing. It must be tough to listen too though.

The explosion problem has been known for a long while with the .223, so bad that the NATO round was modified to try to prevent that tumble. The damage is similar to that described in the youth shot by the DC sniper several years ago. He was also using an AR-15.