Agnostic.com

7 11

LINK A surgeon explains why AR-15-style rifles are so deadly

by Nicole Karlis

The semi-automatic weapon known as an "AR-15-style" rifle has become synonymous with mass shootings in America. Indeed, this style of gun is often in the news for being the gun of choice for many mass shooters.

Most recently, the weapon used during the mass shooting at a suburban Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, was a Smith & Wesson M&P15 — an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle made by gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. In Uvalde, Texas, an AR-15-style rifle was used to fatally shoot nineteen students and two teachers at an elementary school. An AR-15-style rifle was also used in the Sandy Hook massacre.

The "AR" in "AR-15" rifle stands for ArmaLite rifle, which is the name of the company that developed the weapon in the 1950s. The term "AR-15-style" is now used to refer to any rifle of that style. The original rifle was made for military use, but when the company failed to get buyers, it rebranded it for civilian use. Today, there are many different AR-15-style rifles on the market. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, there are an estimated 19.8 million AR-15 style rifles in circulation in the country — a significant increase from the 8.5 million that were circulating before the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004.

As AR-15s are repeatedly used in mass shootings across the country, doctors have spoken up on what treating patients with injuries sustained by these weapons are like— and how these wounds are more severe and disconcerting than, say, from a knife or handgun.

"In a typical handgun injury, which I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ such as the liver," Heather Sher, a radiologist who treated victims of the Parkland shooting in 2018, wrote in The Atlantic. "To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, gray bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments."

But when she looked at a CT scan from one of the Parkland victims, who was shot by an AR-15-style rifle, "the organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, and was bleeding extensively." She was amazed at how a gunshot wound could cause so much damage.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

A semi-automatic weapon like an AR-15-style one automatically reloads after each shot, and can hold around 30 bullets before the shooter needs to reload the gun. Besides its efficiency, what makes an AR-15-style rifle dangerous is that it has a higher muzzle velocity, meaning that a bullet travels nearly 3,000 feet per second. For comparison, a ​9-millimeter handgun's bullets travel at 1,200 feet per second.

Dr. Joseph Sakran, director of emergency general surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a gun violence survivor, told Salon in an interview to think about the injuries sustained by an AR-15-style rifle as if there are two types of cavities created by the weapon.

"Depending upon the trajectory, if it goes through a named artery or a vital organ, you can imagine that trajectory of simply that bullet and that permanent cavity is going to cause life threatening damage," Sakran said. The second cavity he likened to when a big boat leaves behind a bumpy wake in a lake. ""You have bullets that are traveling at high speeds that result in a significant amount of energy distributed to the surrounding tissue, causing this temporary cavity that causes a significant blast injury that can be very, very deadly and cause significant injury."

Sakran said when treating patients who have been shot with AR-15-style guns, the "destruction is much greater" than that caused by a handgun. Sakran said body tissue can be so "destroyed and pulverized" that it is hard to treat.

In other words, these fast-moving bullets essentially create shock waves in the body that cause tremendous damage to organs and tissue. Since different types of AR-15-style rifles use different kinds of bullets, Sakran said the severity of the injury to the permanent cavity can depend on the bullet. But the velocity is a huge factor, regardless of bullet size.

Though we know that the speed of the bullet makes them tear through organs in a much more dramatic fashion, it is hard to quantify the likelihood of surviving a shot from an AR-15-style rifle due to all the other compounding factors.

"I think it's hard to really kind of put into numbers, the likelihood of surviving, because it's so dependent upon trajectory," Sakran explained, providing an example of being shot, but the bullet grazes the top of his flesh. "I'm going to have a flesh wound, but if that is a little bit lower, say into a different angle, and it gets my femoral artery, then my risk of death has just gone up."

"It's not uncommon to see bones that are disintegrated," Sakran said.

Survival could depend on if a main vessel is hit or not. Still, Sakran said when treating patients who have been shot with these kinds of guns, the "destruction is much greater" than that caused by a handgun. Sakran said body tissue can be so "destroyed and pulverized" that it is hard to treat.

"It's not uncommon to see bones that are disintegrated," Sakran said. "You can have tissue that looks incredibly jagged and just even has become necrotic in how it looks and how it feels because, again, that energy and that blast effect has really impacted and caused this kind of cavitation that occurs."

Sakran said this kind of sustained injury can be especially life-threatening in children.

"In children, you can imagine that their vital organs are much more narrowly condensed, right?" Sakran said. "It's not a surprise how devastating these injuries are for children."

Though the protocol is the same for gunshot victims regardless of the specific weapon, Sakran said that when he's treating a victim of an AR-15-style rifle, in the back of his mind he knows the injuries are more likely to be life-threatening.

"I know that I'm probably about to face really significant intra abdominal injuries or this is going to require some extensive operative intervention to save this person," Sakran said. "It is just very clear to me that the amount of death and destruction that one can cause with an assault-style rifle cannot be compared to someone [hurt] with a knife or even a handgun."

HippieChick58 9 July 13
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

7 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

1

the greater the velocity the greater the hydraulic trauma inflicted....its the round..not so much the weapon

1

I thought the simple, two or three words explanation, was, "The weapon fires bullets."

3

So sad. Can't understand why any civilian would need one. We here in Hawaii are extremely concerned since the new SCOTUS ruling about guns. Hawaii has some of the strictest gun safety laws in the country. We just don't have many guns in our state and that has kept all of us safer, I'm sure.

So far this year 2022, up until the SCOTUS decision, our state had issued ONE gun permit. Now since the new federal decision over-ruling our Hawaii State Rules, we've had SEVENTY-SEVEN gun permits issued. More people are carrying guns, when previously very few had. So sad that SCOTUS can over rule what we feel is safest for us in Hawaii.

SO SORRY to here this.

1

I can only say it again..start showing the little body bags..

As gross as it sounds, I think showing the carnage, the un sanitized crime scene could be a deterrent. On the video of the officers standing in the hallway as shots were ringing out, they scrubbed out the screams of the kids. It allows people to overlook the true horror of what was going on while these guys were answering their phone and sanitizing their hands. Maybe puking over pictures of mangled kids would make someone hesitate to buy one of these weapons. People who have been in war zones and first responders should not be the only ones who have to suffer the nightmares these weapons cause. It should be mandatory to sit through a slide show of wounds they cause before you can buy one.

0

Guess the gun and caliber used to not pay for beef…..

Without population control of deer and related species we would be over run as their predators no longer exist in sufficient numbers. That has to be part of the conversation. Some may get upset at the idea of killing Bambi, but a healthy balanced ecosystem means Bambi will be healthier and happier. It doesn't require military style weapons.

@MizJ
Define ‘military style weapons’

1

A .22 hand gun will do the same or more Damage as a .223 or 556. A 16 ga shot gun will do a hell of a lot more damage. A 10 gage shotgun can take a head. A Goodyear tire can do the same thing. A ballbat can do similar. An F150 can cut a person in half with the bumper alone. Trains can flat destroy some shit. 9/11 showed us all how dangerous jets can be.

I say we get rid of anything that can hurt other people. Spoons and shoe strings included. But I want the military to get rid of them too. Do that, and I’ll hide and keep all my shit and support it.

5

A few pics of Uvalde would get the message across far more succinctly. Which is why of course we never see them.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:676605
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.