[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 11, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        BEING ON THE FRONT LINE

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, earlier this week an article 
appeared in the Washington Post that described an ordinary day at 
MedSTAR unit, the medical shock trauma acute resuscitation unit in 
northwest Washington. As the recipient of potentially fatal gun shot 
victims, MedSTAR witnesses firsthand the crime and bloodshed that is 
taking place on our streets. I would ask that the article be printed 
for the Record.

                [From the Washington Post, May 5, 1994]

                   The Tragic Holes in Pro-Gun Logic

                           (By Steve Twomey)

       Today, the House of Representatives will vote on whether to 
     ban some assault weapons, and it's having a tough time 
     deciding, hard as that may be to believe. Maybe Gage Ochsner 
     can help the good congresspeople. He knows a lot about guns. 
     More precisely, he knows bullets.
       Ochsner, a trauma surgeon, sat yesterday a few feet from 
     the room where he struggles to offset what the evil bullets 
     do, although even when he does his best work, it's often not 
     enough. He must go out to the waiting family and announce 
     that a son, brother or husband is gone. The ensuing anguish 
     often winds up expressed as a fist on the nearest wall. ``I 
     don't know how many times we've had to fix plaster,'' Ochsner 
     said.
       His office is the MedSTAR unit, the Medical Shock Trauma 
     Acute Resuscitation unit, a kind of super emergency room at 
     Washington Hospital Center in Northwest Washington. If a life 
     edges near the Big Precipice because of a bullet, a knife or 
     an accident, it often is pulled back in one of the seven bays 
     of MedSTAR.
       It's where a life had come, in fact, exactly 24 hours 
     before our conversation. Code Yellow: an inbound male, with a 
     whole lot of holes. Ochsner, a tall, lanky Oklahoman of 40, 
     led the response team Tuesday.
       Oddly, he doesn't work for Washington Hospital Center. He's 
     a commander in the Navy. But the Navy figures that a great 
     way to give its doctors experience in treating the horrible 
     wounds they will encounter in combat is to send them to 
     MedStar.
       Ponder that: Military doctors obtain battlefield expertise 
     by working at a civilian hospital in peacetime.
       It is war out there on our streets.
       In the six years he's been working at MedSTAR, Ochsner 
     estimates, he has treated at least 500 gunshot victims. In 
     other words, he alone has treated almost as many casualties 
     in a single District hospital as the U.S. military treated 
     during the Gulf War. He says doctors who come from France, 
     Britain and Australia to get smarter about treating 
     ``penetration'' wounds sometimes see more of them at MedSTAR 
     in one night than they do in their countries in one year.
       Tuesday was just one more case. But it's never just one 
     more case. Ochsner said they all get to him. The victims 
     never become just a problem on a table. Tuesday, it was a kid 
     no more than 18. He appeared to be in great shape, Ochsner 
     recalled, except, of course, for the gaping holes.
       He had four in the abdomen.
       And one on the left side.
       And one on the right side.
       And two in the neck.
       ``And I'm not sure,'' Ochsner said, ``but I think he had 
     some extremity wounds.''
       How many were entrance wounds and how many were exit 
     weren't Ochsner's immediate concern. The kid was in cardiac 
     arrest and had been for some time, and the chance of saving 
     him was nearly zero, but the team opened his chest to gain 
     access to vital organs.
       When Ochsner started at MedSTAR, he didn't see so many 
     people hit so many times. While it's obvious that having 
     multiple wounds is worse than having one, they pose specific 
     problems for an emergency-room physician. The more wounds, 
     the greater the blood loss and the greater the chance the 
     victim will die not from any one wound, but from the 
     cumulative effect. And multiple wounds make it hard for a 
     doctor to trace the internal paths of bullets: Which one went 
     where and hit what?
       Of course, multiple wounds are the specialty of assault 
     guns. They fire zillions of rounds in nanoseconds, increasing 
     the chance that the target will be (a) hit and (b) hit often. 
     And the target usually is human, since shooting deer or tin 
     cans with an assault weapon is no test of any true hunter or 
     marksman.
       Once the kid's chest was cut open, Ochsner looked at the 
     heart. It held no blood. One of the bullets had cut his aorta 
     and his ticker had pumped itself dry. The MedSTAR team had no 
     hope.
       Anything unusual about how this all unfolded?
       ``No,'' Ochsner said.
       Ponder that one too: An otherwise healthy teenager winds up 
     riddled with holes on a spring day and dies, and there's 
     nothing unusual about it. Happens all the time.
       Maybe I shouldn't have brought up this kid. Ochsner said 
     the weapon of damage was a .357 magnum, not an assault 
     weapon, so the teenager would not have been saved by a ban 
     and isn't directly relevent to the House debate.
       Except, of course, he is. What happened to him is what's 
     going on out there. When the extraordinary act of killing 
     becomes ordinary, we have reached madness. To do nothing is 
     to conspire. The problem with trauma,'' Ochsner said, ``is 
     that it's not cancer. It's not something where the family, 
     they're kind of prepared. . . . they may have had lunch with 
     this person. They may have just talked to him. Then he's 
     dead. It's a very abrupt process.''
       Banning assault weapons won't stop this process. It will 
     change very little on the streets, because assault weapons 
     just aren't used that often. But it certainly will do no 
     harm. Not even the National Rifle Association really believes 
     these weapons are useful for anything but shooting people. It 
     is fighting a stupid fight because it believes the ultimate 
     goal is confiscating all guns.
       Ochsner doesn't want that. Neither do I. He's a hunter. But 
     he has no problem with tough regulations and banning a kind 
     of weapon whose sole purpose is to create work for him. How 
     anyone could have difficulty with that ``completely escapes 
     me.
       Me too, doc. Maybe Congress should watch you battle a Code 
     Yellow. Maybe Congress should help you repair the 
     walls.

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