[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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