WI GOP Platform 2022: 2. Blame Dem Cities for Gun Violence, demand occupying force (National Guard) in Milwaukee, and want to lower gun age to 18, offering school gun classes and guns on school grounds...etc

There is no connection between the theoretical Republican vision of American society and the real world. Now we have even more proof.

More Guns, Safer Society Myth: Republicans confidently told us that criminals would be frightened off by not knowing who had a concealed weapon, resulting in lower crime rates. How'd that work out? Just nonfatal shooting alone...

The Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission recorded a total of 857 nonfatal shootings in 2021 – about 93% more than that of 2019.

Mass Shootings Ignored. Think about that: These recent headlines show how disastrous that dumb idea was..

Still, clueless Republicans decided to blamed Democrats in Milwaukee for a statewide gun policy, ultimately resulting in a request to turn Wisconsin into a POLICE STATE...not kidding. 

Republican Rep. Joe Sanfelippo: "The vast majority of citizens living in Milwaukee are peace-loving, law-abiding citizens who deserve better than to live and work in a warzone-like setting.” 

Democratic Rep. David Bowen: "I hope that Rep. Sanfelippo is aware that sending the National Guard into our communities — literally imposing an occupying force on our neighborhoods — will do nothing but escalate already tense situations. This knee jerk reaction of sending in actual military forces without any training in community relations would make an already bad situation even worse.”

Guns on School Grounds, Classes Respecting Police: Republicans hatched more deadly ideas, ignoring the gun carnage they say requires an occupying force in our cities:

Will this sell more guns? Is this nothing more than a gun seminar and right-wing indoctrination? My god yes, check out the sales pitch, which by the way does not include funding:

Bill co-author Rep. Treig Pronschinske, R-Mondovi said it would require the state superintendent to create a curriculum that includes information on the different types and mechanisms of firearms and ammunition, the principles of firearm safety, the location of safety devices, how to load and unload a gun, how to engage safety devices and how to carry and transport a gun.

Salon: Wisconsin Republicans just passed a spate of gun-rights measures that include lowering the state's concealed carry age requirement from 21 to 18, effectively allowing high school students to carry firearms on school grounds.

Laws Republicans don't like don't matter, so state legislators ignored federal law, creating a "gray" market for firearms for kids:

Under the Gun Control Act (GCA), all firearms other than shotguns and rifles, and all ammunition other than ammunition for shotguns or rifles may be sold only to individuals 21 years of age or older.

Jeri Bonavia, executive director of Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE), told an NBC Chicago affiliate, "this age group that they're talking about would likely need to be purchasing their gun from the gray market, from private sellers, which means that there would be no background check conducted on those purchases."

With ridiculous reasons similar to saying "if you're old enough to wear adult shoes or shave," well, you should be able to have a gun:

"If you're old enough to fight for your country, [if] you're old enough to sign contracts, if you're old enough to decide who the president of the United States is, we think you're old enough to be responsible with your rights and to be able to protect yourself," Republican Rep. Shae Sortwell of Gibson, the bill's chief sponsor, said last week.

Walker's Tax Hikes; Privatized Election Trouble; Paul Ryan won't stop Armed Stalkers and ex-Boyfriends!

Walker’s Hiden Tax Hikes!!!: Gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers is right, Walker's Wisconsin really hasn’t cut taxes much, he’s just shifted it and passed those increases off to local governments by way of school referendums and wheel taxes. And the zero tax on agriculture and manufacturing lets industry off the hook to educate and train their own eventual workforce. When did that become alright? Who does that? Like Evers said, priorities are truly out of whack. WPR:

 "Right now, Wisconsin priorities are out of whack," Evers said. Evers proposed a $1.4 billion budget for K-12 schools over the 2019-21 biennium. "Taxes have gone up under Scott Walker, all those millions of people who voted for school referenda — they did it because Scott Walker has decided not to fund their public schools." He also pointed out wheel taxes to cover road repair work in response to insufficient state allocations. 

"It’s always about priorities — we found $4.5 billion for Foxconn suddenly out of thin air." Evers said he may consider "shifting" income taxes to do away with policies that benefit high earners, including the manufacturing and agriculture tax credit. 

The Walker ... ad saying Evers may raise the gas tax by $1 a gallon to pay for road work. Evers rebuffed that statement. "It’s ridiculous — who the hell would, frankly," he said of a $1 per gallon gas tax increase.

Capitalism now Owns our Elections: And wouldn't you know it, all that concern about voter fraud and the integrity of our elections, fake!!! We’ve handed our basic right to vote to for-profit private businesses because we cut our taxes so much, that states can't fund or manage our elections and voting machines:

Hacks, Security Gaps And Oligarchs: Private companies play a crucial role in elections, from printing and designing ballots, to manufacturing voting machines, to hosting results websites. The industry exists because the local and state governments who run elections don't have the resources or expertise to maintain all aspects of an election themselves.

1. There's the state that discovered a Russian oligarch now finances the company that hosts its voting data.

2. Then there's the company that manufactures and services voter registration software in eight states that found itself hacked by Russian operatives leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

3. And then there's the largest voting machine company in the country, which initially denied and then admitted it had installed software on its systems considered by experts to be extremely vulnerable to hacking.

Paul Ryan Protects 2nd Amendment right to Kill Women: A bit harsh, I know, but true. What else could explain the shocking facts Ryan has decided to ignore. Nothing else:

A short-term extension of the landmark Violence Against Women Act (was) slipped into a must-pass continuing resolution that kept the government funded until Dec. 7. A task force of Democrats and organizations dedicated to fighting domestic violence and sexual assault has been working on how to improve the existing law.

Speaker Paul Ryan won’t update the law to include a gun control that would save women’s lives, it's that simple:

But the poison pill for Republicans is the so-called "boyfriend loophole," to ensure dating partners under a protective order are prohibited from having a firearm. Currently, that law only applies to couples who are married, live together, or share a child. It also extends the firearm prohibition to people accused of stalking. Finally, it restricts people under temporary restraining orders from possessing a gun. 

The task force offers staggering statistics to back up these requests: Nearly half of women killed by intimate partners are killed by dating partners, and 75 percent of women murdered by intimate partners and 85 percent of women who survived murder attempts were stalked first. A 10-city study cited by the task force found that 20 percent of homicide victims with temporary protective orders were murdered within two days of obtaining the order.

If you're a liberal constituent, Vukmir might just reach for that gun out on the table!

Living up to her name "Nurse Ratchet," the not so popular State Sen. Leah Vukmir is now desperately trying to drive up her conservative creds with personal death threats, a popular right-wing tactic used by conservative college speakers so they could demand the big bucks for supposedly risking their lives.

Really, like those in the public eye haven't all gotten one or two "death threats?" To top it off, she saved an old 2011 threat so she could use it in a job interview, like say for Senator?

Anyone else comfortable with their representative flashing heat on a table top? Sure cuts down on unhappy voters. Vukmir's got a theme going; taking on those murderous, terrorist union thugs:



It's a scary liberal terrorist gun-toting world out there filled with government protesters, so we need this kind of authoritarian Senator:



The unhinged terror sympathizing left wing politics of Tammy Baldwin?

Trump thinks London "a knife-armed war zone"?

After the mass shooting at Sante Fe High school, Republicans were quick to roll out their usual "don't bother us now" reasons why people will keep getting killed needlessly by guns; it's a cultural thing. Change that and human nature in the next century, and we'll all be safer.

Wait, remember how concealed carry will deter the bad guys because they won't know who had a gun? Oh yeh, that didn't work.

One Democratic politician bottom lined it when he said mass shooters are only being encouraged, knowing Republicans will never make it harder for them to succeed.

Guns are like Knives? And then there's that ridiculous comparison. Thank god Trump, our 70-year old man-child president, continues to showcase America's gun lunacy in front of the entire astonished world with embarrassing statements like this: 

Trump managed to stoke outrage and anger in both London and Paris this weekend ... addressing the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas the president cited the rising number of knife attacks in Britain while speaking in support of gun rights in the United States ... about halfway through his 50-minute speech. 

“I recently read a story that in London, which has unbelievably tough gun laws, a once very prestigious hospital — right in the middle — is like a war zone for horrible stabbing wounds. Yes, that’s right, they don’t have guns. They have knives, and instead there’s blood all over the floors of this hospital. They say it’s as bad as a military war zone hospital.”

“Knives, knives, knives,” Trump added as he made a stabbing motion.

“London hasn’t been used to that. They’re getting used to it. Pretty tough. The one thing that has always stood between the American people and the elimination of our Second Amendment rights has been conservatives in Congress willing to fight for those rights. We’re fighting.”

Of course, the truth made Trump look like the silly orange clown that he is: 

Trump's comments immediately drew a backlash from Londoners on social media. Charlie Falconer, a lawyer and representative of the left-wing Labour Party in the House of Lords, favorably compared Britain's murder rate to the U.S. rate and added: “Trump lies on everything.”

Right-Wing Victimization: Untruths and Consequences!

Wow, where do I even start going down this series of right-wing rabbit holes? The Hill posted an opinion by Joe Concha that exemplifies the rampant weeping victimhood that has been exploited so perversely by those brave but cowering "real American" Republicans. 

As pointed out by Concha, it all started with the brutal and mindless potshots leveled at Parkland school shooting student David Hogg, a supposed puppet of liberal villain George Soros:

"Ludicrous claims of him being a child actor or being coached soon followed and have, thankfully, been dismissed by those not living in a world of conspiracy theories or blinded by pure partisanship." 

Free Speech has Consequences?: Conspiracy theories come and go quickly, so the only thing left in the Republican arsenal? Personal unrelated attacks, like Laura Ingraham's attempt to discredit Hogg via his grade point average? Good one...

Hogg responded by listing 12 prominent advertisers of "The Ingraham Angle" in calling on a boycott. He proceeded to expand the list to 100 by sharing a list by Media Matters ... Notably, Hogg chose to accelerate his boycott effort after Ingraham's apology.

Silencing Conservatives? Hogg's call to boycott Ingraham's advertisers isn't an attempt to silence anyone, but it is an attempt to hold character assassins accountable for their words. Period.

As Concha pointed out in his crybaby opinion piece, right-wing "victims" are faced with two dangers:

1) Fear of reprisal for criticizing Hogg, who has the benefit of being protected from any criticism while being free to level it.

2) Fear of being seen as "the person attacking a mass-school-shooting survivor," regardless of whether there's a basis for such criticism or not.

Don't forget, poor helpless Laura Ingraham has media giant Fox News behind her, while Hogg has only himself and his ideas.

Concha stuns the senses making it seem like Hogg was being unfair, by praising victim and national conservative columnist Ben Shapiro for speaking out. Oddly it was Shapiro's own publication that ripped Hogg's college rejections, so Shapiro should actually be the last person to make the following argument:

Ben Shapiro. "I look forward to Hogg's apologies to Republicans ('sick f***ers'), Dana Loesch (she was 'hypocritical and disgusting' for criticizing Broward Sheriff Scott Israel), and Marco Rubio (he said Rubio was bribed by the NRA to give away children's lives)," Shapiro wrote in the online publication he founded, The Daily Wire. "You may not like what Ingraham said. You may disagree with it. I did. But it isn't remotely CLOSE to the level of viciousness with which Hogg has attacked people who disagree with him," Shapiro added.

From the party of Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwartzenegger and now TV reality superstar Donald Trump; guess what, these students are now pawns of big money...forget that they have the backing of the American people. From a tweet storm posted by crazy conservative Parkland student Kyle Kashuv:

1. The #March4OurLives had so much potential to be pure and grassroots but became very far from that. It was exactly what conservatives hate and what liberals love. At this point, with millions of dollars involved, every student, including myself, became a pawn in a game of chess.

2. They've agreed to work with organizations like the Woman's March who have affiliations with Lewis Farrakhan - a known antisemite. Regardless of what they think, the cause was hijacked by Hollywood and became a Hollywood event.

3. The media took interest in him to push an agenda. They've propped people up and have turned them into shields. I am not doubting anyone's sincerity, but people have certainly been hiding behind my classmates to push an agenda.

"Not doubting anyone's sincerity"? No, not at all.

Finally this:

And yet...

Finally, finally...I am forever amused by Republicans who think that criticism means they're being silenced, that they're somehow "not allowed" to exercise their First Amendment right.  

Voters choose Lives over Gun Rights.

We continually let gun losers get away with their numbnuts 2nd Amendment argument that they have a right to bear any and all kinds of firearms. 

Nowhere in the 2nd Amendment does it guarantee an individual's right to bear a particular model or style of firearm. If it did, a gun manufacturer could be sued for infringement for simply discontinuing a specific model.

Also, the government could designate a specific gun as the official weapon of the U.S., banning all others and still fulfill the intent and new activist meaning of the 2nd Amendment.

Which leads me to this revelation, where Fox News couldn't even push poll this to further their agenda. Odd isn't it that Republicans aren't even close to the will of the people on guns, yet aren't being held accountable:

A majority of voters in a new poll thinks it is more important to prevent gun violence than to protect gun rights. A Fox News poll finds: 

1. 53 percent of respondents think it is more important to protect citizens from gun violence, compared to 40 percent who think it is more important to protect the rights of people to own guns.

2. 91 percent support requiring criminal background checks for those who want to buy a gun.

3. 84 percent support mandatory mental health checks.

4. Nearly three-quarters of voters also support raising the minimum age to buy all guns to 21.

5. 69 percent support putting armed guards in schools. 

6. 57 percent of voters oppose a proposal to arm teachers.

Student Protesters Nationwide Smarter than Republican Politicians on Gun Crisis.

It always seemed the gun debate pitted logic and common sense against cliches and imagined 2nd Amendment gun rights that even covered specific gun models.

The Children: For example, here are the fearless articulate messages we're hearing from high school students:



and this...



The "Adults:" Now here are the "look over there" distractions being sold first, by Wisconsin's own embarrassing NRA sellout Paul Ryan, who couldn't look or sound more ridiculous:



and this position...where "we has the wisdom."



Republicans are Everything They Say We Are: We have to come up with a new word to describe those blindly hypocritical "real Americans." It's not funny or ironic anymore. How do you have a debate with someone who has no self-awareness at all? For instance...this kid's protest sign and the fact that schools had to cancel their protests due to what, armed threats?

Schools Try to Stop Student Protesters with Threats, Suspensions: Those "constitutional conservatives" out there never did like the First Amendment much. You know, this part...the "right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" lacks the necessary obedience-to-power Trumpian right-wingers can't get enough of.

First, from the Waukesha School District, in the words of one student there:

As students at Waukesha North march and walk out to create a movement, we are being faced with threats of truancy tickets from an administration which has backtracked their own statements to the point of incoherency. First, student organizers at North were threatened by the School District of Waukesha for any type of advocacy in any way pertaining to them or their students. After the district's statement made national news on CNN, Todd Gray gave an interviewing denying his stance against students taking part in the movement.

Then again, they changed their stance, with principals giving guidelines to something closer resemble an assembly than a protest. Still, we tried to find a compromise. The realization that they were warping our ideas beyond recognition came when we were told we couldn't call it a walk out or a protest. The same administration with the audacity to tell us that The Women's March, a group actively advocating for legislative change so that it's harder for students to get hurt, was using us to push their own agenda, turned out to be using us to warp and quiet the story.

And so many others...

Nevada school administrators threatened to withhold students’ diplomas and kick students off sports teams for participating in the walkout.

Students in Texas were told they would be suspended if they protest gun violence, on the same day a local 14-year-old was charged over a shooting threat..."All will be suspended for 3 days and parent notes will not alleviate the discipline ... A school is a place to learn and grow educationally, emotionally and morally. A disruption of the school will not be tolerated.”

Sophomore Rosa Rodriquez the only student to walk out of Sayreville HS this morning #nationalwalkout Under threat of suspension several hundred others allowed to attend gathering in school auditorium #1010wins

A number of high schools cancelled or postponed their planned walkouts after receiving anonymous violent threats related to the protests. In Broughton High School in Raleigh, North Carolina; Hackensack High School in Bergen County, New Jersey; D.C. Everesthigh school in Weston, Wisconsin; Mukwonago High School in Wisconsin; and Romeoville High School in Illinois, protests were cancelled or postponed because of threats, sometimes in instances in which the threats were found not to be credible, out of an abundance of caution. In one instance, Shikellamy High School’s protest in Pennsylvania was cut short because of the threat of a drive-by shooting. Clearview Regional High School and Clearview Middle School in Gloucester County, New Jersey, were closed entirely because of an anonymous threat.

And finally...a school that forced their students to take a side:

An Ohio high school student has found himself at the center of political controversy after an online post about his suspension for staying in class during the national student school walkout went viral ... he chose not to join his classmates because he didn’t go to a designated area of the school where the non-protesters were supposed to be, he didn’t want to choose a side, and instead stayed by himself in a classroom. 

On social media Shoemaker’s now-viral suspension slip has been spun into a tale about how a liberal school system impeded the rights of a student who supported the Second Amendment, On Twitter, users shared Shoemaker’s photos of the suspension slip with hashtags such as #GunControlNever and #LiberalismIsAMentalDisorder. One person tweeted, “To paraphrase George Orwell, some speech is more equal than others.”

To all the students who suddenly realized they all have truly remarkable power. Their message is so clear and so well-stated that it stands in stark contrast to the mindnumbing nonsense spewed out by Republican politicians.

Walker's "Office of School Safety" not really about guns...

Boy, you can just tell Scott Walker is being forced to react to the nationwide movement to back universal background checks and ban high velocity military style weapons. Students figured it out. They're seeking a plan to "prevent" shooters from getting guns and entering schools, not react TO shooters already wondering the halls.

Oh, and just a reminder, guns were supposed to make us safer? 

Walker's "bold" plan is political gobbledygook meant to sidetrack real gun regulation. He doesn't even mention guns...what guns? In fact, why do anything at all...

 "Walker said he thinks tougher gun laws won't deter people who are willing to commit terrorism."

 Walker's just parroting every other Republican. Remember when Walker repealed the 48 hour cooling off period to buy a firearm?

State Rep. Jesse Kremer.“I understand that opponents of this legislation will argue that the two day period is an essential ‘cooling off’ period; However, I do not consider this a viable argument. If someone is intent on committing the crime of murder, they will find a way to do it — be it with a bat, knife or an illegally purchased weapon,”

Walker deep down doesn't really give a damn, as Dane County Executive Joe Parisi pointed out recently:

 Parisi: "It used to be, that there was an exception in the levy limits that would allow schools to spend more money for safety enhancements like that. Gov. Walker also eliminated that exemption to the levy limit, making it more difficult for schools to do that."

Grudgingly Saving Kids Lives: Spending another $100 million, Walker's answer is to throw more money at the problem, create a bureaucratic office to stall or prevent reform under AG Brad Schimel, and tweak laws and procedures already in place since 2009:

1. Establishing the Office of School Safety under the Wisconsin Department of Justice (two permanent positions (a director and program and planning analyst) and two project positions).
2. Requiring Mandatory Reporting for any threats of school violence.
3. Amending bullying statue to include prompt parental notification.

And blah, blah, blah...

4. Incorporating Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) into training programs.
5. Strengthening school safety plan requirements.
6. Encouraging cooperation with local law enforcement.

Oops, Walker forgot to encourage universal background checks and a ban on high capacity military style weapons.

Democrats have been on top of this for years, but for some reason, when they want to spend money - like on school safety...well. Instead of Walker's $100 million plan, local governments can spend what they need, but still come in under that amount:

A Democratic proposal to exempt school safety measures from state-imposed limits on property taxes would cost property owners $85 million, according to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo released Wednesday.

Superintendent Tony Evers also objected to putting the grant program under the control of Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, who, Evers noted, has signaled he is open to arming classroom teachers. Evers, Shilling and Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, said Walker is ignoring student concerns about gun safety. "For a plan that is supposed to be about gun safety, I don’t see anything in here that will keep deadly firearms out of the wrong hands," Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, said in a statement.

School Protection Devices offered up by Wisconsin Inventors!!!

When concealed carry passed in Wisconsin, I told my conservative friend in Milwaukee that not only will firearms change how we personally solve social conflicts for the worse, but it will eventually coerce everyone else to either carry a gun or require armed security at large gatherings. So here we are.

School Security doesn't have to be Costly: The need to shore up school entryways will still cost a lot, thanks to gun drooling juvenile adults that never advanced past their reckless teen years. These are the same rugged individualists complaining about wasteful spending and high taxes. Irresponsible gun laws are now forcing taxpayers to spend more money on schools that have nothing to do with learning.

While high school students advocate passing common sense gun laws that PREVENT school shootings, one student from the dairy state came up with a device we can use in the meantime.

"JustinKase" door jam: A better way to go, for just $95, protects interior classroom doors, and was invented by a Wisconsin Somerset high school student.  His district is snapping them up because they work:

According to a WCCO-TV report, Somerset, Wisconsin, High School Justin Rivard invented a tool called the "JustinKase" that is designed to stop intruders from entering a classroom. More information on the device can be found here.

Gun Shot Detector: An additional option for high schools was developed by a Wisconsin woman in Baraboo, that detects gun shot anywhere in the building:

WISC: Stacy Jax will forever remember Dec. 14, 2012, the day a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and within minutes, killed 20 children and six adults. “My daughter was in kindergarten at the time and I am a previous teacher,” Jax said. “So putting myself exactly in that classroom was very disturbing.”

Several people in the building heard gunshots, but did not immediately recognize them. She came up with Trinity Gunshot Alarm System, a sensor inside a school that could listen for the sound of a gunshot and then set off an alarm similar to a fire alarm. The sensor picked up the gunshots almost instantaneously, meaning in a real active shooter situation everyone would have seconds longer to react. Those seconds, Hodges said, could make all the difference. “It only takes seconds to fire a round, so if you think every time a gun goes off, that’s another victim, every second does count,” he said.

Yay! Scott Walker solving school safety problem he created!

Well, Scott Walker wasn't exactly rushing to protect Wisconsin schools from the next lunatic exercising his 2nd Amendment right to high-velocity high capacity weapons:

CapTimes: Walker said he has had several conversations with lawmakers who are drafting a comprehensive school safety legislative package. Walker could call a special session to bring lawmakers back to the Capitol. 

NRA Money? Lot's of it? Walker not Influenced? Like the Supreme Court said in Citizens United, money does not corrupt:

Walker, who received about $3.5 million from the National Rifle Association for elections in 2010, 2012 and 2014, disputed the argument that contributions from gun rights groups influence policy. He noted that he differs with the group on whether to give firearms to teachers.

Opposing that obviously crazy idea to arm teachers now qualifies as a brilliant decision by our governor? The bar is that low now? 

Walker will Solve Mental Health Failure He Created with Funding/Job Cuts: Maybe we should crack down on the mentally ill?

Yet the party deemed not responsible enough to govern had a few suggestions...

An effort by Senate Democrats to allow schools to exceed their revenue limits to implement school safety plans was blocked by the Republican majority last week. Democrats have also proposed reinstating a 48-hour waiting period for handgun purchases, banning the sale of bump stocks and banning anyone with a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction from owning a firearm.

Nutty right? Next thing you know they'll want to spend hard-earned taxpayers money protecting kids. Dane County Executive Joe Parisi appeared on WKOW's Capitol City Sunday and reminded us what might be keeping many school districts from acting:

Parisi: "It used to be, that there was an exception in the levy limits that would allow schools to spend more money for safety enhancements like that. Gov. Walker also eliminated that exemption to the levy limit, making it more difficult for schools to do that."

Make no mistake, Scott Walker and the Republicans own these mass shootings and the civil decay gun madness brought with it. In fact, Republicans are now trying to blame the gun carnage on gay marriage, liberalism, socialism, the pill, video games, movies, and racial equality...not guns.

Sure, let's change human nature first, got it.

Yet guns keep killing people and Republicans keep pushing myth after insulting myth. Dare we even look at the evidence?

On banning High Velocity Weapons of Mass Murder.

First things first: I recently tweeted this about the 2nd Amendment.

With that in mind, there is no reasonable argument for a right to buy a high velocity weapon, and there's reasonable reason why we can't outlaw their sale.

Understanding why assault-like weapons should be banned came into focus with this editorial by a Florida radiologist who has seen assault weapon wounds that are pretty much impossible to repair. This should change your mind:

As I opened the CT scan last week to read the next case, I was baffled. The history simply read “gunshot wound.” I have been a radiologist in one of the busiest trauma centers in the nation for 13 years, and have diagnosed thousands of handgun injuries to the brain, lung, liver, spleen, bowel, and other vital organs. I thought that I knew all that I needed to know about gunshot wounds,

In a typical handgun injury that I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ like the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, grey bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments … victims who arrived at the hospital that day survived.

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer,

One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle which delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. There was nothing left to repair, and utterly, devastatingly, nothing that could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.

A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than, and imparting more than three times the energy of, a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun. The tissue next to the bullet is elastic—moving away from the bullet like waves of water displaced by the boat—and then returns and settles back. This process is called cavitation; it leaves the displaced tissue damaged or killed. The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. Exit wounds can be the size of an orange.

With an AR-15, the shooter does not have to be particularly accurate. The victim does not have to be unlucky. If a victim takes a direct hit to the liver from an AR-15, the damage is far graver than that of a simple handgun shot injury. Handgun injuries to the liver are generally survivable.

One of my ER colleagues was waiting nervously for his own children outside the school. While the shooting was still in progress, the first responders were gathering up victims whenever they could and carrying them outside the building. Even as a physician trained in trauma situations, though, there was nothing he could do at the scene to help to save the victims who had been shot with an AR-15.

Most of them died on the spot, with no fighting chance at life. Can the answer really be to subject our school children to active shooter drills—to learn to hide under desks, turn off the lights, lock the door and be silent—instead of addressing the root cause of the problem and passing legislation to take AR-15-style weapons out of the hands of civilians?

As a radiologist, I have now seen high velocity AR-15 gunshot wounds firsthand, an experience that most radiologists in our country will never have. I pray that these are the last such wounds I have to see, and that AR-15-style weapons and high-capacity magazines are banned for use by civilians in the United States, once and for all.

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) of 1994 included language which prohibited semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15, and also large-capacity magazines with the ability to hold more than 10 rounds. The ban was allowed to expire after 10 years on September 13, 2004. The mass murders that followed the ban’s lapse make clear that it must be reinstated.

After Florida's Mass Shooting, High School Students Repulsed by Republican Reaction!!!

Maybe the mass shooting issue will finally focus the nations attention on just how inhumane the Republican Party has become, and how sold out it is to NRA business interests. Hell, what percentage of the economy is dependent on firearms manufacturing anyway?

One irony: Republicans who pushed that mindless "civics test" to graduate, who also didn't know ours schools already have detailed U.S. history courses, may be getting activist teenage blow-back from a very educated electorate. How about that! 

Porn vs Assault Weapons...Porn bigger problem: This is that epiphanic moment if there ever was one...Keep in mind this. Porn Viewing Stat: Florida Number 21, 127 page views per capita:

Less than a week after a shooter killed 17 people at a school in Florida, the state's House of Representatives voted not to discuss a ban on assault weapons after earlier declaring pornography a health risk, angering people on social media.

A high school students response to the "adults" in the Florida legislature?

A similar resulted happened right here in Madison:



Trump White House Considered Florida Shooting a Reprieve from Critics: Here's Chris Hayes with the ugly details and other repugnant Republican reactions:



Make Paul Ryan Go Away...Please: After plunging the nation into deeper debt with his dream tax cuts, he's not going to bother with trying to end mass school shootings with common sense, bi partisan gun control that polls see big support for:

Last October, Politico/Morning Consult found that 64 percent of Americans and 55 percent of gun owners believe gun laws should be stricter. Furthermore, 84 percent support universal background checks, 76 percent support a mandatory 3-day waiting period, and 72 percent support a ban on assault weapons.

House Speaker Paul Ryan called the shooting “horrific,” but said Congress shouldn’t do anything until it has “all the facts and data.” There’s just one problem with that: The GOP, at the behest of the National Rifle Association (NRA), is blocking scientists from producing the “facts and data” on gun violence.

Thanks to the Dickey Amendment — a 23-word rider attached to a spending bill in 1996 and enacted in 1997 — research on gun violence has been frozen for two decades. As a result, gun violence was the least-researched cause of death in the U.S. over the past decade, and the answers to even the most basic questions about gun violence prevention remain elusive.

Fox News' Shep Smith railed against the idiocy of the amendment.

“Forget your political arguments. Why can’t we come together as a society and say ‘No, we’re going to study this, we’re going to research this, we’re going to bring our best and brightest together and put them in a room and give them whatever they need to figure out why are our children killing each other more in the United States than anywhere else in the world?' We change the course of human events around the world. We put a man on the moon 50 years ago and we can’t figure out why only our children are running around in their schools killing each other. It doesn’t happen everywhere else. It happens here. Why can’t they put the best and the brightest together to research it, to figure it out, and help us stop it? We’re failing our children."

MSNBC's Nichole Wallace and Steve Schmidt called it like it is; a big GOP problem:

MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace has had enough of Republicans feigning concern about gun violence and doing nothing ... students and parents are holding Republican politicians accountable for inaction ... Republicans are not just refusing to help, they are responsible for the bloodshed. And as a “non-practicing” Republican, Wallace said, she shares the “culpability of a party being held hostage by the NRA.”

“The NRA is a gun lobby out of step with the vast majority of its members that support more common-sense gun measures. Most gun owners are for things like gun locks and gun safes. Most gun owners are for background checks. Democrats who are for gun control are fine with doing more for the mentally ill, but Republicans who are for doing more for the mentally ill never, ever, ever, ever want to have gun control. When is the Republican Party going wake up and realize it has blood on its hands?”