Un real !!!

[the_real_wild1]

Most on here wont know but I was actually really good friends with a person that went on a rampage with a gun. I walked away from the friendship many years before it happened but could see signs well before anyone else did. When it happened it seemed like I was the only one that was not surprised but it. It was a sad day for everyone involved. There are signs that a person is unstable but with everyone being so sensitive about the littlest things there is nothing you can do about it. I really don't know what the answer is.

 

[Riverjet]

Sad story indeed Mamma! Sorry you had to go through that. There was a teenaged boy in Vanderhoof a few years ago that suffered an identical fate as this young girl. He was the boyfriend of a friend of mine and was shot by his pal while playing with a gun he thought wasn't loaded, it was a 22 as well. Hopefully the people responsible for this situation pay a price for their carelessness. Irresponsible people getting their hands on firearms is never a good thing.

A little story that I hope will help some of you think carefully about this issue:

This happened the week before Christmas, my birthday actually. All I saw when the ambulance brought her in was a tiny hole just below the left side of her rib cage. It kinda looked like a melted chocolate chip, if you really care to know. No other marks would bely the devastating damage that lay beneath. Just as she was transferred to our ER Trauma bed, the heart monitor began to blare. Her heart had flipped into a rhythm that was incompatible with life. A nurse started compressions while I intubated and bagged her... her eyes closing for the last time. And so it began: four grueling hours of trying to save the life of an 18 year old girl, shot ACCIDENTALLY by her own boyfriend with a LEGALLY OBTAINED .22 caliber gun as her parents and brother watched. Never in my career have I done CPR as the surgeon did a thoracotomy, splitting her tiny body from stem to sternum, but this day I did. Over and over we brought her back, only to have the threads of her life, blipping across the monitor fade away again and again. We brought in her family so they could see how hard we were trying to save her. So that they would at least know, if she didn't make it, that the team who worked on her gave a ch!t: that we cried buckets as we hung IV's, pumped in blood and urged her lungs to accept the breaths we offered. Finally, it seemed as if something held together and we made a dash for the O.R., racing her open body and pouring wound through the hallways to one last ditch attempt at life. Three surgeons worked tirelessly, clamping her aorta and repairing the damage as they discovered it, but the blood just wouldn't seem to cease finding a source. As fast as the fluid went into her, it filled her lungs and seeped out her endotracheal tube. Having done every last procedure they could think of, the surgeons piled her back together, unable to close the gash across her abdomen because of all the trauma that had laid its hand inside of her. They covered her and she made the trip to ICU. She would either make it now or her family would say goodbye. Ten minutes after her arrival, loved one after loved one after loved one filed in to lay their tears on her broken body and say a final farewell. There was no life left. While they watched, I suctioned as much of the frothy blood from her lungs as I could and turned off the ventilator. My voice failed me and I whispered a silent "I'm sorry" that rang empty in the air. There are no words for the hurt that enveloped those people. Beyond reason. Beyond imagination. Haunting to this day... I finished my night shift in a blur, and returned home, but sleep never comes easy after something like that. I can only imagine how her family tries to erase those visuals and compartmentalize the brutality of it.

I have debated whether or not to tell this story, but in the end decided that if it helps even one person decide that the gun they keep in their home with children is too big of a liability, it is worth it. And if it makes even one of you lock your guns up a little tighter or move them to a different location, then it is worth it. Bottom line: Guns DO kill people when in the wrong hands... The common denominator is ALWAYS the gun- careless people with butter knives rarely kill people... But careless people with GUNS do... If you could ask that girl's family what they would do differently, what do you think they would say? A father of a boy who turned a gun on two of his school mates appeared on TV shortly after the Sandy Hook killings, and his answer to that question was that he wouldn't have had a gun. He knew his son struggled socially and academically. The father described how his heart had broke over and over watching his son struggle to gain his footing in society, and how every avenue he tried to get his boy help turned up fruitless. His little boy was lost and he knew it, but he said he truly never imagined the horror that would ensue when his son made the move to take back the power and influence he felt he had lost, or never had. And according to Dad, the only thing that could have changed what happened that day, was if he hadn't been able to get to the locked gun cabinet to procure a weapon; or, if he hadn't had a gun. Do you think that the mother of the murderer in Sandy Hook ever imagined that he would turn her legal guns on her, take her life and begin assassinating six year olds. Reality is, we never see massacres coming because no normal person can truly imagine such devastation at the hands of someone they know.

Something has to change.

On the same day as the Newton Conneticut massacre, 20 children were hacked up by a knife wielding madman all the way across the globe in China. None of those children died... The lethal potential of a knife is not as great as that of a gun. While both do harm in the hands of a madman, only one takes lives as swiftly and surely as a gun. We can never control the madmen, even if our healthcare systems are perfect. So the next agenda has to be protecting the children and innocent to the best of our ability. If it was your kid's life at stake would you choose China or Conneticut?

I don't believe in gun control either, but somewhere along the way we have made it okay to issue guns to a public who take the responsibility of owning a gun far too lightly and thus fail to control their own guns? I don't know the answer, but I do know that whether it is one dead 18 year old or 20 dead 6 year olds at an elementary school, it is too much heartache in a world so small.

Kiss your loved ones and be thankful for a simple life in a peaceful country. <3

 

[medler]

Ya. It's sad Very sad. Nothing can stop the crazy people. Just hope that some things get changed

 

[medler]

Thanks Mike..

They guys on my platoon went to the funerals. We had a talk about the trip today. Unreal is all I can say of the situation.
Very sad.

Good for them going Ray. !!

 

[eclipse1966]

what a sad story and I am glad there are people like you that try and save lives especially in circumstances like you described. I know I could not do what you do and see the misery life can dish out day in and day out and then go home and get on with your own life.

A little story that I hope will help some of you think carefully about this issue:

This happened the week before Christmas, my birthday actually. All I saw when the ambulance brought her in was a tiny hole just below the left side of her rib cage. It kinda looked like a melted chocolate chip, if you really care to know. No other marks would bely the devastating damage that lay beneath. Just as she was transferred to our ER Trauma bed, the heart monitor began to blare. Her heart had flipped into a rhythm that was incompatible with life. A nurse started compressions while I intubated and bagged her... her eyes closing for the last time. And so it began: four grueling hours of trying to save the life of an 18 year old girl, shot ACCIDENTALLY by her own boyfriend with a LEGALLY OBTAINED .22 caliber gun as her parents and brother watched. Never in my career have I done CPR as the surgeon did a thoracotomy, splitting her tiny body from stem to sternum, but this day I did. Over and over we brought her back, only to have the threads of her life, blipping across the monitor fade away again and again. We brought in her family so they could see how hard we were trying to save her. So that they would at least know, if she didn't make it, that the team who worked on her gave a ch!t: that we cried buckets as we hung IV's, pumped in blood and urged her lungs to accept the breaths we offered. Finally, it seemed as if something held together and we made a dash for the O.R., racing her open body and pouring wound through the hallways to one last ditch attempt at life. Three surgeons worked tirelessly, clamping her aorta and repairing the damage as they discovered it, but the blood just wouldn't seem to cease finding a source. As fast as the fluid went into her, it filled her lungs and seeped out her endotracheal tube. Having done every last procedure they could think of, the surgeons piled her back together, unable to close the gash across her abdomen because of all the trauma that had laid its hand inside of her. They covered her and she made the trip to ICU. She would either make it now or her family would say goodbye. Ten minutes after her arrival, loved one after loved one after loved one filed in to lay their tears on her broken body and say a final farewell. There was no life left. While they watched, I suctioned as much of the frothy blood from her lungs as I could and turned off the ventilator. My voice failed me and I whispered a silent "I'm sorry" that rang empty in the air. There are no words for the hurt that enveloped those people. Beyond reason. Beyond imagination. Haunting to this day... I finished my night shift in a blur, and returned home, but sleep never comes easy after something like that. I can only imagine how her family tries to erase those visuals and compartmentalize the brutality of it.

I have debated whether or not to tell this story, but in the end decided that if it helps even one person decide that the gun they keep in their home with children is too big of a liability, it is worth it. And if it makes even one of you lock your guns up a little tighter or move them to a different location, then it is worth it. Bottom line: Guns DO kill people when in the wrong hands... The common denominator is ALWAYS the gun- careless people with butter knives rarely kill people... But careless people with GUNS do... If you could ask that girl's family what they would do differently, what do you think they would say? A father of a boy who turned a gun on two of his school mates appeared on TV shortly after the Sandy Hook killings, and his answer to that question was that he wouldn't have had a gun. He knew his son struggled socially and academically. The father described how his heart had broke over and over watching his son struggle to gain his footing in society, and how every avenue he tried to get his boy help turned up fruitless. His little boy was lost and he knew it, but he said he truly never imagined the horror that would ensue when his son made the move to take back the power and influence he felt he had lost, or never had. And according to Dad, the only thing that could have changed what happened that day, was if he hadn't been able to get to the locked gun cabinet to procure a weapon; or, if he hadn't had a gun. Do you think that the mother of the murderer in Sandy Hook ever imagined that he would turn her legal guns on her, take her life and begin assassinating six year olds. Reality is, we never see massacres coming because no normal person can truly imagine such devastation at the hands of someone they know.

Something has to change.

On the same day as the Newton Conneticut massacre, 20 children were hacked up by a knife wielding madman all the way across the globe in China. None of those children died... The lethal potential of a knife is not as great as that of a gun. While both do harm in the hands of a madman, only one takes lives as swiftly and surely as a gun. We can never control the madmen, even if our healthcare systems are perfect. So the next agenda has to be protecting the children and innocent to the best of our ability. If it was your kid's life at stake would you choose China or Conneticut?

I don't believe in gun control either, but somewhere along the way we have made it okay to issue guns to a public who take the responsibility of owning a gun far too lightly and thus fail to control their own guns? I don't know the answer, but I do know that whether it is one dead 18 year old or 20 dead 6 year olds at an elementary school, it is too much heartache in a world so small.

Kiss your loved ones and be thankful for a simple life in a peaceful country. <3

 

[SledMamma]

what a sad story and I am glad there are people like you that try and save lives especially in circumstances like you described. I know I could not do what you do and see the misery life can dish out day in and day out and then go home and get on with your own life.

Thanks eclipse, and Riverjet, and medler! But it's not really about me. The only thing sad about what I do is feeling like history keeps repeating itself and the world keeps getting crazier. Feels like most honest attempts are futile when no one learns from these horrifying lessons and it's the innocent who suffer... Firefighters, children, those left behind.

 

[Nathansharkey]

The argument that you make about how bad guns are is the same bs as the argument that some folks make about how bad that atv and sled use is. I would bet that more people are killed in Canada as a result of people enjoying hobbies such as boating, sledding, atv's, motorcycles than are killed by guns.