The Green Berets
I was perusing social media when I came up on a video. I have to admit I don’t pay attention to everything the Texas State Legislature does. It would probably drive me crazy if I did. Well, I cannot ignore House Bill 1147. As someone that has been teaching for 25 years I definitely cannot ignore it. I’ll post the video, but I have to warn you, it will put you through the emotional ringer.
If you don’t think you can make it through the video, please allow me to summarize the situation. The bill would require all school campuses with students third grade and up to have at least one station where medical supplies would be readily available. Students as young as nine can be trained to essentially be combat medics. They would apply tourniquets, seal off chest cavities, and treat other severe bodily injuries.
I’m a grown ass man (sorry momma). When I signed up for this gig back in 1997 I knew what I was getting into. I listened to stories from my grandmother, parents, and older sister. Every day wasn’t going to be sunshine and rainbows. Some kids don’t want to learn or do what they need to do to earn the grade. Some kids aren’t the best behaved. More importantly, some adults aren’t as professional or dedicated as they should be.
I signed up for all of that. I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t get trained to storm Normandy. I didn’t get trained to apply the kind of critical aid needed to keep someone alive long enough for an ambulance to get there. I certainly didn’t train to do that AND dodge bullets at the same time. Of course we have been trained to do rudimentary first aid and I’m sure kids can be taught the same. Maybe they cut themselves on the swing set or they get beaned with a ball during recess. Maybe someone falls down a flight of stairs or twists an ankle. This training is not about that.
As horrifying as this all is, it is the message behind it that is most horrifying. We know what is causing these events. We know how to stop it. Australia has done it. Most of the industrialized world has done it. The right doesn’t want to do it. I understand it on some level. Their base loves their guns. However, the different contortions we are going through to avoid addressing the issue is just beyond the pale. We don’t need kids to learn how to apply a tourniquet or stop their friends from bleeding out. We don’t need a damn tank in front of the school. We don’t need to reduce every school to one set of doors. We don’t need to issue every man, woman, and child a bullet proof vest. We just need to take the damn AR-15s. Period.
I shouldn’t need to tell a teacher that spelling counts.
Tourniquet
1That’s their sensible gun measure? Why not have teachers keep guns under their desk like some old west bartender. Well maybe that’s already part of the plan.
2And here in Oregon, the state Senate was about to vote on sensible gun measures (along with women’s abortion rights) when the right wing (want to be Idahoans) senators boycotted and didn’t show up. This despite a voter approved measure to stop that from happening again. So nothing will get done here either.
Funny how Dr. Strangegov and his cohorts want the schools to deal with shootings. Now try to walk into the Capitol or the Governor’s Mansion with a gun and see what happens.
3I used to think that such things as violent videos, shooting games, etc., didn’t lead to gun violence and that the suggestion was just gun nuts making excuses and trying to deflect the vox populi from conceding that, yes, guns really are the problem. Now, I’m not so sure. I can’t help thinking a lot of these yahoos see themselves as good guys and that, just like John Wayne in Rio Bravo, they’ll step in and clean out the bad guys as soon as trouble starts. Certainly the NRA wants them to think that. After all, they’ve seen it time after time in movies, cop shows, et al, so it *must* be true. Right?
4Thanks for the correction slipstream. Obviously, it shows how often I’ve used or even thought about that level of aid.
BFSman, more than one thing can be true at the same time. Simply put, no one needs an AR-15. However, the proliferation of these weapons also might amp up the want and need for violence.
5Um, a moment here, please for this old former teacher to catch a breath. Isn’t there something somewhere in the child labor laws that keeps them from becoming Medics before they finish primary school? I took a Red Cross class decades ago. I also sent my children to such classes but they were big enough and strong enough at that time to lift a loaded stretcher. This is ridiculous in so many ways and makes those in power look like idiots. Us grown ups are supposed to do the medic work, not the kiddies. Apparently this has to be solidly pointed out to various people. Yes, I know they will turn right around and declare that very young people were once the work force for packing sacks full of cotton, etc. And that has been outlawed over the years in favor of sending and keeping kids in school. This is enough to blow my mind!
6BFSMan @ 4 I am a child of the ’50s. Most of our toys were toy guns. We played shooting each other. The only ball game we knew was called Kill the Man with the Ball. We were permeated in World Wat II gore. I spent most of the 8th grade drawing pictures of B-17s bombing Germany.
Yet I haven’t murdered hardly anybody.
7There are at least two things at work here – aside from the usual mental illness excuses –
1) The NRA has had huge infusions of cash from Russia, with the obvious intent of destabilizing the U.S. from within, and
2) The felt-need for heavy armament because the Right Wing has intentionally fed paranoia about an impending race war ever since the Civil Rights movement.
I learned all about tourniquets, etc. in Girl Scouts but not gunshot wounds…it was just in case of a bad wood-cutting axe accident.
8I’m a former EMT would could barely handle this type of injury with a full crew and all the medical equipment available. W.T.F?
9I can’t help but thinking that this is just an extension of something I talked about in here awhile back. Sometime in the past when the solution to the problem was to have armed guards stationed at every entrance to schools. With assault rifles IIRC. I remember thinking then that even kids who weren’t indoctrinated into a culture of guns and the idea that they were the only solution to….. guns, by their parents at home would instead have it happen at public schools. So we’d all pay for it.
10As f**king perverse as that seems to us, and probably most gun owners as well, I believe there are some who think it’s the answer to everything.
Or at least a great path to put our kids on.
A long term plan if you will.
And yeah oddly enough I imagine the GRU think it’s a great contribution to our national security.
And I’m fairly certain Remington, Winchester, and Federal’s boards of directors would agree it’s good for business.
Even if they don’t talk about it in polite company.
Skepticat @9 has touched on a potentially good idea. Let’s show the “honorable” state legislator detailed color photos of some of the dead children from a recent school shooting. Particularly ones hit by AR-15 fire. Then ask him just what first aid he would apply, and how he would proceed in treating those wounds.
It’d be even more effective if he was shown a video of attempted treatment, while children and adults are screaming loudly next to him, and the sounds of gunfire getting closer.
My father was a Navy corpsman in the Pacific in WWII. He knew there was an immense difference between practicing CPR on a medical dummy in a Red Cross training center, versus applying sulfa and pressure bandages on a screaming, writhing Marine while under fire from people who really want to kill you. Somehow, these ignorant state legislators need to learn this distinction before they pass laws trying to make children responsible for first aid while under fire.
11I have been watching Beau videos off and on for a year or so now.
Never seen him show anger before. Sorry to contradict, but it is no longer “just a thought,” Beau.
12Wounds from the type of guns being used in these shootings overwhelm the medical capabilities of trained trauma personnel. How is a child supposed to deal with bones/tissue that have been through a ballistic blender? They should be training these babies to give last rites.
13I found the text of House Bill 1147 at the Texas Legislature web site. It’s a 3-page proposal to establish bleeding control stations in both public and charter schools in Texas. The bill was introduced by a Democratic representative from San Antonio who has a long history in education. The text of the bill has no reference to the type of injury requiring the use of a bleeding control station, and there is no reference to sucking chest wounds. So, perhaps there is a real concern that sometimes an injury at school might require immediate treatment and this bill addresses that need. But, more likely, given that it was introduced by a Democrat, her intent is to make the point that since Republicans will not address the scourge of school shootings, then let’s at least address the consequences of gun shot wounds. Perhaps by including third graders as potential first responders, she’s making the point that since guns can’t be controlled, schools must be prepared for the worst. And here’s how to do that.
14The bill is stuck in a committee, of course, and will very likely never see the light of day. And nobody would have even known about it were it not for this Youtube video. At least a person trained in bleeding control is better than thoughts and prayers, even if that third grader is traumatized for the rest of their life when the inevitable happens because Republicans won’t talk about gun control.
This is just a thought and it might be a crazy one. If it is I apologize and you can hurl half eaten boxes of vegetable fried rice at me. Part of me is wondering whether some people making these proposals know EXACTLY how ridiculous these proposals sound and how beyond the pale they are.
Something deep down inside of them knows they don’t have the courage to stand up to the NRA and MAGA crowd. So, they are hoping something tips the scales in the other direction. Maybe an absolutely ridiculous and extreme suggestion like this will somehow galvanize forces against them and finally do what they know has to be done, but they can’t do or even suggest themselves.
Surely, some of these people are educated enough to know you can’t have one door in a school. Surely, they have enough common sense to know that one armed guard ain’t going to cut the mustard or that arming teachers is a really bad idea. No, you really can’t put a tank outside. They just hope that these suggestions are seen as ridiculous as they know them to be. They hope someone else takes the bullet and makes the straightforward suggestion that citizens shouldn’t have access to an AR-15. It can’t be them. At the end of the day it absolutely can’t be them. So, maybe they keep lobbing suggestions until the masses with common sense have finally had enough.
15I think The Surly Professor (11) is on the right track but doesn’t go far enough. These legislators need to be spending a few nights in the ER watching trauma teams try to save gunshot victims. It’s bad enough with regular guns, but AR15’s and other high-impact bullets do horrific damage. I work in firearm violence prevention research; my colleague who leads this center is an ER doc who got into the research many years ago because he realized that just treating the ever-increasing and ever-worse stream of victims was not the answer. These legislators are either deluded by the cartoon version of violence on the screen, or aware but totally depraved and indifferent to anything but money and power.
16Good points, Laurel! Stupid legislators seem to be the theme of the day lately. They publicily reveal their own very, very thin knowledge of female health care every chance they get. Been watching this. They don’t give a damn about saving lives. Hence, wild and weird nonsense about total abortion bans no matter what. Now its another chance to reveral their ignorance on gunshot wounds and child medics to the rescue! And they keep being ignorant about how ignorant they are! This is all going to blow up in their faces.
17It isn’t just a matter of how horrific the wounds are from these weapons; they are asking children to assess what supplies might be needed to treat their mangled friends and their teacher(s). An adult can barely handle that. The people who propose these kinds of things do not have the courage or the moral compass to deal with the proliferation of violence and guns in this country, so they put it on the shoulders of our children. What a world. What a world.
18GeneB #14, that actually makes perfect sense. I suppose a large part of me actually thinks it is a decent strategy. They need to find some way to shock people into supporting common sense gun legislation. I have a more simple view of representative government though. I’d like for people to make progress on issues across the board. Joke legislation doesn’t necessarily help.
19This law went into effect January 2020. What you are seeing now is the revision of that law. It used to mandate offering training annually to students 7th grade and above. Now it’s 3rd grade. You really wonder what that thought process was that went into that change, nevermind the original version. I wonder what’s next.
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