“We don’t do enough to make guns safe. If people saw what a GSW (gunshot wound) does, they would limit the availability of guns. Look at Space Mountain: When they find a loose bolt, they shut it down, and yet we allow guns into homes where there are children.” – Dr. Michael Lekawa in Emergency room doctors speak out on Southern California gun violence [at latimes.com]
From my experience (which is vast) most ER doctors have trouble finding their ass with a funnel and both hands. Not very impressive.
Q: What do you call a med student that graduates last in their class?
A: Doctor
I question your judgement if you have been in an ER so many times.
Uhhhh, I am a physician. I get called by them about patients all the time. I suggest you think a bit more before posting, Randall.
>We don’t do enough to make Guns safe.
Guns are only as safe as the people that use them. Using that logic, we can make Cars safer by removing the engines and banning gasoline, because Cars kill a lot more people than Guns.
But HURR ban all guns because my opinions about a minority of the population should apply to everyone.
Idiot.
You can’t fix stupid.
No, but it surely has a way of ending its own missery at times.
Biggest gun guy I know is an ER doctor. But he also hasn’t made the mistake of thinking that being an MD makes him a god among men.
Working in an ER and he hasn’t gone to med school? Astonishing!
And look at cars! If people saw what a motor vehicle accident does, they would limit the availbility of cars.
It ould take multiple hits from a fifty to cause the kind of devistation one Smart car can cause to its own occupant. Most of the funerals of crash victims I’ve gone to were either closed caskey, or took a tremendious ammount of work by the mortcian.
Licensing and testing drivers, registering cars, requiring insurance, regulating the places cars can and cannot go, imposing strict safety requirements on construction and use. Are these bad ideas?
I’m with the ER medic on this one.
Licensing and testing are a joke in this country, if you want similar measures for guns you’re asking for no significant demonstration of skill, knowledge, or even legal residency. Since driver’s license and identification are the same thing in most places, how about making the driver’s license automatically function as a carry permit? Answer the same kind of stupid questions, and it’s shall issue.
Registering cars is a tax measure supposedly to recover some of the costs of road maintenance (whether the funds are misappropriated is another issue entirely), if you have a track car that never sees a public road without a trailer underneath it, there is no requirement to register it. There are no similar public facilities degraded by intentional and regular firearms use around where I live.
Cars are restricted in where they can go because normal operation of a car inside places like a shopping mall (driving at 25mph or over) would be inherently dangerous. Normal operation of a sidearm is at rest in the holster at your side. Emergency operation of cars or firearms may create additional dangers, but emergency situations are by definition not normal. If you swerve off the road to avoid a child running out from nowhere, few people will complain about an illegal lane change.
Guns are as safe as cars. They don’t explode, catch fire, or otherwise maim or kill the operator if used properly. If you crash into someone, or shoot them, bad things may happen. Kinetic energy, and physics in general, is unforgiving. Just think, a Smart car is a 11.26 million grain projectile. At 60mph, this is about 194000 ft/lbs. My sidearm is about 400 ft/lbs, and I don’t fire it up and down the freeway while talking on the phone.
Drive around on the freeway and report back, sport.
I don’t know are they? They sure don’t prevent the accidents and carnage everyone is talking about.
Most docs that I know have become more pro-gun after seeing the results of ER visits. Too many innocents coming in with major trauma because some scumbag decided he needed what was in their wallet.
Damn it Dan, he’s a doctor, not a firearms expert. Tell him to take his opinion and shove it where the sun don’t shine. A good chunk of the gangbangers that come into his ER are not worth the bandages to patch them up.
But dude, universal health care is a right, Constitutional one at that.
For humans… Maybe… (Citation needed) Sub human scum… Not so much.
I forget to add, I appreciate the McCoy Star Trek reference. Hats off to you sir.
He’s dead, Jim.
” If you have ever seen what a doctor mistake can do you would be alarmed ,we shold limit the availability of doctors ,when they find a loose bolt on space mountain they shut it down yet we still allow doctors near our children “.
There fixed it for you.
http://semmelweis.org/tag/physicians/
Exactly. Medical malpractice (primarily at the hands of physicians) kills way more people each year than firearms. Honest to God truth.
Using Mr. Michael Lekawa’s logic, we should keep children as far away from hospitals and doctors’ offices as possible.
epic fail
According to statistics provided by the AMA, an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 U.S. hospital deaths result from medical error annually. Some research suggests that these figures are higher. The total costs involved in preventable medical errors that result in injury or death (adverse events) each year are unknown, but are estimated at somewhere between $17 billion and $30 billion.
Anyone have his contact info so we can let him know he can recuse himself? Seems his hands weld more dangerous instruments. Most of the time it’s a pen.
Lets play…. Twist – His – Words (TM)!!!
“We don’t do enough to make whirlpool saunas safe. If people saw what a whirlpool sauna with an improperly maintained suction drain does to a child, they would limit the availability of whirlpool saunas. Look at Look at Space Mountain: When they find a loose bolt, they shut it down, and yet we allow people to build whirlpool saunas right in their own homes where there are children.”
Just another California Libby, they should think before they speak. I am willing to bet the majority of folks who show up with gunshot wounds did something to deserve them!
Watch the video hood life 3 and tell me that tons of innocents are6nt hurt by the homies inability to aim an illegal handgun
Someone should tell the “good” doctor that freedom is messy, but it certainly beats the alternative…
That sounds like a damn fine T’Shirt Press On. Perhaps on the other side you could put, “For the children of course……”
Seems every doctor has a pet cause. Some harp on guns, some helmets, others focus in on saturated fats or caffeine. For whatever reason the individual has gotten tunnel vision on a cause and simply by virtue of being doctor decides there is a platform from which upon to grandstand.
It is easy to myopic when you are elbow deep in the same problem over and over and over again. They fall into a mental trap and loose a more world view. Stress, many hours in the ER and you loose some sense of other views.
IMHO, they become products of their environment but loose all authority or reasoning in anything else because that is all they see. Imagine the ER doctors in Chiraq and how many gun shots they deal with on a daily basis versus a country doctor. It is why a lot of mental health professional tell you that vacation is important and walking away from your work is important. You see enough of something and you want it to stop. Your want of something to stop clouds your reasoning.
Knives can cause much nastier wounds than guns. Maybe we should ban knives. I’m surprised when people that stupid can tie their own shoes, let alone become a doctor.
I am a custom carpenter. Many of my clients are doctors. Many have become so used to the idea that their medical opinion is infallible that they come to believe their opinion on anything else must be correct as well. One asked me to create a three story spiral staircase with no handrail ( because that is contemporary) He has a two year old daughter. Needless to say, we did not do business.
Y’know, either my worm-drive or portable circular saw can do some pretty nasty things to a human.
We must keep all power tools — especially those with batteries — vaulted and safe from the kiddies!
Sarcasm aside, I DO keep an eye on my tools, or rather did twenty years ago when the kids were little. I don’t leave a chisel or knife where the customer’s toddler can get it.
Object safety — weapon, tool or other — not rocket science. As an actual rocket scientist, I can so assert with dead certainty.
As a full time EMT-I, I have seen many times what a gunshot will do, no it is not pretty. But that makes me hold my guns even closer. Most of the shootings I have worked we found out later(if the suspect was caught) were done with illegal weapons! Who is going to defend me from these people if I can’t do it myself? The police? Most of the time we(EMS) arrive on scene before they do!
When I was an EMT, it was hardly unknown for someone to take a pot shot at the people trying to help the victim(s) — in other words, us.
Be safe out there.
Unfortunately that’s the truth, so even if we do arrive first we have to stage at a distance and wait for the scene to be secured by law enforcement. I have not personally not had it happen to me, but I have talked to a many that have. Though I have had the suspect(I later found out) standing only a few feet away from us trying to provide care, blended in as a pedestrian. Not a good feeling.
You’ve had more careers than Buckaroo Banzai, Russ.
More than the Great Impostor, even.
But hey. I thought guns were SUPPOSED to be dangerous.
Not quite, sir.
What I have done:
• construction and a little consulting to put myself through college;
• echanical prototyping;
• learned to fly and helped restore some aeroplanes;
• got married (not good), had kids (good) and divorced(good);
• took a year and restored the steam-powered equipment at an old gold mine in Placer;
• shoveled coal for passage in the Caribbean and as a deck hand to Alaska — these were summer jobs;
• didn’t want to write payroll programmes, so I took the classes and became an EMT, but burned out after five years — about average;
• worked in computers in Denver for Bond Gold, Enron, Evolving Systems, IBM Groupware Services and Celestial Seasonings, along with some consulting;
• worked for several years in computers and science support for the USAP and Allied Signal;
• some other overseas work in telecommunications, disaster recovery and system security;
• came to Kansas following 911 (i was pretty shellshocked) and did oddball consulting, tractor repair, repair and light construction – coasting for a bit, y’know;
• went into the alarm and surveillance biz, which is where I am.
Ive done a lot of other short-term and one-off stuff, and do basic research in my spare time, along with several hobbies.
Looking back i’ve seldom thought about all the jumping around I’ve done.
Good Grief! Maybe I AM Buckaroo Bonzai, after all.
as a navy janitor, i know all too well what a bullet can do, specifically 7.62×39. thats why there is one in the collection. being im a nice guy, i want to humanly put down baddies and tasty animals. i would like something bigger….i need a .308 or 30’06 #freepersonproblems
Or 7.62x54R…
Another +1 for the Mosin.
If people only saw what Congressional legislation can do…….
“… and yet we allow guns into homes where there are children.” (emphasis and italics added) — Michael Lekawa
That right there says it all. So what else are you going to allow me to do Mr. Lekawa? Are you going to allow me to eat red meat which many people claim is bad for my health? Shove it.
We allow guns into homes where there are children? There is no “we”. I decide what to allow and not to allow in my home, and the government can keep their nose out of it.
You could use that kind of logic to justify anything.
If someone threatens my or a family members life I want them to have one of those horrible gun shot wounds.
Why limit them to one? They are the reason to hoard ammo.
We allow guns into homes where there are children…because they are our children and it is our responsibility to protect them.
Space Mountain…? Yeah, if something’s broken, you fix it.
And if a gun is unsafe, I red tag it ’til it’s fixed. End of simile.
Have you ever seen the effects of botched surgery? Someone really should keep these surgeons away from people.
Have you ever seen the effects of inertial trauma? We really must regulate and maybe outlaw vertical drops.
I don’t know about loose bolts, but we sure have a lot of loose nuts.
Isn’t it curious that a doctor can’t trace the pathology of gun violence.
Epidemiology must not have been this doctors major in Med-school.
Go figure?
As a proud father of a two month old daughter, I allow guns in my home for one simple reason: so that MY children aren’t the ones being treated for “GSW.”
Guess it depends on your definition of safety. I consider my gun unsafe if it fires without the trigger being pulled, or FAILS to fire when it should. Safe for me, that is. Not safe for the bad guy on the other end of it. But that’s sort of the point of guns.
It’s like looking at cars and, instead of putting airbags on them, you take the wheels off so they can’t move. Safe!
25 years as a trauma nurse, 5 years as a paramedic, yet I know that guns are just a tool. Violence is the problem, and if anything must change, it’s out attitudes about violence. Guns, knives, cars, rocks, even bare hands are just tools. Just as stethoscopes, BP cuffs, cardiac monitors are tools.
ER nurses I’ve worked with love guns, one admitted to have stopped counting his collection at 38. I’m a bit jealous, I only have a few. Self defense is a God given right and natural instinct, and we’re entitled to the tools needed for that.
Full disclosure, I think of Joe Biden as a tool too, but that’s a different rant.
Paul, RN, Board Certified Emergency Nurse, Trauma Nurse Specialist.
This is nothing new. Remember this? “We must make…safer weapons. We must make…safer bullets.” – Joycelen Elders, U.S. Surgeon General, early nineties
And done. We call them “hollow points”.
I miss Koop…
Too many frangible brains around the water cooler in most statehouses.
I pulled security for Koop when he was at an event in California back in 90. He’d left government service at that time. He was sort of controverseail in some of his statements and a lot more people than expected showed up for the event. Crowd control got dicey there for a while.
Small world.
I know that R.J. Reynolds wouldn’t have shed a tear were he to stop a bullet…
Yeah, he was a mixed bag, but an honest and worthy S.G.
My kids are safer with guns than Lekawa.
ER Nurse and Paramedic for 30 years. Many ER Nurses and Docs carry for self defense. Violence is the problem. Guns, knives, rocks, even bare hands are just tools. I could strangle someone with my stethoscope tubing, and believe me I’ve been tempted!
What needs to change is our attitude about violence. I would even want to get rid of much of the violence on TV and in video games. If TV content couldn’t change human behavior, advertisers wouldn’t spend billions of dollars per year on ads. I have guns but don’t shoot people. Lets get to the root of the problem and stop blaming the tools!
Now we’re just going to take your blood pressure — at the external carotid…
So are we also going to limit the availability of guns to LEO and US military? DHS? Did I hear a no? Then why limit availability of guns for us?
In 1789 The Founding Fathers were particularly concerned that Americans should never again have to fight against tyranny. Their solution was “The Bill of Rights,” the first 10 amendments to The Constitution. They intended to make it clear that all power rests with the citizens, and the citizens could allow the government to use it, but never own it. I admire their brilliant foresight.
I could see why an ER doctor constantly taking in gunshot patients would be a little tired of guns and shooting. But he is only viewing the issues from his perspective, and not considering other implications.
In particular, he’s not seeing the people who don’t suffer a GSW in the first place because they had a gun. Those people don’t go to his ER, don’t end up on his operating table, and get to live their lives because he didn’t get to have his way.
Having seen what people can do I say we limit the availability of people….
In highschool my friends dad wad head of the ER at the local hospital. He was a gun owner, & was rather cavalier about the legal storage of his guns. He didn’t put trigger locks on them or keep em in a safe/locked cabinet. When his son asked him if he could show us his guns, he just told us his gun were in his closet & that we should put them back where they were when we were done looking at them.
I’ve seen what a gunshot wound can do, and that is why I think guns are the best weapons available to protect children. I don’t need a jewy doctor to tell me how to live.
No, but you might need one of ’em one of these days in order to stay alive.
Fortunately for you, he or she won’t hold your hate speak against you, what with that whole vow to Apollo and all.
Or do you plan on a MedicAlert bracelet instructing responders to let no one whose name might be Semitic anywhere near you, to use no n¡ggah blood and so on?
Good luck with that.
EDIT: Lekawa, by the way, is a Polish regional name with no particular association with Judaism.
It’s likely that Poll0cks are a problem for you as well, and since a name on my Mom’s side was Trembecki, I guess you’ll not be listenin’ to li’l ol’ me.
I’ll just go have a good cry over that.
That was a sublime text-book case of Cognitive Dissonance.
To their credit, its original. I have never before encountered the argument that a weapon’s lethality is a design flaw.
Dumb doc limiting the availability of guns. Stupid Commie.
Yeah, I’m gonna need a second opinion.
I disagree with the first opinion. Now for a tie-breaker.