Congressman Steve Scalise was shot in the hip.  So that’s not life threatening, right?  Not if it were a handgun shot, or even a legitimate hunting rifle.  But the kind of semi-automatic rifle that the shooter used, like that in Orlando and Newtown and just generally really popular, was designed for war, for damaging specifically human flesh.

These weapons aren’t just deadly for their ability to fire more rapidly with magazines that hold more ammo, every shot is more deadly when it hits it’s intended target.  Or an unintended target.  It doesn’t care.

I once treated a patient shot in the pelvis with a similar weapon. The bullet shattered the hipbone into hundreds of pieces. It shredded the femoral artery, causing life-threatening bleeding and destroyed whole portions of the bowel and bladder.

Every Congressman should read What Bullets Do to the Body.

There is simply no reason for these weapons to be legally available to anybody but law enforcement and the military.  The lethality of these weapons is off the charts and we cannot justify it for self-defense or sport.

We’re just inviting disaster and it keeps coming.