Texas: Three adults and 18 children killed in deadliest school shooting in state's history

[Elfdart]

During the hearing, Republican Greg Steube brandished various pistols in an effort to argue that the bill's provision banning large-capacity magazines of more than 10 rounds amounted to stopping law-abiding citizens from purchasing guns of their choice.
When Representative Sheila Jackson Lee remarked that she hoped one of the guns Steube was holding was not loaded, Steube replied, “I’m in my house, I can do whatever I want with my guns”.
It was one of several pointed exchanges during the hearing.

It would not surprise me at some point if we have one member of Congress firing upon others in either the House or the Senate. Yes, it's getting that bad. Bunch of fucking lunatics.

She should have dared him to put the barrel in his mouth and give it a squeeze.

[PainRack]

There's actually some very concrete ways to mitigate the deadliness of mass shootings we can experiment.

We know that mass shootings with rifles are rare, however, they form the majority of casualties. This suggests a pareto effect we can mitigate by restricting assault rifles ownership.

Mass shootings with large magazine capacity has larger casualties than those without. Again , another target.

No, actually, there are two things that cause massive casualties.

1.) Enclosed, confined spaces -- people have less space to run or flee. You might not know it; but the majority of casualties at Sandy Hook were AFAIK, in a few closets. Yes, the "active shooter" procedure there was to hide in closets -- which gave the shooter absurdly easy targets, to the point that you could strike multiple people with a single round.

2.) Response delayed beyond "golden hour" -- a lot of the casualties at the Pulse nightclub shooting died of blood loss and trauma because the cops waited three (!!!) hours to go in and clear the nightclub.

In closing; I'd like to remind you that the deadliest shooting so far in a school (30+ dead at Virginia Tech) had the shooter using a Glock 19 9mm (133 rounds fired) and Walther P22 .22LR (61 rounds fired) -- with factor 1 (enclosed confined spaces) in play.

Incidentally, waiting periods and licensing, either through removal or implementation has shown an impact on homicide and suicide.

Maryland statistics prove you wrong. Waiting period since 1966; and fingerprints/licensing/training for handguns since 2013.

Oddly enough.
https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/5/4/259

https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/08/20/gun-purc ... e-suicide/

Here's citation that Maryland gun licensing/checks reduced crime and deaths.

Any citation for your claims??


As for my claim vis rifles vs handguns
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30529633/
While handguns kill more people overall, a rifle statistically involves more people shot. You can point to outliers all you want but if you do that, I'm just going to include las Vegas shooting to distort the stats too.



Shep. I'm kinda sick of you turning up at these and going ASKUALLY, you wrong without ponying up a single bit of evidence while making claims that's proven wrong by the scientific literature.


Mind actually providing citations first?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

CCTV shows police didn't enter Uvalde classroom for 77 minutes and ran away as they heard gunfire.

Police waited 77 minutes to enter a classroom where a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers, chilling CCTV from Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas shows.

It also depicts police officers running away from the classroom where the attack happened, as they hear gunfire.

The newly released video has added to the anger over the failed police operation, depicting in devastating clarity the actions of killer Salvador Ramos and slow response of law enforcement.

The footage, posted by local news outlet Austin American-Statesman on its website, shows the 18-year-old gunman crashing his pickup truck and entering the primary school at 11.33am on May 24, carrying a semi-automatic rifle.

The sound of gunfire is then heard for more than two minutes.

The video includes 911 tape of a teacher screaming: “Get down! Get in your rooms! Get in your rooms!”

The camera in the corridor shows that police are on the scene just three minutes later but do not enter the classroom and shoot the gunman dead for another 77.

As the gunman enters the school and makes his way down a corridor, a child who is thought to have been in the toilets can be seen just metres away from the shooter and then running away as shots begin to ring out. The student is reported to have later been rescued from the school.

Minutes later, the actions of the child are replicated by the police.

Two officers approach the classrooms minutes after the gunman enters, then run back to their colleagues who are massing in the corridor amid the sounds of gunfire.

For more than an hour after this, while the gunman is in a classroom filled with unarmed fourth graders (children aged nine and 10), police are seen standing in the corridor awaiting orders as school pupils die just metres away.

As the time passes, more and more police officers arrive on the scene.

By 12.21pm, several officers with tactical gear can be seen approaching the classroom, yet it isn't until 12.50pm that officers finally enter the room and fatally shoot the gunman.

While law enforcement are waiting, a man wearing a vest which reads "sheriff" can be seen using a hand sanitiser dispenser which is affixed to the wall.

The video is a disturbing 80-minute recording of what has been known for weeks now about one of the deadliest school shootings in US history, that heavily armed police officers, some armed with rifles and bulletproof shields, massed in the hallway and waited more than an hour before going inside and stopping the May 24 massacre.

Earlier this month, a report commissioned by the Texas Department of Public Safety found that an Uvalde police officer could have shot Ramos before he entered the school but hesitated while he waited for permission from a supervisor.

The footage released on Tuesday has anguished Uvalde residents anew and redoubled calls in the small South Texas city for accountability and explanations that have been incomplete - and sometimes inaccurate - in the seven weeks since the shooting.

Hours after the video was published, residents at a Uvalde City Council meeting shouted for action and demanded that police face consequences.

The attack in Uvalde was one of the latest in a string of mass shootings across the US that have renewed debate over gun laws and mental health.

[Elfdart]

In honor of the 10th anniversary of the departure of the late, great Alexander Cockburn, I found this classic, which has aged remarkably well and will continue to do so as long as public funds are wasted on all these SWAT teams -most of which are useless:

Counterpunch

APRIL 21, 2007
Bring Back the Posse
BY ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Money quote:

When the mass murder session began in the engineering building the police cowered behind their cruisers till Cho Seung-Hui finished off the last batch of his 32 victims, then killed himself. Then the police bravely rushed in, started sticking their guns in the faces of the traumatized students, screaming at them to freeze or be shot. Similar timidity was on display in Columbine, where Harris and Klebold killed students in the library over a period of 15 minutes and then committed suicide. The police finally mustered up the nerve to enter the library over two hours later.

Years ago campus police were greeted as a welcome alternative to regular cops hassling students and creating trouble.. But now they mostly are regular cops, hassling students, dishing out speeding tickets like the one the Virigina Tech campus police issued Cho. They were good at spotting a car going a few miles over the limit, bad at protecting the campus from a smouldering psychotic.

The Virginia Tech terrible massacre should prompt a radical review of the utility of SWAT teams which now infest almost every community in America. Each time there’s a hostage taking or a mass murderer on the rampage, one sees the same familiar sight: overweight SWAT men, doubled up under the weight of their costly artillery, lumbering along in their body armor and then hiding behind trees or cars or walls while the killer goes about his business. SWAT teams perform most efficiently when shooting down unarmed street people menacing them with cellphones.

Now he did go off on a tangent about psychiatric drugs, and he's being somewhat facetious (like Swift's idea of encouraging starving Irish peasants to eat their own children) with the idea of the posse, but his distaste for SWAT teams and other paramilitary forces which are at best little more than cosplay stormtroopers is 100% right. It reminds me of William Slim's warning about the cult of commando units in the army.

[Ralin]

What.

What exactly does this have to do with Ulvalde?

[Jub]

What.

What exactly does this have to do with Ulvalde?

That increases in police funding and presence do very little to solve the issue of mass shootings. Also, even ten years on we're not seeing those training budgets do anything to make the cowards behind badges and body armor any more likely to actively engage a spree shooter. There is no amount of funding that will, without root level systemic reform, actually cause police to be useful as a form of deterrent to an active shooter.

[Ralin]

That increases in police funding and presence do very little to solve the issue of mass shootings. Also, even ten years on we're not seeing those training budgets do anything to make the cowards behind badges and body armor any more likely to actively engage a spree shooter. There is no amount of funding that will, without root level systemic reform, actually cause police to be useful as a form of deterrent to an active shooter.

Really? Because it seems to be talking entirely about SWAT teams (and the evils of anti-depressants), and I hadn't heard that SWAT was involved at Uvalde.

[Elfdart]

Uvalde is a small town that spent good money organizing a SWAT team specifically to deal with mass shootings, armed stand-offs and the like.



And just like in previous mass shootings, that SWAT team proved to be about as useful as a cock-flavored lollipop. The regular police were also useless, by the way. Cockburn called bullshit on the use of SWAT teams fifteen years ago and nothing has changed: Police still cower behind cover while innocent people (in this case a bunch of 9–10-year-old kids) are slaughtered, and then have the nerve to trot out that Thin Blue Line nonsense.

[Jub]

That increases in police funding and presence do very little to solve the issue of mass shootings. Also, even ten years on we're not seeing those training budgets do anything to make the cowards behind badges and body armor any more likely to actively engage a spree shooter. There is no amount of funding that will, without root level systemic reform, actually cause police to be useful as a form of deterrent to an active shooter.

Really? Because it seems to be talking entirely about SWAT teams (and the evils of anti-depressants), and I hadn't heard that SWAT was involved at Uvalde.

Even if it wasn't SWAT, the cost in man-hours alone for an hour of 376 officers being on the scene would be around $12,500 if each officer was earning a reasonable wage for the area. Or we could do their yearly salary, which is ~$24 million at the above wage and an assumed forty-eight 40-hour work weeks per year. How would you feel if your city/town/county spent that only to get the result of 400 idiots standing around, thumbs firmly shoved up asses, while kids died?

[Ralin]

Even if it wasn't SWAT, the cost in man-hours alone for an hour of 376 officers being on the scene would be around $12,500 if each officer was earning a reasonable wage for the area. Or we could do their yearly salary, which is ~$24 million at the above wage and an assumed forty-eight 40-hour work weeks per year. How would you feel if your city/town/county spent that only to get the result of 400 idiots standing around, thumbs firmly shoved up asses, while kids died?

Are you asking me if I would be unhappy about my local police failing to stop a shooting spree before a couple dozen people died? Yes, I would be pretty unhappy about it. Doesn't really translate into that being evidence that SWAT/armed and trained police (which it is a pretty big leap to conflate) are useless and a waste of funds. And also that anti-depressants cause shooting sprees, which is a point you and Elfdart are pretty glib about glossing over. As well as the fact that police were the ones who ultimately did storm the place.

[Elfdart]

Well if the NYPost article is right and the SWAT team might not have shown up at all then they're still useless. I'm not suggesting that SWAT teams are always a waste, but in most cases there's very little they do that can't be accomplished by reasonably well-trained police officers who do their duty. In the case of Uvalde, it was off-duty border patrol who stormed the room and killed the shooter.

As for the bit about anti-depressants, it wasn't the main point of the article nor is it the main point here. It was a side issue for the writer and one I think he had completely backwards. It doesn't change the fact that fifteen years later the taxpayers are still funding an "elite" police unit who did nothing when it mattered. It's worse than the armored vehicles and other toys the taxpayers foot the bill for and are 99% useless.

[Elfdart]

For more:

Police Militarization Gave Us Uvalde
The adoption of aggressive, military-style tactics and weaponry has put American policing on the wrong track for decades.

By Arthur Rizer

For two decades, a group of police analysts (myself included) have been warning about the corrosive effects of police militarization, which have been unfolding for more than 40 years. Through the Pentagon’s 1033 Program, the federal government has been dumping military weaponry, armored personnel carriers, even grenade launchers and drones, on police departments large and small. People of a certain age should reflect: You probably don’t recall police regularly hanging out with armored personnel carriers and automatic weapons when you were a kid. But sometime after this nation embarked on the War on Drugs, these scenes became normal.

SWAT teams have proliferated in towns and cities across the country; almost every town with more than 25,000 people now has a SWAT team, as did the 15,000-person town of Uvalde. Those teams, far from responding solely to crises such as, well, school shootings, mostly serve drug warrants, employing flash grenades and no-knock entries—the methods of a wartime-Baghdad block search—to roust suspected drug dealers out of bed (or, as in the case of Breonna Taylor and many others, kill innocent people).

I focus on SWAT not because it is a substantial component of American policing, though it is large and growing, but because it plays an outsize role in the culture of policing, in its emotional makeup. A consistent theme in my research with local police has been the way SWAT sets the tone for more conventional officers. SWAT members are considered the elites of the profession; joining a SWAT team is many younger officers’ not-so-secret aspiration (some older hands’ aspiration, too). Esteem begets emulation, and the attitudes and tactics of SWAT often set the tone in the lower ranks.

and

What does this have to do with Uvalde—an event in which more, not less, aggression was called for? It would be insufficient to chalk up the tragedy at Robb Elementary to bad individual decision making. I think it reveals a hollowness that has always lurked deep within police militarization.

Having served in both, I can tell you that police aren’t the military. The intensity of the training, the resources put into developing unit cohesion, the careful cultivation of competent junior officers, the physical demands, the singular focus on obedience—military training is not simply “tougher” (in some ways) than police training; it is different in kind. This reflects the differing purpose and goals of the two institutions. That’s good; we shouldn’t want police to treat Americans like the military treats America’s enemies, and we shouldn’t train them to do so.


But in our ill-conceived attempt to refashion police into a cadet branch of the military, we have somehow managed to get the worst of both worlds. We have trained a generation of officers that being casually brutal in everyday encounters is acceptable, but these same officers show a disturbing tendency to fall back on jargon about “battlespace management” and “encounter tempo” to explain a slow reaction in the rare circumstance that really does require a rapid, all-out response. Especially in poor communities, the result has been the strange dynamic of “over-policing and under-protection” described by the criminologist David Kennedy, in which police are hypervigilant about petty offenses but unresponsive to more serious criminal activity.

Police militarization, it turns out, is largely swagger, and short on substance. What strikes me as I study the Facebook photo of the Uvalde SWAT team, standing in their tactical gear, is the theatricality of the whole thing. Any thoughtful observer of policing over the past 20 years has come to recognize the increasing childishness of the rhetoric about police militarization generally, and SWAT specifically. The journalist Radley Balko and others have documented police units’ use of military insignia and tough-guy mottos totally unsuited to civilian agencies (examples: “Hunter of men,” “We get up early, to BEAT the crowds,” “Baby Daddy Removal Team,” and “Narcotics: You huff and you puff and we’ll blow your door down”). Police education and training standards are abysmally low. In Texas, more training hours are required to be a hairdresser than a cop. National standards for SWAT training and tactics are essentially nonexistent.


So much of this turns out to be LARPing: half-trained, half-formed kids playing soldier in America’s streets and schools. Many of the thousands of SWAT-team members in this country don’t have the training and expertise to respond like they’re SEAL Team 6. It’s time to stop pretending that they do.

There's more.

[Jub]

Even if it wasn't SWAT, the cost in man-hours alone for an hour of 376 officers being on the scene would be around $12,500 if each officer was earning a reasonable wage for the area. Or we could do their yearly salary, which is ~$24 million at the above wage and an assumed forty-eight 40-hour work weeks per year. How would you feel if your city/town/county spent that only to get the result of 400 idiots standing around, thumbs firmly shoved up asses, while kids died?

Are you asking me if I would be unhappy about my local police failing to stop a shooting spree before a couple dozen people died? Yes, I would be pretty unhappy about it. Doesn't really translate into that being evidence that SWAT/armed and trained police (which it is a pretty big leap to conflate) are useless and a waste of funds. And also that anti-depressants cause shooting sprees, which is a point you and Elfdart are pretty glib about glossing over. As well as the fact that police were the ones who ultimately did storm the place.

Prove that the increased funding and overt militarization of the police has done anything to make your average citizen safer.

[Ralin]

Prove that the increased funding and overt militarization of the police has done anything to make your average citizen safer.

That has nothing to do with anything I've said or the article linked, so no.

[Jub]

Prove that the increased funding and overt militarization of the police has done anything to make your average citizen safer.

That has nothing to do with anything I've said or the article linked, so no.

The article, if read in context, is essentially making the argument that increasing police funding and making them into a cadet branch to the armed forces does fuck all for public safety. Events such as Uvalde prove this.

I question why you're even in this thread if all you want to do is nitpick if us bemoaning SWAT funding is appropriate to a thread where SWAT failed to act.

[MKSheppard]

Wow, are you full of shit. Flight 93 yes, everyone was going to die, but the passengers, in rushing the cockpit, knew that if they stopped the hijackers they were all also going die but prevent other deaths. For sure, if they downed the airplane in a field the airplane would not be able to crash into a building DC. Also, back then (which a snot-nosed whelp such as yourself may not be old enough to remember) cockpit doors were not fortified.

I hate to necro on this minor point, but something needs to be said, now that it's 20 years (jesus) since 9/11.

Before 9/11, there was a script for airline hyjacking. Someone would either claim there was a bomb on the plane, or they'd seize the plane.

You likely would be flown to an airfield in the middle of nowhere in Africa, and one or two people would be killed by the hyjackers as a "show of we fucking mean it", but everyone else would be released after two weeks tops.

That's why there was so much compliance early on in 9/11, because they thought that this was "oh we've done this bullshit before", and didn't realize yet that the hyjackers had rather, terminal plans.

9/11 could only have happened before 9/11, to paraphrase a circular phrase.

[MKSheppard]

Shep. I'm kinda sick of you turning up at these and going ASKUALLY, you wrong without ponying up a single bit of evidence while making claims that's proven wrong by the scientific literature.

Because MD homicide statistics keep repeating year after year the harsh truth of gun control - it doesn't work.

As for some of your stuff, I'll humor you.

https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/5/4/259

Your article investigates in 1999 the effect of a 1988 law in Maryland that established the Handgun Roster Board.

Effectively, what it means is that a handgun cannot be sold in MD unless it is approved by the Handgun Roster Board; so there's a lag time of about 9 to 12 months from a new handgun being introduced on the market, and it appearing in Maryland gun stores.

https://mdsp.maryland.gov/Organization/ ... oster.aspx

This is the Maryland "Banned" SNS list as of March 2022: LINK to PDF

Only 56 handguns have been banned, and the most recent is:

(56) Bearman Industries BBG9 – (9 mm), Overall Length 4 3/4", Barrel Length 2 3/4", Weight 0.8
LB (Reliability and Quality of Mfg.- Unable to chamber 9 mm cartridge in 9 mm marked barrel)
20428 / (Reliability, Quality of Mfg., and Ballistic Accuracy- When two cartridges were loaded to test
fire, both cartridges fired simultaneously. Cross-bolt safety was not functional. No rounds hit the
target.) 22002

From looking at Baltimore crime statistics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore

1990 - SNS bill takes effect: 305 homicides, 41.4 per 100K rate.
1997 - Last year they use in your paper: 313 homicides, 43.5 per 100K rate.

It seems that the SNS bill has *increased* homicides, by forcing Baltimore criminal elements to shift from jam-o-matic pieces of crap from Jiminez in .25ACP to the Glock 9mm much faster than surrounding cities in other states.

EDIT: It also shows how much crime gun sales still occur in-state, due to the 1968 Gun Control Act regulations regarding handguns.

EDIT II: Recently, a literal saturday night special from a SNS manufacturer was actually approved by the Handgun Board here in MD. Seems the bill forced them to step up on QC.

EDIT IV, the specific SNS I'm referring to was the Phoenix Arms HP25A in .25ACP and it was approved in 2015.

[Jub]

Shep. I'm kinda sick of you turning up at these and going ASKUALLY, you wrong without ponying up a single bit of evidence while making claims that's proven wrong by the scientific literature.

Because MD homicide statistics keep repeating year after year the harsh truth of gun control - it doesn't work.

As for some of your stuff, I'll humor you.

https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/5/4/259

Your article investigates in 1999 the effect of a 1988 law in Maryland that established the Handgun Roster Board.

Effectively, what it means is that a handgun cannot be sold in MD unless it is approved by the Handgun Roster Board; so there's a lag time of about 9 to 12 months from a new handgun being introduced on the market, and it appearing in Maryland gun stores.

https://mdsp.maryland.gov/Organization/ ... oster.aspx

This is the Maryland "Banned" SNS list as of March 2022: LINK to PDF

Only 56 handguns have been banned, and the most recent is:

(56) Bearman Industries BBG9 – (9 mm), Overall Length 4 3/4", Barrel Length 2 3/4", Weight 0.8
LB (Reliability and Quality of Mfg.- Unable to chamber 9 mm cartridge in 9 mm marked barrel)
20428 / (Reliability, Quality of Mfg., and Ballistic Accuracy- When two cartridges were loaded to test
fire, both cartridges fired simultaneously. Cross-bolt safety was not functional. No rounds hit the
target.) 22002

From looking at Baltimore crime statistics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore

1990 - SNS bill takes effect: 305 homicides, 41.4 per 100K rate.
1997 - Last year they use in your paper: 313 homicides, 43.5 per 100K rate.

It seems that the SNS bill has *increased* homicides, by forcing Baltimore criminal elements to shift from jam-o-matic pieces of crap from Jiminez in .25ACP to the Glock 9mm much faster than surrounding cities in other states.

EDIT: It also shows how much crime gun sales still occur in-state, due to the 1968 Gun Control Act regulations regarding handguns.

EDIT II: Recently, a literal saturday night special from a SNS manufacturer was actually approved by the Handgun Board here in MD. Seems the bill forced them to step up on QC.

EDIT IV, the specific SNS I'm referring to was the Phoenix Arms HP25A in .25ACP and it was approved in 2015.

Wouldn't it be more apt to say that gun control doesn't work in isolation and especially doesn't work within a city surrounded by places where a firearm could be obtained and where policing and community services are failing large sectors of the population? Gun control works fairly well in places outside of the US.

[Broomstick]

Yes, that's the rub - gun control actually DOES work in other countries, so it might be a good idea to look into why the US is an exception.

[Zaune]

Possibly because those other countries also have universal public healthcare, welfare that pays cash not food stamps, statutory requirements to provide emergency accommodation for the homeless and a general sense that the state has a duty of care towards its citizens.

Making it harder for any rando to buy a handgun for cash with no questions asked would be a start, but as long as you still have desperate crushing poverty and systemic inequality then you've still going to see people resorting violence out of desperation or despair-fuelled rage.

[Solauren]

There is also the problem of the sheer number of firearms in the United States already. Even if you put in perfect Gun Control measures and border screening, etc, you still have more guns in civilian and criminal hands then you have actual citizens.

The only way I can think of to deal with that aspect of the problem is offer alot of money for firearms to be turned over to the Government.
But first, you'd have to stop all legitimate gun sales for a month or two first, then announce it, to prevent people from just stocking up for a turn over.

[Zwinmar]

It really doesn't help that Police are partially funded by what they sieze, nor that the private prison industry exists. They say that you have to serve your time if you commit a crime but really, that shit is forever unless you are rich then well you get a slap on the wrist. We don't have a justice system in this country, all we have is a tax on being poor and it only gets worse if you are an obvious minority.

Government is supposed to serve the people, here, it serves the corporations.

As for gun control:
Their ideas tend to be dumber than Trump. A law is supposed to be technical and specific, as it stand right now and historically every idea proposed makes no sense. Rather than learn about firearms they just have a knee jerk reaction that ends up amounting to "it looks scary" then they put the morons in charge of the ATF and they make up rules that are nonsensical and contradictory while just changing definitions whenever they feel like it. You can not have a regulatory body that doesnt even know the thing they are supposed to be regulating.

[MKSheppard]

Article from 2016 Baltimore Sun regarding Baltimore:

https://data.baltimoresun.com/news/shoot-to-kill/

The number of fatal head shots in the city rose steadily from about 13 percent two decades ago to 62 percent last year. Meanwhile, the number of cadavers with 10 or more bullets more than doubled in the past decade, according to the Maryland medical examiner’s office, which tallied the bullet wounds at the request of The Sun.

Now, roughly two-thirds of city homicide victims are either shot in the head or multiple times. Many suffer both fates.

Law enforcement officials nationwide say they have noticed an increase in the quality of guns wielded by criminals.

“All the cheap guns made in the '80s have either quit functioning or have been recovered by police,” said Los Angeles Homicide Detective John Skaggs, the protagonist in the best-selling book “Ghettoside,” who has closed nearly all of the homicide cases he's handled. “They seem to all be expensive and high-quality now.”

In Milwaukee, police are tracking this trend. A decade ago, the top guns seized by police were a 12-gauge shotgun and pistols that cost less than $200 with standard, eight-bullet magazines. This year, the most seized guns were .40-caliber and 9 mm handguns that cost more than $400 and come with magazines that hold nine to 16 bullets.

In Baltimore, at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, the nation's first hospital devoted to trauma injuries, doctors sought to assess improvements in care. They studied patients over a dozen years and found that chances for surviving “improved significantly.”

A notable exception: gunshot victims. In 1999, 9.8 percent of those patients died. By 2008, that rate had risen to 17 percent.

...

Johns Hopkins Hospital also studied trauma outcomes and found that the fatality rate for patients with gunshot wounds nearly doubled from 9.5 percent between 2000 and 2003 to 18.3 percent for the period through March 2005.

The study concluded that the overall fatality rate jumped because patients were arriving in grave shape. More patients were dead on arrival, and more succumbed to their injuries within minutes of arriving at the hospital.

The median time before they were pronounced dead: six minutes.

On the streets in a number of cities, gunmen have increasingly aimed for the head. The number of fatal head shots in Milwaukee doubled in 2015 over the year before, and gunshot victims with three to seven bullet wounds jumped 150 percent.

It has been a clear, long-term trend in Baltimore, with the number of fatal head shots rising fivefold over the past two decades.

Some criminals are cunning enough to know that more of their targets could be wearing body armor, said Baltimore police Maj. Donald Bauer. This year, police seized body armor in multiple drug house raids — something veteran officers said they haven't seen before.

And in a cruel twist, some shooters are taking into account that Baltimore has top-notch trauma care, said former police commissioner Anthony Batts. That's why they aim for the head — to “take the trauma center out of the equation,” said Batts, now a consultant with the AWW Group training police commanders.

Gunmen are pumping more bullets into victims. People shot multiple times made up less than 60 percent of homicide victims in 2005, the earliest year for which data is available. That rose to 70 percent by last year.

The Maryland office of the chief medical examiner recently studied homicide autopsy reports of gunshot victims dating to 2005. About one-third of the victims died from a single gunshot, and that remained constant over the past decade. But the number of victims shot five to nine times doubled, as did those shot 10 or more times. In one case last year, a victim had been shot 38 times.

The article is a lot longer, and has some details on how Baltimore hitmen operate; it's pretty much like something out of The Wire; with "Cowboys" who rob drug dealers (OMAR CALLING)

[Ralin]

What the fuck point are you even trying to make? Everyone knows headshots are not an effective way to kill someone!

[MKSheppard]

What the fuck point are you even trying to make? Everyone knows headshots are not an effective way to kill someone!

Seriously? Read that linked article. It's long and lengthy and goes into a variety of reasons why the death rate in Baltimore keeps climbing despite massive improvements in trauma care; and also a peek into the gang culture in baltimore (snitches get stiches).

But if you want me to summarize it:

1.) Replacement of junk saturday night special guns with polymer framed striker fired pistols -- you're going from a 90 joule cartridge (.25 ACP) to 450 joules (9x19mm Parabellum).

2.) Criminal elements across the nation (not just baltimore) are big into "no man, no witness, no crime" -- pure drivebys are rarer now -- they pursue their targets and run them down, and instead of firing a few random shots, they empty the magazine.

In Los Angeles, gangs in the 1990s often carried out drive-by shootings, which could be indiscriminate and ineffective if the intent was to kill someone in particular. In the last decade, police said, they've been getting out of the car. “You want to kill 'em, not wing 'em,” said LAPD Homicide Detective Chris Barling, describing the mentality of shooters.