Editor:
We are again presented with stories of people being killed by an AR15 rifle, and are faced with questions about the weapons used. Let’s briefly consider those weapons.
Physicians regularly remove bullets from people who have been shot and repair the area around the wound. There is rarely any damage inflicted more than a half inch from where the bullet traveled.
These are bullets fired from a hand gun or a normal rifle, and those bullets typically travel around 500 mph when fired. So, unless the bullet damages a critical component of the body, most victims will survive.
Bullets fired from an AR15 are a very different animal. Where most bullets travel that 500 mph, the bullets fired from these semi-automatics travel more than four times as fast. They travel at more than 2,800 mph. While that may help with accuracy, it also does something dramatically different.
Where the area around a wound from a regular bullet is often not severely damaged, the very speed of the faster bullet creates a field of severe distortion that forms an area of destruction about 6 inches in diameter for the entire path the bullet takes. If the bullet directly hits a leg bone, 3 inches of that bone will be turned to dust, and an inch on either side is killed.
This means that almost any tissue within that 6-inch-wide path is virtually destroyed. Unless fired from more than a mile away, such bullets are never found inside the person hit. They pass clear through the body and typically exit leaving an opening the size of a large apple. Think about it. Do we really need AR15s?
Larry Kueneman
Pine Cove