In an incredible display of utter tastelessness, Donald Trump Jr. insisted in a rage-fueled video on social media Saturday that the Uvalde mass shooter could have killed 19 children and two teachers with a “bat.”
Assault rifles are being stigmatized when “screwed up people” are the real issue, he railed in a Facebook video.
The red-faced, nearly teary-eyed Trump Jr. shouted that the shooter was a “sociopath” who could wreak the same havoc with nearly any other weapon.
“It’s the gun; it’s not the sociopath wielding it,” people are claiming, he complained. “He wouldn’t have done the exact same thing with a bat, or a bomb, or some sort of improvised device — or a machete?” he added.
The real problem is that people are “screwed up,” and we have “crazy teachers” and “indoctrination programs” in our schools, he insisted.
“That’s what’s going on right now, guys. Enough is enough,” said Trump, who said he’s looking for “accountability.” “Never ends, man,” he added.
In fact the gun is critical in the amount of destruction any shooter can deliver. Assault rifles cause extreme trauma to the human body, and bullets are spit out lightning fast, allowing a gunman to do maximum damage extremely quickly.
A pediatric trauma surgeon at the University Hospital in San Antonio who helped save the lives of children wounded at the Uvalde elementary school told CNN earlier this week that the high velocity bullets rip out “large areas” of tissue that instantly trigger massive hemorrhaging that can kill someone within five minutes. That’s why mass shootings with assault rifles have so few survivors (unlike, say, an attack involving a bat).
“When a high-velocity firearm enters a body, it basically creates a wave and a blast,” Dr. Lillian Liao told “Nightline. “So it looks like a body part got blown up. A high-velocity firearm will create a giant hole in the body.”
All the treated survivors suffered “large destructive wounds,” which are more likely to affect an organ in the small body of a child, she said.
When Scottish parents and gun control advocates were battling to ban high-caliber handguns after 16 children were killed in a 1996 mass shooting in a school in Dunblane, the late Prince Phillip asked if someone beat people to death with a cricket bat, would they be banned as well?
Obviously, that was “nonsense,” Mick North, a father of 5-year-old Sophie killed in Dunblane, told NPR Friday, recalling the prince’s complaint.
Such statements utterly fail to acknowledge the appalling devastation of guns, particularly automatic weapons, North noted. “It is too easy for somebody to pick up something like a gun and cause havoc within seconds and certainly within minutes,” he said.