While in theory the idea seems practical — providing tools to you and me to save life and limb — and perhaps laudable, that same idea can seem tone deaf, insensitive, inadequate and ill-timed.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is reportedly exploring the notion of installing bleeding control kits in public places and training staff in life- saving techniques that include the application of tourniquets and treating a life-threatening wound.
Stop the Bleed was an initiative first introduced by the Department of Homeland Security in 2015. The purpose is to train non-emergency personnel how to handle and treat victims they may encounter in the event of a mass shooting, terrorist attack or even a natural disaster.
According to a story by The Union-Tribune’s Lyndsay Winkley, at least one county supervisor thinks participating in the program could save lives.
“While the nation debates how to handle these horrible, horrible incidents, there’s one step that we can take right here in San Diego County to improve the odds of staying alive after a mass shooting or any other traumatic incident that may take place, and it’s a program called Stop the Bleed,” said Dianne Jacob, who represents the county’s District 2.
She is not wrong.
Knowing how to stop traumatic bleeding is a practical skill. It may rank right up there with knowing how to perform CPR, the Heimlich or correctly applying an automated external defibrillator. (None of which, shamefully, I know how to do).
But hopefully Jacob and others don’t forget that treatment is not the cure to eliminating the “horrible, horrible incidents” she references.
Presumably she is talking about mass shootings in public places such as movie theaters churches and schools.
We have a long history of debating gun reform in this country. One side — despite a changing environment and culture — propped up and emboldened by the National Rifle Association seems unwilling to even entertain the idea of considering life-saving changes to gun laws.
At times the NRA et al appear all too comfortable with the idea of slaughtered men, women and children on American soil as long as their right to own any and all firearms is not questioned. Better to treat gaping chest and head wounds in a classroom full of 15-year-olds than prevent them in the first place by prohibiting the sale or possession of certain firearms, no?
That’s the path we risk travelling if we continue avoiding a genuine, good-faith effort to look at how much power we let guns and the gun lobby play in our lives.
We may treat the symptoms instead of addressing the problem. If that remains the case then no matter how much training we receive, we all will have blood on our hands.
