There are certain things that I believe every person needs to learn. Everyone needs to know how to cook a handful of meals that involve easily accessible ingredients, ideally from scratch, but not necessarily. They should know how to get stains out of clothing. They should know some basic home maintenance tasks.
Oh, and they should know things like CPR and how to use an AED.
Luckily, many Americans know all of these things to some degree or another. One thing that too few understand, though, is something that the FDNY just taught a bunch of people in a “hot spot” for so-called gun violence.
esidents in one of New York City’s most violence-stricken neighborhoods received hands-on training Tuesday on how to stop life-threatening bleeding in shooting victims, as part of a new FDNY initiative.
The “Control the Bleed” program was held at the New York City Housing Authority Van Dyke Community Center in Brooklyn, just a day after an NYPD officer was shot in the face nearby and survived, the New York Post reported.
“Control the Bleed is a training program that is meant to offer regular New Yorkers the skills to help them help their neighbors in an emergency,” FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker said. “Rather than just standing around when you see someone in need, by teaching life-saving skills, we’re ensuring that everyday citizens can respond with confidence when faced with life-threatening bleeding.”
In the past, some have looked at this training and lamented it. “If we controlled guns better, we wouldn’t need this kind of thing,” they argued.
Frankly, that’s insane.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that we had absolute control over guns to the point that there was zero “gun crime” anywhere in the United States. What then?
Well, knives are still a thing, and we’ve got a higher non-gun homicide rate than many developed nations’ total homicide rate, so it would seem to me that at least some violent crimes would still be taking place, and at a rate we should still be concerned about.
Even without crime, though, we still have a thousand other cases where understanding how to control bleeding might be needed. Everything from car accidents to terrorist attacks to just falling weird and getting a compound fracture could cause enough blood loss to claim a life if no one knows how to deal with it.
This should be life training. Everyone in this country should not just know how to control bleeding, but have the tools readily accessible so they can. Even if someone is too queasy at the sight of blood to do anything themselves, they can potentially guide others. They can bring supplies that are needed because they understand what’s needed. They can help in many ways, simply because they know.
As a nation, we cannot just assume that if we take away one thing, suddenly every problem goes away.
This should be in every school, every community center, every church, and every civic group across the nation. There should be no reason Americans are unaware of what to do should someone need lifesaving care before EMS can arrive.
It’s not about guns. It’s about life and all the ways it can end suddenly.
Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
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