HAMILTON, Ohio (WKRC)- For many of the mass shootings we've seen throughout recent years, the weapon of choice is an ArmaLite 15 or similar rifle. They’re capable of many of shots in a short amount of time, but they’re also deadlier than a handgun for another reason.
Bullets from an AR-15 rifle, and weapons similar to it, travel almost three times faster than those of a typical handgun.
When the patients show up at emergency rooms, the wounds are often far more deadly.
Dayton Police said the accused Dayton mass shooter, Connor Betts, used a .223-caliber high-capacity rifle, with 100-round magazines.
Thirty seconds was all he needed to kill 9 people and injure more than two dozen more before being killed by police.
“If a bullet with that much energy strikes organs, liver, or heart, or lungs, or spleen, it can kill immediately,” Dr. Marcus Romanello, Chief Medical Officer and Emergency Department Medical Director at Ft. Hamilton Hospital said.
Dr. Romanello says the faster a bullet goes, the more damage it will do to the body.
The bullets coming out of the ArmaLite 15 and similar rifles travel around 3,000 feet per second
“Even though it’s a smaller bullet, a smaller mass, it’s doing a considerable amount more damage. So, not only is it leaving a trail of damage directly through the body, the energy it’s dissipating into the human tissue is also causing its own cavitation or injury wave that can be much larger than the bullet itself,” Romanello said.
Most handguns use heavier bullets, that don’t travel nearly as fast.
So, handgun rounds do not do as much damage inside the body.
Assault-style rifles are so powerful they create a shock wave through the body.
“It’s the shock wave of the bullet and the tissues around it. Even if a bullet were to strike a bone, now the energy impacts the bone and the fragments of the bone can go moving throughout the body and cause damage,” Romanello said.
Dr. Romanello says there’s a push around the country ‘Called Stop the Bleed,” to get more places equipped with combat-style first aid kits. They are made to stop the bleeding or at least slow it down after incidents like mass shootings.
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