How Much Suffering Will It Take Before We Have Realistic Gun Control?

This article from this morning’s New York Times outlines the injuries suffered by lobbyist Matt Mika during the mass shooting at the Republican baseball team practice last June and his long and painful rehabilitation since that day…and how he hasn’t gotten his life back to normal yet….months and months later.

Mr. Mika was the individual with the most critical injuries and the first responders essentially considered him to be dead. But the skills of the paramedics and the trauma surgery doctor saved his life. But his life was totally disrupted. He doesn’t really have it back yet. Beyond the physical injuries and trauma he continues to encounter emotional trauma to this day.

I imagine it is very similar for Representative Steve Scalise, who in the last photo that I saw of him is still on crutches.

So after all of the prayers have gone out…what happens next?

Apparently nothing…despite the evidence of continuing tragedies and traumas surrounding mass shootings is right there in their GOP family…the Republicans can’t throw off the yoke of their NRA masters to do something? Hell we don’t even had a bump stock ban yet. What shithole country do we live in?

Some excerpts from the article:

“Other than the fact that he was awake, you could have said: ‘This dude is dead.’ The fact that he was not was remarkable,” Mr. Shade (Chad Shade, a paramedic of 14 years for the Alexandria Fire Department) said.

Mr. Mika’s days are now a mix of rehabilitation and slowly increasing work hours.

“I look better than I feel,” Mr. Mika said. “You may look great, but you actually don’t know how people feel.”

At night, he feels the bullet fragments moving around in his chest. He sleeps on his back to relieve pressure on his chest and left arm.

“I want to get back to some type of routine in life,” Mr. Mika said, “and not have this incident define who I am.”

He sees physical therapists in downtown Washington for hours at a time, his gunshot wounds in plain view of other patients nursing back and shoulder injuries. He talks to a therapist and consults his girlfriend’s preacher.

Joe Mika remembers tying his son’s shoes, changing his bandages and clothing for him in the weeks after the shooting, helping him live his life in reverse.

“I don’t think my wife and I will ever stop worrying about him,” he said.

But this is probably the most telling quote in the article:

“I’m angry this person has taken away my ability to be normal,” he said. [emphasis mine]

You’re a lobbyist. You can actually do something about that!

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