America Doesn't Need Gun Control, it Needs Black Control: New Study Confirms Enormous Financial Burden on Hospitals of Black Gun crime

What can we infer from a new paper - Hospitalizations Due to Firearm Injuries in Children and Adolescents - that could help us craft a sensible policy when it comes to the issue of gun control in America? 

How about you read the findings of this report, published in the journal Pediatrics, and then come up with some ideas? [Guns sent 20 children to U.S. hospitals every single day, study finds, Los Angeles Times, 1-27-14]:

Twenty children or adolescents were hospitalized for firearm-related injuries every day in 2009, and 453 died of their wounds, a new report says. 

The study provides one of the most comprehensive recent efforts to tally the number of children hurt nationally in gun-related incidents. It was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. 

A national database of patients younger than 20 who were admitted to hospitals in 2009 shows that boys represented nearly 90% of the total, and that the rate of gunshot-related hospitalizations for African American males was 10 times that of white males. 

Blacks ages 15 to 19 were 13 times more likely than their white peers to be injured by gunfire.  

And 70% of all black children hospitalized for gun injury (compared with 32% of all white children injured by firearms) were classified as victims of assault. Latino children and adolescents were three times likelier than white children to be hospitalized with a firearm-related injury. 

Hospital care for youths injured by gunfire cost $147 million in 2009, according to the report, but that is a fraction of the overall cost of the injuries. It doesn't include physician-related services, rehabilitation and ongoing care and rehospitalization, and does not take into account many victims' loss of future productivity. (Past research has found that almost half of children hospitalized for gun-related injury are discharged with a disability.) 

Among Latino youths, firearm-related injuries were three times higher than among white children, the data show. And African American girls were more than six times as likely as their white counterparts to be injured by gunfire.

Got any ideas yet? 

The only benefit of a true zero-tolerance gun control policy among the black population (this paper makes it clear which demographic is responsible for the incredible financial burden on hospital care for treating those children of gunfire wounds) is we can train our trauma surgeons employed by the military on life-saving techniques before they go into a war zone.

For the killing fields of Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia provide hourly opportunities for new techniques to be developed that will save the life of a black person shot by another black individual (one of the truly unexplored reasons why homicides have declined so significantly in places like Chicago and New York City: heightened proficiency of emergency room surgeons/care courtesy of an almost endless supply of black bodies to experiment new techniques upon). 

Proficiency of trauma surgeons has only improve as America's hospitals fill with non-white victims...

Consider this: a study conducted by Dr. David Livingstone, Wesley J. Howe Professor and chief of trauma surgery at Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School and director of the New Jersey Trauma Center, reviewed all the interpersonal gunshot cases at the hospital between 2000 and 2011, using the data from the trauma registry, emergency department billing and hospital finance records. 

Only four percent of his patients were white (odds on what percentage of blacks were behind these shootings?) [Degree of Gunshot Violence Takes Turn for the Worse, Study Suggests, AnesthesiologyNews.com, 1-3-2014]:

Of the 6,322 patients who presented with firearm injuries, 92% were male. They were young, with a mean age of 27 years (±9 years). In fact, they were very young: 29% of all gunshot victims were between the ages of 20 and 24, and nearly 20% were teenagers aged 15 to 19.

In keeping with other studies, the research confirmed that gunshot violence disproportionately affects blacks and Hispanics. Eighty-six percent of gunshot patients who presented at the Level 1 trauma center were black, and 9% were Hispanic. Whites and Asians represented 4% and 1% of all gunshot patients, respectively.

What does the average person treated at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center (serving 65 percent black Baltimore, perhaps ground zero for gun crime in America) look like?

Funny you should ask... 

 Violence is the leading cause of death for young adults in Baltimore and is a widely recognized public health concern.  

VIP Background Dr. Carnell Cooper started the Violence Intervention Program (VIP) in 1998 after seeing victims of traumatic violent injury being treated, released, and readmitted months later due to another, often more serious, violent injury. 

Dr. Cooper recognized that this "revolving door phenomenon" occurred repeatedly, with patients being discharged without any form of counseling or intervention to the same streets where they had sustained their injuries. Seeing this caused Dr. Cooper to ask a simple scientific question:"How can we reduce the number of repeat victims of intentional violent injury coming through the doors of Shock Trauma every day?"  

To answer this question, Dr. Cooper, Dr. Paul Stolley, and other colleagues completed a comprehensive case-control study (Archives of Surgery, Vol. 135, No. 7, July 2000) that identified the risk factors for repeat victims of violence. 
The study identified the following risk factors: 

• African-American male 

• Median age 31 Unemployed 

• No health insurance 

• Income less than $10,000 yearly 

• Current drug user 

• Past or present drug dealer 

• Positive test for psychoactive substances upon admission 

• Additionally, eighty-six percent (86%) of the victims felt that disrespect was involved with their injury, and a majority of the victims had a history of involvement with the criminal justice system.

 How about a more in-depth look at both the societal cost (in terms of wasted man hours trying to save criminals lives and the drain on taxpayers money going to save them) of black people on trauma centers in Baltimore (a gun is just a tool; a person must make a conscious decision to use this tool as a weapon)
[The trauma of gun violence: Dr. Edward E. Cornwell III, trauma chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, describes gunshot wounds as "more and more a juvenile disease.", Baltimore Sun, 3-12-2000]:

So what happens when the human body meets the gun industry's deadliest creations? It's not pretty. Ask Dr. "Eddie" Cornwell, the trauma chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. During the 16 years he has been a trauma surgeon, Cornwell has saved his share of gunshot-wound victims, and he has watched many others go to the medical examiner for autopsies. 
Edward E. Cornwell III, 43, realizes that only a quirk of fate separates him from the African-American youths he is trying to save. He says his parents made the difference.  

Cornwell has strong opinions about gun violence. Recently, he shared his thoughts with Perspective Editor Mike Adams. 

How many gunshot wounds does Hopkins treat annually? 

It's been slowly increasing. We had about 365 in 1997, about 380-some in 1998 and 390 last year. Baltimore actually stands out a bit, apart from the national trend. 

From the early to the late 1990s, in Boston, New York Los Angeles, Miami, Washington, the numbers of penetrating trauma, gunshot wounds and stabbings, have gone down. Baltimore is different, and I don't have a complete explanation for it. But, in the neighborhood around Hopkins, about 80 percent of the crime is centered around trying to obtain or sell illegal drugs. 

How would you describe the typical gunshot wound victim treated here at Hopkins based on age, race and economic background? 

Simply put, young black males. The typical patient would be in his late teens or early 20s, someone from the surrounding neighborhoood. As I said before, in 1999, we had about 390 gunshot cases, and those patients from the narrow age of 15 to 20 years old represent close to 60 percent of our gunshot wounds and close to two-thirds of all of our deaths. 

What's the societal cost of these gunshot cases? Who's paying the bill? 

You and I are paying the bill. The taxpayers are paying the bill. That's the sad truth throughout the country. To be a Level 1 Trauma Center as we are, we need to be open, ready and available 24 hours a day. That means the lights are on, the CAT scan is ready, the operating room is ready to go, the blood bank is available, people are in-house who are specialists in certain areas and prepared to take care of these patients whether they show up or not. And then, when the patients show up, they may or may not be able to pay. Many of my patients are Male X, Male Y, Male P, for hours before we even know a name.

A sensible gun policy for America?

Make it illegal for black people to own a gun.

Those black people found possessing a gun?

Throw them in jail immediately.

Those found using a gun in a crime?

Execute immediately.

America doesn't need gun control; it needs black control.