Memphis Commercial Appeal lets slip the Enormous Cost of Black Gun Violence in 65% Black Memphis to White Taxpayers Subsidizing the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center

The Memphis Commercial Appeal is doing a six-part series into violence in the 65% black city called "Wounded City: A Special Investigation of the Commercial Appeal Exploring Memphis' Gun Violence Problem."

Memphis, of course, doesn't have a gun violence problem, it has a black violence problem.

The study is quiet on the number of victims and the number of white people who were self-inflicted gunshot victims (no one cares about the white death happening nationwide)

As you know, we get an editorial from the Memphis Commercial Appeal, LOOKING AT MEMPHIS’ BROADENING EPIDEMIC OF GUN ASSAULTS, but this piece fails to note the racial group behind primarily every nonfatal and fatal shooting: blacks.

But what is incredible is the latest part of the series entitled, TRAUMA CARE: "YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE DEEP DOWN INSIDE THAT YOU CAN SAVE THEM"

The piece confirms not only are black people responsible for all of the gun violence in 65 percent black Memphis, but the extraordinary cost uninsured blacks who are victims of this black gun violence cost the tax payers of Shelby County.

At the hilariously named Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center in Memphis, 93 percent of the gunshot victims emergency room doctors and nurses see are black (obviously, white suicide attempts via gun shot are the unspoken remainder of much of the gunshot trauma victims, but no one wants to talk about white people killing themselves because so much of the mainstream media and academia promotes this idea as positive way to end white privilege), and the stunning cost of patching up these black victims of black gun violence is staggering:

As LaRhon Threalkill pulled himself by his elbows along the dining room floor, his legs dragging uselessly behind in a trail of blood, he sensed time was running out. “I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t move. I felt like this was it,’’ says Threalkill, shot seven times and left for dead during a 2015 robbery. 

“But something told me, ‘No, LaRhon. There’s more fight in you. You can’t just allow yourself to die and end your life like this.' ’’ 

Extraordinary will and good fortune helped save Threalkill’s life that night after he invited an acquaintance into his Southeast Memphis home. But an investigation of medical records by The Commercial Appeal reveals he and a legion of other shooting victims are evidence of a wild card in Memphis’ battle to reduce a murder rate that far exceeds state and national averages: improvements in trauma care. 

Simply put, improving surgical skills and techniques at The Regional Medical Center's Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center are impacting the city’s homicide rate. Injury-related shootings grew as much as one-third in Memphis between 2006 and 2015, yet the murder rate fell nearly five percent, according to the newspaper’s analysis of crime statistics and more than 5,500 cases from the hospital’s trauma registry. 

Over the same period, the mortality rate of gunshot victims admitted to the hospital — known as The Med until a recent rebranding — dropped from nearly 17 percent to nine percent. 

Those trends emerge from an examination of outcomes for gunshot victims treated over a decade — a roster of tragedy and hope: 786 deaths, 4,767 survivors. 

For those like Threalkill who survive, life often poses extreme challenges — a long and painful rehabilitation and enormous financial cost. 

Paralyzed from the waist down with two bullets still embedded in his spine, Threalkill faced medical bills totaling nearly a half-million dollars at the medical center, alone. 

Because he initially had no health insurance, much of that cost was absorbed by the publicly subsidized hospital, where shootings account for $25 million a year in uncompensated care — costs that are passed on in the form of higher taxes and healthcare costs. 

But all those miracles, all those successes treating “penetrating trauma,’’ come at a cost. Paper copies of Threalkill’s medical records weigh 69 pounds. His initial three-week hospital stay cost $163,000. 

Repeat inpatient stays for follow-up surgery and care over the next two months added another $169,000. A five-week inpatient rehab tacked on $159,000. In all, more than $491,000. And he’s just one patient. 

Gunshot victims arrive like clockwork at the medical center, a non-profit facility that receives $28.4 million a year from Shelby County government. Its records show two other gunshot victims were admitted that same day, July 15, 2015. 

One was sent home a day later, the other to jail. Two more were admitted the following day: One died, one survived. During Threalkill’s initial three-week stay, 39 other gunshot-wound patients were admitted. 

Over the course of the year, the hospital registered 732 gunshot patients — more than two a day. These numbers don’t include many others treated and released for minor injuries such as flesh wounds. 

During the decade examined by the newspaper, spanning 5,553 patients, 270 spent at least a month at the medical center. 

The typical daily cost: $666. A day in ICU, where many start, costs much more: $7,512. More than 312 spent a week or more on a ventilator at a cost of about $7,500 a week. Eighteen were transferred to skilled-nursing facilities: As much as $500 a day. An additional 245 went to rehabilitation: $2,253 a day. Many of those bills were never paid.

One of the unspoken reasons America's healthcare system is collapsing is because of the strain black violence in urban areas puts on hospitals and trauma centers, as this micro-look at black dysfunction being treated by white taxpayers at the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center in Memphis illustrates.

Memphis doesn't have a gun problem.

Memphis doesn't have a violence problem

Memphis has a problem with black people using guns to commit violence.

And 65 percent black Memphis has a problem with black people using guns to commit violence against other blacks  that, ultimately, white taxpayers are forced to subsidize the trauma care, recovery, and lifelong healthcare.

Insanity personified?

Yes.

But this same pattern is repeated in major cities with large black populations nationwide: trauma centers in Baltimore, Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Chicago, NYC, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Richmond, Charlotte, Nashville, Omaha, Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Miami, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and Cleveland are all burdened with patching up black victims of black gun crime that anti-white liberals blame on guns and the 2nd Amendment.

Wrong.

All of the aforementioned, just as in Memphis, do not have a gun problem.

They do not have a violence problem

These cities, just as in Memphis, have a problem with black people using guns to commit violence.

There's a simple solution to all of this: remember the 2nd Amendment, as written, only applied to white males (consult the Naturalization Act of 1790). Return to the concept of liberty the founding fathers intended and make it a criminal offense for any black person to posses a firearm.

As we see with the statistics for Memphis and the racial reality of gun violence in America, almost all of the gun violence is black on black, so this rational and sane return to the version of the 2nd Amendment our founding fathers intended will actually save black lives and prove, truly, that black lives matter.

Just not as much as the securing of the blessings of liberty for us and our posterity.