DHS Will Stop School Shootings By Teaching Kids Bleeding Is FUNdamental!

Triage 4 Teenz!

The Trump Administration is finally doing something about school shootings! Nope, nothing to keep guns out of the hands of people bent on killing as many people as quickly as possible, that would be tyranny. But Homeland Security, in a move that ought to make Rick Santorum proud, will be awarding a $1.8 million grant to teach high school kids how to control massive bleeding. As part of overall first-aid training like CPR, it's not a horrible idea. We're just not sure the My First Sucking Chest Wound textbooks are age appropriate.

A notice filed on the DHS website last month says the goal of the "School-Age Trauma Training" grant is to "enhance a bystander's ability to take decisive, lifesaving action to assist victims with traumatic injuries." And heavens, no, it's not ONLY for school shootings, but you can see how that would be one situation where teens might get a chance to use their bleed-out prevention training:

"Similar to how students learn health education and driver's education, they must learn proper bleeding control techniques using commonly available materials,'' according to the notice, "including how to use their hands, dressings and tourniquets."

A DHS spokesman said the grant wasn't related to any single shooting, and added the program was meant to help students respond to natural disasters. Makes sense, since we seem bent on treating mass shootings as if they just spontaneously came out of nowhere like tornadoes, California wildfires, or hazardous chemical spills. No one can explain or predict these mysteries, which science speculates may be the result of God's anger at women having abortions.

Applicants for the grants would be required to include basic training on triage and on survival techniques in a variety of mass casualty events. We imagine Donald Trump will weigh in to advise the learning objectives be expanded to include shooting bad hombres while applying pressure to a wound. Programs specifically for prep school boys will offer guidance on drawing up a nondisclosure agreement if your Playboy model girlfriend stops bleeding.

This isn't merely a bandaid of a solution, however, since knowing how to stop bleeding really is a useful first-aid skill, as the New York Times reports:

The Stop the Bleed campaign, a national campaign by the Department of Homeland Security, encourages bystanders to act before emergency medical workers arrive. Some groups have based similar trainings on the campaign or started their own.

More than 1,000 people have attended a program put together by Ujimaa Medics, a grass-roots organization in Chicago that hosts workshops for residents on "urban emergency first response," according to its website . It notes that five gunshot victims have been helped by the organization's trainers and that the organization has eight trainers younger than 18.

The program does mention active-shooting events, but as just one of multiple scenarios in which stopping bleeding would be useful, like car crashes or, we suppose, Trump 2020 rallies.

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[ NYT ]