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Recently the Bangor Daily News featured a Lewiston shooting survivor being released from the hospital. He was shot five times, and is apparently still carrying fragmented pieces of bullet. I got shot three times during a battle in Vietnam (1966), and irretrievable bits of bullet were left inside of me. Five-plus decades later, that became a problem.
I went to the ER with a severely infected dog-bite wound (trying to release my wife’s collie from an illegal leg-hold trap). They got me stabilized with a load of IV antibiotics and my doctor at the Calais VA clinic ordered an MRI to determine whether or not the bone had become infected, a potentially catastrophic condition. But the bits of metal in my belly said, “Not!”
I was shot by someone using frangible rounds, and it seems like they may have been used in Lewiston, too. My shooter was within his rights to shoot me as an enemy combatant, but he/she was otherwise a war criminal, using ammunition that has been declared illegal in war by international humanitarian law.
Oddly, sadly, but highly predictable, soft-point, exploding, frangible rounds are OK for use by U.S. law enforcement and, not to be left out, U.S. civilians. What is wrong with this picture?
Charles A. Kniffen
Lubec
