Martin/Zimmerman: humble opinions and speculation thread

[Bricker]

From a 2010 thread (predating the current controversy):

@picunurse

The brain has about 4 minutes of oxygen, so no, a heart shot isn’t instant death*. In fact, depending where the heart is injured, it’s remotely possible to survive. That would only be if sophicated medical care was immediately at hand.

*I have sad personal knowledge of this. My grandfather shot himself in the heart. I was the first to reach him. He was able to say my name before he died.

@Blake

How much misinformation and speculation can we squeeze into a single GQ thread?

Firstly, there is good research done on the subject of what constitutes an incapacitating shot done by the FBI. It is available online if you want to spend your time looking for it. There are numerous first hand accounts of people shot through the heart who continued to run and fight for several seconds afterwards.

We have literally dozens of examples of people shot through the heart by firing squad who lived for minutes, in one case almost half an hour, afterwards. That these people were shot through the heart can’t be denied because it was confirmed by autopsy. Many of these firing squad subjects either retained or regained consciousness after being shot through the heart. In the British Army, one of the more unpleasant tasks of the officer in charge of the squad was to remain with the body for a minute after the execution. If the person was still alive they were required to deliver the coup de grace with a handgun round to the brain. The pain often caused the person to pass out but they would occasionally regain consciousness fairly rapidly. People breathing and moving after being shot was a normal occurrence and one reason why it was harder to find officer to volunteer for firing squads than enlisted men.

So there is no disputing that being shot through the heart isn’t instantaneously fatal a large proportion of the time.

According to the CIA there are only two ways to instantly take somebody down with a bullet: a hit to the central nervous system or breaking the major leg bones. That is it. Any other wound at all, including heart shots, leaves the target with a very good chance of moving towards you and firing.

Secondly, the concept of hydrostatic shock is still being debated, but most ballistics experts don’t believe it exists to any appreciable degree. The idea of rifle rounds turning organs to mush through hydrostatic shock is simply not true, or at least no evidence of it has ever been found in the real world.

Even if we accept that hydrostatic shock exists, the idea of hydrostatic shock travelling though the blood vessels to the brain and causing brain damage is simply ridiculous. Firstly it would require a round that struck but did not penetrate the ventricle. If it penetrated then any pressure would be dispersed out through the holes, just like the famous strobe photo of an apple being shot. Secondly it would require that the shot hit just as the ventricle was beginning to contract. A hit at any other time would have no fluid to displace. Even if those two highly improbable events did occur, the brain doesn’t have a dedicated blood vessel from the heart. Any pressure increase would be distributed across the entire body, not transmitted ot the brain. The pressure compensation mechanisms that prevent the brain from experiencing excess pressure would easily cope with the tiny fraction of extra pressure that this miracle shot could produce.

250 milliseconds if done correctly. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. Pressure on the carotid sinus causes loss of consciousness though a nervous reflex designed to protect the brain form pressure fluctuation. It occurs regardless of how much or how little blood the brain is actually getting. As such it has absolutely no relevance to this thread.

What is your response, you with the face?