This account is based on a review of nearly 100 autopsy reports from several AR-15 shootings as well as court testimony and interviews with trauma surgeons, ballistics experts and a medical examiner. The second part depicts the entrance and exit wounds of two actual victims - Noah Pozner, 6, and Peter Wang, 15 - killed in school shootings when they were struck by multiple bullets. The first part of this report is a 3D animation that shows the trajectory of two different hypothetical gunshots to the chest - one from an AR-15 and another from a typical handgun - to explain the greater severity of the damage caused by the AR-15.

The Washington Post sought to illustrate the force of the AR-15 and reveal its catastrophic effects. News accounts rely on antiseptic descriptions from law enforcement officials and medical examiners who, in some cases, have said remains were so unrecognizable that they could be identified only through DNA samples.Īs Sakran put it: “We often sanitize what is happening.” Crime scene photos are considered too gruesome to publish and often kept confidential. The carnage is rarely visible to the public. “It literally can pulverize bones, it can shatter your liver and it can provide this blast effect,” said Joseph Sakran, a gunshot survivor who advocates for gun violence prevention and a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital.ĭuring surgery on people shot with high-velocity rounds, he said, body tissue “literally just crumbled into your hands.” The impact is even more acute on the compact body of a small child. A single bullet lands with a shock wave intense enough to blow apart a skull and demolish vital organs.

The AR-15 fires bullets at such a high velocity - often in a barrage of 30 or even 100 in rapid succession - that it can eviscerate multiple people in seconds. The scenes of chaos and terror are all too familiar in America.

Child human muzzle