Posted on 12/12/2023 12:28:01 PM PST by Red Badger
A 57-year-old Wisconsin woman received superficial wounds to her right buttock earlier this year when a concealed firearm on her person was subjected to the powerful magnetism of an MRI device.
Though her injuries were relatively minor, consisting of a clean entry and exit through subcutaneous tissue, the incident is yet another reminder of the potentially deadly consequences of taking a loaded firearm into places where loaded firearms have no place.
Detailed in a report by the US Food and Drug Administration, the case follows a shockingly similar incident that took place in Brazil just a few months prior, in which a 40-year-old man died as a result of injuries sustained when his own gun fired in close proximity to an active MRI scanner.
Just how the unnamed woman in the more recent incident managed to slip her handgun past medical staff isn't clear, with personnel reporting the patient had undergone the standard screening procedure for potentially magnetic items, one that includes specific references to weapons.
MRI devices are seriously powerful, in all senses of the word. Not only are they useful for producing detailed images of our squishy bits for specialists to diagnose injuries and illnesses, they operate by producing incredibly strong electromagnetic fields.
Those fields twist the protons in your tissues so they all line up in the same direction like tiny compasses. When jiggled with a follow-up pulse of radio waves, the protons take differing amounts of time to realign; differences that translate into variations in tissue, which can be used to build an anatomical map.
While all protons wiggle and waggle in a magnetic field, the arrangements of particles in ferromagnetic materials – such as the elements iron, nickel, and cobalt – amplify this effect. Bathed in an MRI's typical magnetic field of around 1.5 to 3 tesla, there's less wiggling and more heating, shaking, and leaping.
That's the physics behind the basic rule of keeping metallic objects far away from an MRI. That includes piercings, jewelry, coins, phones, crucifixes, Iron Age artifacts, throwing stars, toy cars, lucky horseshoes, magnetic eyelashes, house keys, and, of course, firearms.
It's possible these (and other) unfortunate incidences are simply cases of feeling so at ease with packing heat that the weapon's presence just slips one's mind.
Given the risk of severe injury or death to one's self and others, stories like these can only serve as a reminder to double check and then check again if you're armed before entering a tube pumping out the magnetism of a few thousand fridge magnets. It just might save your ass.
Another gun free zone. MRI rooms. Ubiquitous gun-free signs to be put up now
Yes she got shot in the butt.
Here’s the incident if anyone is interested:
https://www.ajronline.org/doi/full/10.2214/ajr.178.5.1781092
Thanks!.................
I’m pretty sure that lead does not shield attraction from magnetic fields. If it did, it would do so by becoming itself interactive with the magnetic field, which would not help the situation.
Do they work on Badgers?
I remember a safety demonstration I saw about 15 years ago where they had a wooden plank set up in front of an MRI machine. A technician had a flat head screwdriver in his front pocket. When they ran the machine the tool “jumped” from his pocket and was embedded into the plank.
Absurd?
Catch up.
Non magnetic guns...... Are here.
No problem if you need one covertly, its possible.
Good thing she didn’t ruin a million dollar MRI machine.
Of course they do!
I’ve had several!
And a MRI too!..............
This a special kind of stupid article. You don’t take off all your cloths for an MRI.
But taking a gun into the MRI room is just stupid
Steel slides, steel barrels, steel fire control components ...
Some high end systems can cost $3mm.................
No name or pictures of the woman. I’m going to assume that I don’t need to guess who at this point.
Really who walks around with those?
Sunken civ................
If I’m going to shoot myself,it’s gonna be BEFORE I have to get into that MRI Coffin-like machine! ;)
Forest Gump: ‘Where were you shot, Son?’
‘In the buttocks, Sir!’
I had an MRI last week.
Stripped and put on scrubs.
The rivets on jeans will rip away.
Taking a firearm into an MRI is stupid.
And stupid should hurt.
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