US Woman Takes Her Gun Into an MRI Scanner And Gets Seriously Lucky

Science Alert ^ | 12 December 2023 | MIKE MCRAE

[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.

[telescope115]

I had an MRI done of my head once. They didn’t find anything.
My wife said “I could’ve told the that much”.🙄

[mware]

Heard about the guy who was carrying an O2 tank in the hallway. As he walked by the MRI room the tank flew out of his hands and went into mri. Killed the kid in it.

[markman46]

Ya mine was empty too, except for a small stroke.

[jmacusa]

Incredible. What kind of hospital or medical clinic lets you in packing a firearm?

[BamaBelle]

I recently had an mri and they scanned me before I could enter mri room (after asking what seemed like 5 million questions about metal in my body...thankfully I have none...lol)

[Osage Orange]

Didn't matter really if the pistol was loaded or not. You do NOT take METAL into an MRI room...

The Techs were not doing their jobs..

[telescope115]

I hope you’re ok now.

[Osage Orange]

Stupid does hurt....Been stupid prolly over 300 times.

[Cobra64]

Ferrous based objects are magnetic.

Aluminum, gold, silver, titanium, etc are not magnetic.

[Cobra64]

I call BS.

[Osage Orange]

Well Hell....I just unloaded and reloaded my pistols!!!

[Cobra64]

Parts of the gun are made of steel which is an alloy. Iron is the primary element in most steel.

[Osage Orange]

I’ve some coins that are kinda magnetic.....

[Cobra64]

Except the gun barrel.

[Tellurian]

The officer notified the technologist that he was carrying the weapon before entering the MR dressing room. ... Once the officer was inside the MR suite, the gun was pulled from his hand as he attempted to place the gun on top of a cabinet 3 ft (0.9 m) away from the magnet bore. The gun was immediately pulled into the bore (of the MRI machine), where it struck the left side and spontaneously discharged a round into the wall of the room at the rear of the magnet.

Two different incidents? The link describes a male officer; the gun discharged into a wall. Not through a woman's buttocks. If this is the same incident, the writer of this thread's reference article just made a bunch of stuff up after reading a headline. Heck, I could have done that, I'm a Freeper after all.

[Pontiac]

lead is not magnetic, neither is polymer

If the magnetic field is strong enough everything is magnetic.

https://www.livescience.com/5688-mice-levitated-lab.html

[Hiddigeigei]

"What I don’t understand is how the gun fired without the grip safety being depressed."
The article explains what they think happened. The magnet lifted the firing pin bock held in place by a rather weak spring and the force of the pistol hitting the magnet muzzle first drove the firing pin forward with enough force to fire the cartridge.

[Candor7]

Except the gun barrel.>>>>>>>>>>>

Used to be true:

"This investigation clearly demonstrated the viability of using powder injection molding for the fabrication of near-net-shaped gun barrel tubes with injection molded lands and grooves and a uniform twist. This novel concept is demonstrated here using alumina and the concept can be extended to other advanced ceramic materials such as silicon nitride"

See:

Processing of a Ceramic Rifled Gun Barrel

Ceramic gun barrel liner for aluminum tube:

Soon we will have no steel mills to make steel. Its all in China now thanks to Brandon.

[Candor7]

I have 2nd amemdment rights everywhere I go.

And the tech is available to exercise it everywhere .Thats got anti 2nd amendment groups and government agencies all upset as guns are printed and set up for use.

So now the 2nd amendment can be exercised everywhere.

[buwaya]

In those locations I mentioned, and many others, no you don’t. You are free to try to win such a case. There are rights, and there is criminal irresponsibility.