For high-crime neighborhoods, a class in gunshot first aid

Borrowing from battlefield tactics, the trainers teach neighborhood residents how to tighten a tourniquet around someone's arm, drag them to safety, apply pressure to major arteries to stop bleeding, and position victims in a vehicle before rushing them to a hospital.

The program is part of a national campaign by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called "Stop the Bleed," which recognizes that no matter how fast emergency responders get to a scene, bystanders will be there first.

[...] most of the efforts elsewhere are aimed at teaching the public how to respond to mass shootings or mass accidents like a plane or train crash.

Organizers are hoping to find funding to help pay for gunshot-treatment kits to distribute to people who have completed the program and to leave in places that could be adjacent to gun violence, from recreation centers to late-night takeout restaurants.

At the recent training, grandmothers, uncles, young women and boys as young as 10 years old paid close attention as hospital volunteers demonstrated techniques before practicing on one another.

Scott Charles, Trauma Outreach Coordinator at Temple University Hospital and one of the program's organizers, suggested part of the challenge could be a mutual wariness between the young men and some in the community who fear them.