Paramedic's powerful image lays bare grim reality of gun violence

Luis Sone, right, and his girlfriend, Maritza Garcia, look at a vigil in front of Dallas police headquarters. Photo / AP

A paramedic has shared an incredibly powerful image along with a heartfelt post laying bare the grim reality of gun violence.

The post, on Imgur by a user named LostScotsman, was titled 'This is hard' and showed an ambulance floor covered in the blood of a shooting victim.

Along with it, the anonymous paramedic issued a plea to end the gun violence that is plaguing the United States after a week of horrific violence.

Sniper Micah Johnson, 25, killed five police officers and wounded several others in Dallas on Thursday night at a Black Lives Matter protest.

They were demonstrating following the deaths of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, at the hands of police earlier in the week.

Referring to the events of the past few days, the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) worker wrote: 'It stuns me that it's so easy for humans to be so willing to say someone deserves death.

"I'm tired of watching the world be so willing to damn people to death based on their job, race, religion, or what the hell ever. If you are willing to think that thought, you don't value human life."

In gut-wrenching detail, the paramedic also describes the difficulties they endure on the job on a regular basis.

"We are tired of going to work,' the paramedic writes. 'We are tired of being called to an apartment at four in the morning to someone who has been shot 6 times over piddly s***.

"What's even more tiring is when we sit there and do everything we can to try and give this person another go at life, but we watch life actually leave this person and he ceases to exist.

"We are tired of having to tell families that we did everything we possibly could have (and the entire time knowing that, telling them this, it doesn't change a thing) but their loved one has passed away.

"We are tired of hearing children crying because they're afraid of losing their parent.

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGE

A paramedic has shared this incredibly powerful image along with a heartfelt post laying bare the grim reality of gun violence. Photo / via Facebook

"We are tired of going to funerals for people we know and have become friends with, who lost their life doing their job.

"We are tired of seeing everyday people lose their loved ones because of some kind of violence that is solely because one street doesn't like another. We are tired of seeing violence in the street because every day we know someone else is going to lose their life over meaningless 'turf'.

"We are tired of seeing how drugs can destroy a family, a neighborhood, and even an entire city."

But despite all these feelings, the paramedic says it won't stop them from going to work every.

"No matter how tired we get, we still wake up. We get dressed and we walk out the front door,' they add.

"We wake up every day because, if it was our parents or children out there dying, we would want someone there to help us."

Paramedics give up time with their families and spend hours agonizing over what they may have done wrong, they add.

"Because you need us," they explain. "The truth is, we wouldn't do anything else."

They add: "We know that we are seeing you on the worst day of your life.

"We know that you are in the most pain you've ever been in. We know what it's like to lose people, because we do it more often than you do.

"We have held the hand of people as they take their last breath. We have been the last kind face countless people have ever seen.

"We have held crying mothers, fathers, and children."

Dallas police officers comfort each other in front of police cars decorated as a public memorial Friday. Photo / AP

The paramedic says "sometimes I'm the hero everyone thinks we are. But most of the time the damage someone has decided to do to this human laying in front of me is too great to repair.

"And no doctor on the planet could save this person. And it kills me to think that this outcome is what someone wanted. It hurts so bad.

"It hurts so bad because you realise in that moment that human life isn't something to be taken lightly."

They conclude: "I'm ashamed of some of you people.

"But I am also proud of some of you people. The ones who truly care. Please, for me and everyone like me, don't stop caring."