7 June 04

Range Injury:

At a Tactical Treatment of Gunshot Wounds Course late last month, conducted by Doc Gunn and me, a student was injured while opening a folding knife.

Our student was using a Cold Steel Ti-Lite (just like the one I carry). During the course of instruction, each student shoots a scenario with a partner. One partner is "wounded" in the leg (hit with a rag wad) during the exercise. The wounded partner, of course, ignores his wounds and continues to shoot until all threats have been eliminated. Then, the uninjured partner, cuts off the trouser leg on the relevant side and applies a battle dressing to the wound. Instead of cutting and tearing the actual trouser leg, the uninjured shooter deploys his knife and cuts, then tears, a plastic bag we use for just this purpose.

As our student deployed his knife, he used his right thumb to open the blade. His thumb slipped off the stud, and then made direct contact with the cutting edge. The result was that he effortlessly cut a flap of skin off the front of his thumb. Like the trooper he is, this student finished the drill with nary a whimper.

Doc Gunn bandaged the wound, and this student finished the day with us at the range. At the hospital, it took ten stitched to repair the damage. He'll be fine, but this incident served as an important object lesson:

I don't know how Cold Steel makes their knives so sharp, but they all come from the factory with a razor edge. They are "high-performance" knives, as advertised! Sometimes we fail to appreciate how sharp they actually are and of what heavy damage they are capable, particularly since we all handle dull, flimsy, and relatively harmless (be comparison) kitchen and dining knives every day. The Cold Steel knives most of us carry routinely are formidable weapons indeed, as we discovered that day, and we need to always handle them with the reverence and respect they merit!

/John

7 June 04

Full Auto?

At an Urban Rifle/Shotgun Course in May, an LEO student brought one of his department's "AR-15s." When my instructor examined it prior to the start of the course, it appeared to function normally.

As the student was firing from a prone position, the rifle fired a four-round burst (full auto) before the startled student could get his finger back off the trigger. I was standing right behind him at the time and asked him if the rifle was actually an M-16 with a three-position (safe, semi, full) selector. He replied, "Of course not!" I responded that the weapon may then be defective, as we see on occasion.

When I subsequently examined the weapon, I discovered it was indeed an M-16 with a perfectly functional, three-position selector. My instructor, having never seen one, didn't notice the "auto" position, as the letters are covered up by the safety tab when the selector is in the "safe" position. The shooter had no idea his rifle was capable of full-auto fire, and he was pretty sure no one else in the department did either! The full-auto feature was presumed to have been "disabled" when the department acquired the weapons from the federal government.

In any event, they all know now!

Lesson: Our current gun laws being what they are, most people, most firearms instructors, indeed most police officers, have never seen, much less handled, a full-auto rifle, machine gun, or submachine gun. When I first became a police officer thirty years ago, full-auto weapons (Thompsons, Grease Guns, Reising Guns, MI Carbines, even BARs), while never commonplace, were still found in many police inventories. Officers were familiar with them and actually shot them now and then.

It is my opinion that every police officer should be familiar with common military small arms, including those capable of full-auto fire, and be able to recognize them, handle them safely, and use them effectively. Unfortunately, today we "protect" the public, even police officers, by shielding them from such "dangerous knowledge." For one, I am not nearly so frightened by "dangerous knowledge" as I am by "dangerous ignorance." Fear and ignorance are far more hazardous than are knowledge and competence, as we see from the foregoing.

/John