18Dec06

At our Urban Rifle Courses we always have several local patrol officers who

bring department rifles, mostly stock AR-15s, from DPMS, RRA, DSA, and others. They usually work just fine. Other students bring out-of-the-box, stock XCRs, CX4s, Krebs/Kalashnikovs, et al. Again, they usually all work just f ine.

It is only when we have a student who is seriously involved in one of several, organized competitions that we run into trouble. Most current rif le competition conventions invariably put a premium on meaningless degrees of accuracy, to the exclusion individual tactics, reliability, and suitability to any conceivable, practical purpose. Who are seriously involved in these competitions will unfailingly bring a rifle that is tight, bulky, heavy, and loaded up will all manner of glittering gadgets, and also bring a smug determination that he will "show us all a thing or two." His demise is a ssured, and it usually doesn't take long!

Legitimate, defensive firearms must be highly reliable under a broad spectrum of circumstances and, simultaneously, functionally accurate. Be t hat as it may, if you are determined to have a weapon that is exceptionally accurate,

you may get it, but reliability will be critically compromised. Your rifle will still be reasonably functional, as long as you maintain it at a high level. However, severe environments and lack of maintenance will predictab ly conspire to bring it to its knees.

Ultimately, if you are determined to have a weapon that is extravagantly accurate, reliability will be fatally compromised, and you will be thus sadd led with a tight, unreliable, temperamental, ammunition-sensitive prima-donna.

It will never be reliable, no matter how well you maintain it.

With few exceptions, everything you add to your rifle for the sake of increased accuracy is just something else that will eventually peel, chip, delaminate, come unglued, come loose, disconnect, stop working, break into pieces, fall off, etc. Pray you're not fighting for your life when any of that happ ens!

No single rifle will adequately fulfill both missions. If you want a serious, defensive rifle, it will be reliable, but its accuracy will never b e better than mediocre. If you want a single-purpose, competition rifle, its accuracy may be unsurpassed, but its reliability will always be untrustwort hy. You can't have it both ways.

Which way do you go, Mister? Far be it from me to tell others what to do, but, as for myself, every rifle, indeed every weapon, I own is a legitimate, fighting implement. As a matter of personal policy, I will neither own nor

keep a "play gun."

/John

18Dec06

In her book, Reaching for the Stars, Nora Waln writes about the nation of Germany between 1934 and 1939. The author describes Hitler's meteo ric rise to power. She also describes the curious reaction of the German populous, a predominantly Christian and socially conservative ethnicity.

She compares their collective response to that of a field of rabbits being collectively stalked by a weasel. Only rabbits near the weasel show any concern, and even they precipitously lose interest when they individually p ersuade themselves that they are not the selected victim. The victim is selected, killed, and dragged away, all with scant reaction, even notice, from the oth ers, who continue grazing as if nothing had happened The unsavory event fades from their collective memory almost instantly as they concern themselves wit h other things. When the weasel returns, the process is repeated.

The author is sympathetic to the German people, but she makes it clear that , while rabbits can be expected to demonstrate no societal cohesiveness nor concern for each other, members of an enlightened civilization cannot. Whe n they do behave like so many rabbits, it is symptomatic of impending societa l dissolution, hastened along by an artful and clever weasel!

/John

18Dec06

My colleague and ER surgeon, Doc Gunn, answers a nagging question about treating trauma in the field:

"In the case of a gaping wound, many advocate first stuffing somethi ng into it that will act as a matrix for blood to fill and then clot. The method i s known as 'DPDP' (Deep Packing w/Deep Pressure). By stuffi ng the wound full of gauze, you will necessarily apply pressure directly to wounded tis sues, thus controlling bleeding better, at least in theory, than via pressure on the surface alone.

The problem is, when the packing is subsequently disturbed and/or dislodged , an eventuality difficult to prevent in the field, bleeding will resume. As

with all 'probing' of wounds, particularly in the field, you may well make matters worse. You're throwing the dice!

A better plan is to quickly apply IBD(s) over the wound and use it/them to pull injured tissues together. Blood will fill open spaces, and clot. Then , you need to get him to a surgeon and an ER, as there is little more you can do.

Two days ago, I packed and wrapped an egregious laceration of a man's palm,

prior to sending him off to the Big City and the services of a hand surgeon.

The flap of skin involved 80% of the palm, and what was exposed was down to

tendons. I numbed it, irrigated it under high pressure, packed it with a fe w loops of Kerlix, closed the flap over the Kerlix, and used the rest to form a secondary dressing around the entire hand and wrist. Actually, I did littl e more than any of our students would have done, except they would have used an IBD or two. The man needed to see a hand surgeon (out of my league!), and all I did was stabilize the injury so that it didn't get any worse, and he didn't bleed to death, during transit.

Bottom line: It's best, in general, to simply apply IBDs, skillfully and quickly, just as we do in our TTGSW classes. Then, get him to an ER. Our job in the field is to insure that he gets there alive, and none the worse for wear!"

/John