16 Oct 07
"Complications" associated with an accidental/self-inflicted GSW, from an LEO friend:
"Our ND survivor had to go back to the hospital for several days of additional treatment. He developed a blood clot in his left calf. Blood thinners and bed-rest were prescribed! He'll be okay, eventually. This officer is in his fifties, so he isn't healing quite as fast as some eighteen-year-old Lance Corporal in Ramadi!
He accidentally shot himself through his thigh, from inside his fanny pack. The bullet (FMJ from a G27) went through-and-through without hitting the big artery nor the femur.
Not sure why he was carrying FMJ and not our duty-load. Had it been our duty-load (Gold Dot), his leg would surely have been torn up a great deal more that it was, no doubt!"
Comment: (1) When an "officer" is not serious enough about his job and sworn duty to even carry effective ammunition, he probably needs to find something else to do!
(2) When you make contact with the trigger of a gun, expect it to discharge at that instant! Who has the habit of pointing guns at himself is in for such an unhappy surprise. Just a matter of time!
(3) Although most pistol GSWs are not fatal, "complications" often develop which will seriously disrupt one's lifestyle, sometimes for months! While not fatal, most are still permanently disabling/disfiguring.
Getting shot is no fun, particularly when it is the direct result of abject stupidity/carelessness!
/John
16 Oct 07
On military pistols, from a friend who currently works in the Green Zone:
"Who carry pistols here openly have 92Fs (M9), Glocks, and SIGs, mostly in 9mm but a few in 40S&W. Now and then, one sees a 1911 in 45ACP. Lots of shoulder holsters and tactical leg rigs.
All exposed pistols are empty. No chambered round and no magazine inserted. Some carry one or two charged magazines separately, but most don't even do that much. All with these empty weapons have to go to the clearing-barrel in front of the mess hall a minimum of three times a day, and the longer soldiers are here the more careless gun-handling/muzzle awareness becomes. For one, I avoid the area near clearing-barrels (AKA, "ND Centers") like the plague!
I've long-since grown weary of this institutionalized stupidity, so I carry my (fully loaded) pistols, and blades, concealed, never saying a word about them. A few other Operators do also. That thought, of course, never occurs to VBCs, who constitute the vast majority here."
Comment: One of our students, an O6, was "caught" carrying an obviously loaded M9 in the Green Zone earlier this year. The fellow colonel who turned him in (real "camaraderie" here!) had never seen one carried loaded!
My student soon found himself standing before a two-star who asked him where he learned to carry a loaded pistol. He explained he picked up the practice at our Military Pistol Course at Camp Pendleton and was thus persuaded that carrying the pistol any other way was really silly! The two-star continued by saying the practice of carrying loaded guns is dangerous. My student enthusiastically agreed!
In the end, our colonel was told to stop carrying loaded pistols. Like my friend above, he responded by switching to concealed carry, not wishing to continue arguing with idiots!
Pistols are seldom a critical factor in the grand scheme of modern warfare. Pistols are designed only to preserve the lives of those who carry them (loaded). That is why they are considered optional/trivial/unimportant bythose who don't have to risk their own lives!
For a soldier getting killed, the war has already gotten as big as it can get!
/John
16 Oct 07
A problem shared by dive-computers, airplane instruments, defensive firearms, and residential alarm systems. A friend who installs and services residential security systems says this:
"I've spent decades in the home-alarm business, and I can say with authority that the vast majority of home-owners who purchase, at great expense, sophisticated electronic residential security systems (usually right after a violent crime in the local area) actually use it for only two weeks! Then, they stop turning it on, because it is so 'inconvenient.' Thereafter, they never have it serviced/checked/upgraded, and it is promptly forgotten. It just sits there, turned off, gathering dust!"
Comment: These are the same people who buy a gun, because they're 'afraid,' and it thereafter sits in a dresser drawer, in the box it came in, unused, unloaded, unmaintained, and extremely unlikely to ever be used for any legitimate purpose. Its owner quickly forgets it is even there!
These are the same people who buy airplanes and boats, and equip them, at great expense, with all the latest electronic gadgets that are designed and purported to notify the pilot/captain when a safety issue develops, and then never turn any of it on!
These are the same people who, when SCUBA diving, spend big bucks on sophisticated dive-computers, again designed and purported to warn the diver when a safety issue is developing, and, of course, never turn it on either!
On those rare occasions when any of this stuff is actually turned on, and alarms, because the home is being violently invaded, the airplane is (unknown to the pilot) flying upside-down, or the diver's air supply is about to drop below what is needed for a safe accent, these are the same people whose reaction is predictably, "That can't be right! Let's justturn it off."
And, of course, these are the same people who, in a panic, get to their gun, belatedly try to figure out how to load it, and usually end up shooting themselves and/or being victimized by violent burglary suspects, whom they are otherwise unable to deal with effectively.
And, these are the same people who subsequently whine from their hospital beds about how all this is so "unfair."
The real problem is not forgetfulness, nor naivete, nor even stupidity. The real problem is adolescent, narcissistic arrogance! The naive, foolish belief that some erstwhile-unemployed guardian angel has been assigned to protect me, personally. The naive belief that politicians can legislate all the uncertainties out of life. The naive belief that nothing bad can happen to me, because that would violate some cosmic rule about "fairness."
"It can't happen to me" has been the famous-last-words of more than at few naive fools, who should have known better. Who want to die only from old-age had better take note, and grow up!
/John
Copyright © 2007 by DTI, Inc. All rights reserved.
created on Tuesday October 16, 2007 23:59:1 MST