Amazingly at work they offered CPR/Heimlich and AED (automated external defibrillator) training not only for free but you got paid overtime for it. Upon completion, you will get not only a nice card saying you are now a standing member of those who may be able to save a life, but also a card valid for 2 years displaying such info. A life-saving set of techniques taught under the best of incentives and several individuals rejected the idea. Some even verbally degraded it with various colorful idioms.

Some of the dissidents were old farts, set in their ways and so soured with life they plainly didn’t give a squat. I am guessing that the fact that they had to come to work at odd hours interrupting their mac & cheese and that day’s episode of Oprah was too much to sacrifice. A couple of youngins assumed their gansta stances and replied with the standard “Hey man. That just bullshit. I don’t need that shit.” Other not so young excused themselves by using a myriad of reasons, but I  could read out of their bodies and verbal patterns was that they were too embarrassed to be embarrassed in front of others.

I asked one of the youngins what would he do if his Mom ( a woman with a history of vascular problems) would suddenly need CPR. His answer was “I’ll call Call 911.” When asked what would it happen if 911 or rescue wasn’t immediately available, his response was “Why it wouldn’t be?”

It saddens the hell out of me that people are willing to be mentally castrated this way. In order to save face, they rather depend on the kindness of the Government to help them get out of trouble. Then when their dreams dead stop as they hit the shoals of reality, they moan and complain and demand more government control. It is sort of trying to treat a rattlesnake bite by injecting more poison into your veins. It must hurt to think logically while pride is in the way.

We know that Shooting and Shooting Sports are safe. Contrary to what the Disloyal Opposition and Media say, accidental Shootings are in an old time low among civilians. Still we must be ready for that accident if it were to happen so? Are you ready?

Do you carry a First Aid Kit that can handle a gunshot wound? Do you know what do do in case of a gunshot wound? Do you know how to use that expensive pouch you bought that has QuikClot or Celox? We keep repeating that in a defensive scenario we are the first responders but this also should be true for medical emergencies. You can be Wyatt Earp with a gun, but if you are Barney Fife with a gauze, you are not helping yourself or your family. Get training at least at a basic level The Red Cross offers instruction all over the country for individuals or groups that want to learn the basics. Trust me, every little bit of knowledge will help you or somebody survive.

Does the range you attend have an established plan to deal with medical emergencies? Does it stop at calling 911 and getting the mop and the bucket? Is there somebody that has First Aid training working in that place? Ask questions and demand answers! You must plan ahead and according to what’s available and what is not. If the range is located next door to a Fire Station, maybe you can breathe a tad easier (Luck will have it that the day you need them, the paramedics are away half across town in another call. Don’t laugh, I’ve saw that happen.) If the nearest Paramedics are 10 minutes away and the Range has only acne-covered teens collecting cash and giving you paper targets, you may want to have a very complete plan ready or select a better location for your practice.

The same applies if you are a member of a shooting club. Does the club have a plan? Who are the selected Responders in case of emergency and how well are they trained? Who else is also trained?  First Aid kits? Is the area near a hospital or should there be a plan to transport an injured man to the nearest medical facility? Most major metropolitan areas respond to shooting incidents with a Medevac, Can you clear an area for the helicopter to land safely?Do you have Paramedics in your club? Abuse them! Ask them to set up a basic First responder class and to organize an emergency protocol for the club. Again, every little bit helps.

And don’t forget other life threatening situations besides gunshot wounds? Do you shoot in a rural area and wild poisonous critters may be the problem? How about your local weather? Heat related injuries is a common danger in our club and every year we have our share of people (Me number one idiot) that overdo it and have to be dragged to a cool place and iced down like a snapper in a fish market. No major situations have happened because we have a plan in place to deal with anybody that might be affected. If your issue is cold weather, seek information on the subject and prepare accordingly. I wish I could be more detailed in this matter, but we are awfully unprepared for frostbite in Miami.

I think you get the idea. You cannot prevent all injuries or cover every contingency, but being ready to tackle a major or minor emergency will save a life.

Not everything out of Chicago this year has been bad. Being ornery to what they’ve been told by all the experts, Women in Chicago are buying guns for self-protection.  And demonstrating once more that they are smarter than us males, with the gun they are getting instruction on how to use them and how to defend themselves. Women being responsible for their self defense are smart and sexy in my humble opinion.

The Brady Bunch must be having a conniption.

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.

I just got off the phone with a fellow IDPA shooter who spent three days at Blackwater shooting till he dropped. My buddy is just a civilian who enjoys sports shooting and has guns for that purpose and self-defense, period. Unfortunately he had to deal with a couple of Civilian Armchair Commandos also attending who tried to indoctrinate him in the black arts of Bullshit Tactical Shooting and have him change is ways that were not “tactical enough” for the commandos.

First, some definitions: A Civilian Armchair Commando is a regular guy (as opposed to Operator or LEO) who spends time and money attending assorted shooting academies in order to become Walker Texas Ranger or Jack Bauer and equips himself with the latest and best operator gear in the market . He also expels amazing amounts of carbon dioxide telling everybody how they will react and kick the ass of any Bad Guy with the skills he acquired during his many pilgrimages through all these centers of shooting instruction. This is what I call Bullshit Tactical Shooting or believing that you as a civilian dictate the what, when, where and the outcome of a deadly force encounter.

In case you haven’t learned yet, let me spell it for you: We as Civilians do not get to choose the what, when, where and the outcome of a deadly force encounter. It is thrown on us by the Criminal who decided that a) You look like a soft target, b) He needs monies or some sort of instant gratification you can provide and c) thinks he can get away with it. A Civilian does not read minds, feel intentions or has supernatural powers or NSA electronic surveillance that will tell them that a Bad Guy is about to attack. And if by chance you get to know you are about to be attacked, the best thing to do is to get out of there! Who in his right mind will want to dance in front of a hail of bullets?  I am not a bulletproof super hero so I will exit stage left if given a quarter of a chance to avoid the situation. We are also bound by law not to be the aggressors because no crime has been committed. A Civilian will and can only react when there is imminent fear of death or grave bodily harm as stipulated in the law. If we don’t heed to this precept, we ourselves become the Bad Guys.

So, when I hear a Civilian Armchair Commando explaining in full detail about the tactics he is going to use, the super-duper equipment he will have and the dozen of magazines loaded with the latest magical man-stopper rounds, I feel the urgent need to laugh in his face. First because I know this idiot has never faced a feces-runnin’-down-your-pants situation and secondly because I can see this guy actually buying (if they were available) a set of pajamas in MARPAT with MOLLE and a whole bunch of attachments and weapons carrier to use in case the Bad Guy attacks while he goes to the fridge for a midnight snack.

We are not in a war zone so we cannot walk the streets armed with a rifle hanging from a sling and a sidearm on a thigh holster. Even at home we don’t (at least the sane majority do not) wear a MOLLE vest loaded with mag pouches, bowie knives and trauma kits or rig the doorbell to a claymore mine because you don’t know if it is the UPS guy delivering a package or an AlQeada terrorist trying to kill you. We do take the precautions, set the equipment according to our mission, capabilities and legalities which are the ones of a civilian encountering your run-of-the mill Bad Guy in the street or trying to break into our homes while we are inside.

The same apply for “Tactics” during a Deadly Force Encounter and that is to say, What frigging Tactics? The only Tactic is to pray to God you don’t get shot and for the other guy to stop being a threat. If you think you have time yo sit down and design a cohesive and invincible strategy when an attack is happening, then you better have you Life Insurance paid up and hope that the beneficiary will enjoy the monies for your hide. Some people still do not get that training is nothing more that the gathering of tools to be used instinctively in case of emergency. These tools (Mindset, Marksmanship and Gun Handling) are to be practiced over and over until they are deeply embedded in our brain and muscle memory so they are used without hesitation, without the need of retrieving them from the file cabinet of our brain; in other words, they become the instantaneous reaction to an aggressive, deadly and unlawful stimulus against you or your loved ones.

Rant Over, carry on.

My stomach is sounding the alarm big time. The old churning-super-fast-spin-cycle warning of incoming doom tells me Hurricane Ike is going to do a tap dancing act in my neighborhood and I hate dancing in general.

The sucker is ugly as the picture shows and if you take in consideration that he is blowing at 135 miles per hour, what we have is an honest to God fifties horror blob intending on destroying whatever it can swallows.

Tomorrow and the day after are going to be very busy days getting ready for Ike. The shutters are going to be installed, at least in most of the non-necessary openings, generator checked, gasoline hoarded, double check the pantry for items that need to be stocked and of course more water.  Just to be sure I’ll go over Southcom’s Hurricane Survival Kit which is perhaps the best checklist out there.

Tropical Storm Gustav is right now south for the Dominican Republic & Haiti about to become a hurricane. The infamous Cone of Uncertainty has it hitting South Florida in a 30% chance for Sunday or Monday so once more it is time to get ready. I had a post relating to Hurricane preparedness but lost it in the WordPress upgrade, I will re post it here:

2008 Hurricane Season. Are you ready?
(Originally Posted June 3rd, 2008 )
With the 2008 Hurricane season already here, it is a must to re-stock your hurricane kit or get one if you do not have one. One of the best list I have seen floating around is the one Southcom’s Hurricane Survival Kit and it would be my recommendations you print it and follow it. I will personally bump my supplies to at least 3 weeks worth for the family and pets and I would add to it comfort/morale items such books, playing cards and board games. Once the worse is over and your mind has adapted to the new circumstances of less creature comforts, having something to distract you and your loved ones is a great morale booster.

Of course weapons, accessories & ammunition are not in the list. It still baffles me that there is some sort of political correctness timidity in getting the obvious in the list but we know better and learn from lessons past. If you have a semi auto pistol and only 2 magazines, What are you waiting to get a couple mags more? And with the political nightmare that might come in November, you better buy 5 just in case. Also, do you have weapons with red dots, lasers or lights attached? Don’t forget the batteries for them! Have 2 cleaning & lubrication kit: one full size and another portable that you can carry and use if SHTF and you are away from your home base.

So, Are you ready? And I mean mentally ready. Do you have a plan other than sitting there waiting for the hurricane to be over and wait for things to come back to normal or are you already mentally planning on the WhatIfs” of the after-storm? If you already forgot about New Orleans & Katrina, you better take a refresher as soon as possible. If there was an event that showed in full force that your safety is not guaranteed by the government, this was it. Louis Awerbuck expressed it succinctly when he wrote in a recent article that “The first of the loot-shoot-scoot brigade will deploy immediately after a disaster, looking for an easy mark. Those with nothing to lose will be ready to take, and the sooner they start, the more they can take.” And that means your stuff and possibly even your life or the life of your loved ones.

Although when Hurricane Katrina visited South Florida as a small category one, it did enough to leave lots of areas without power. Those who had a generator were doing OK but were suddenly facing a rash of critters who were intent on stealing such a precious commodity. A friend of mine was the target of two of those critters who were bold enough to openly stroll into his backyard and attempt to take the power source. My buddy confronted the critters from a second story window and politely asked them what did they want. The critters indicated in no uncertain and foul terms that they were about to steal the generator and there was nothing he could do to which my friend responded by producing his Bushmaster and aiming it at them. The critters immediately reconsidered their initial thieving position and disappeared in a flash.
During the same Post Katrina time frame, yours truly was enjoying a smoke at 2 am sitting in the threshold of my front door. It was miserably hot and humid with little breeze and sleep was AWOL for me that night, the battery operated TV was on but repeating the same old news that we were without power and it was hot (yippee! like I did not know.) when three critters drove by in a small white vehicle. Now I live in a small somewhat closed community and I pride myself in knowing which vehicles belong to the area and this particular one did not. The critters drove by slowly following the posted 10 M.P.H for the community and that raised the first flag: nobody here drives at that crawling speed. I kept my eye on them as they went away hoping that they were just joy ridding around. About three minutes later, they drove by again slowing just a tad and the three occupants eyeballing be without shame. Again the went away but by now my slow brain had decided that:

1) These guys are up to no good,
2) I am a moron for having the gas lamp on inside the house so I can be
silhouetted by it and
3) Get ready ’cause probably I will see the critters again.

By the time I finished reasoning the above points, the critters were approaching once more and at a higher rate of speed. The driver slammed on the brakes and 2 doors flew open while the 2 companions tried to extricate themselves out of the car. I reached inside the house and presented the profile of my WASR-10 to the critters who after taking a good look and recognizing the traditional AK shape in the hands of that fat bearded guy, decided that the target was not as soft as it initially appeared and it would be a good idea to initiate a hasty retreat which they did with a selected choice of cuss words as background music.

The point I am trying to make is that not only have weapons and ammo but the mental preparedness to use them in case interlopers decide to pay you a visit. This mental preparedness alongside knowing how to use your tools and what to do with it is what is called The Combat Triad: Mindset, Marksmanship, and Gun-handling. To be up to date in the Combat Triad is as important as a fully stocked pantry or having a good First Aid kit with you in emergency situations.

So, Are you ready?