Miguel posted this video earlier.

The cop takes a bullet to the finger and then tourniquets his hand halfway up his forearm.

Yes, absolutely tourniquets are life saving tools, and it’s good that some of the medical equipment and knowledge used to save lives on the battlefield in the GWOT has become adopted by the police and civilians alike.

But when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Tourniquets are used to occlude blood flow by squeezing arteries shut.

Under the wrong conditions, they can cause more harm than good.  Tourniquets can cause nerve damage by comprising nerves.  Not something you want in your hand.

Lots of arterial bleeding?  Absolutely apply a tourniquet.  The premium is on saving a life.

A healthy person is not going to bleed to death from splitting a finger wide open, or even taking a finger off.

A pressure bandage is much more applicable here.

On my person, I generally carry an Israeli bandage instead of a tourniquet, because it’s more versatile.  It can be used with a tourniquet like function.

Don’t think I’m sitting on tourniquets, they are a vital tool for saving lives. But they have a time and a place when they are appropriate.

Being prepared is absolutely critical.

So is using your brain in an emergency situation.

You don’t want to stop the bleeding of a bad finger boo-boo in such as way as to cause nerve damage to the hand.