But offered no comment My guess is that they just posted the link to a News Radio report (very even handed… nicely surprised here)and wanted to read the reaction of their readers as weather vane to indicate what to write about.
I imagine it was not what they were expecting. By a far majority in Facebook and Twitter, the comments were on support of the nurses arming themselves and bashing the few naysayers that dared to post the same old and worn slogans and tripe
It was easier to collect the anti comments since they were the fewer and I am feeling lazy today.
The vast majority of attacks on nurses that I am aware of is from addicts who want prescription drugs. Either the nurse is attacked as part of the robbery or attacked for denying the person drugs. Same for doctors.
Also, in the grand scheme of things, why should a nurse who is a life saver not defend herself from an addict who tries to kill her for a bottle of vicodin?
Is she not entitled to save her life? If she is killed how many fewer lives are saved as a result?
Unfortunately, most nurses don’t have a safe place to store their firearm once they get to work. Mom was a nurse for a very long time. There were a number of nurses attacked between the parking garage and the entrance to the hospital.
So we end up with the same freaking problem. The ability to defend yourself with a firearm is restricted because there are so many “no-go” places that it becomes almost impossible to do it legally.
I.e. I’m ready to go out, wife hands me a letter and says “can you drop this at the post office.” As far as I can tell, the courts have ruled that the parking lot of my local post office is a “gun free zone” and as such I can’t even bring my firearm into the parking lot in order to put it in the drive through drop box.
And if you want to talk about “you can’t carry that here”. I had to go to court last year, I got to security and told them “There is an empty holster on my belt” They tried to insist I had to take the holster off. Took a supervisor to say “yes, he is allowed to carry a holster into the court room”
There was an “empty holster” protest at a nearby college a few years ago, where students carried empty holsters openly on their hip as a symbolic gesture that they had been disarmed. My then girlfriend was the head of the college’s “Students for Concealed Carry” chapter. She was asked to leave class because the empty holster was frightening her fellow students.
She refused, wound up getting campus police called on her, being interviewed on the news, and darn near got expelled.
I agree with the first two. There ARE insurrectionists threatening people’s lives. They are the ones decrying the “capitalist” system. It *is* a shame that people whose job it is to save lives have to worry about taking a life in self defense. It is sometimes, regrettably necessary
My college room mate worked for a time as an EMT on an ambulance. This was not in a crime ridden big city but in a relatively safe, small city. He and all the EMTs carried concealed due to the risk of being attacked for the drugs carried on the ambulances. This was before “Shall Issue” was a thing. I don’t know if they had carry permits or not. I do know the local cops knew they carried and approved.
I told this story in the comments before… but growing up in Miami I knew a lot of doctors who carried concealed in fanny packs. Before cellphones it was pagers for doctors. You’d see them in scrubs wearing a fanny pack with a pager on the waist belt.
Sure they had gloves and tape and gauze and s scissors in the fanny pack for emergency medicine, but there was a 38 snubbie under all that.
Robbing doctors for drugs and cash was a thing in the 90s around the sketchier hospitals in the Miami area.
I used to carry a little J frame in an ankle holster when I was in my last job as a paramedic. I didn’t when I was with the fire department, because we could call the cops rather quickly, but as a private ambulance company, I didn’t always have that ability.
Back in da day, I was an ED nurse at Some Little (at that time, around 250 beds) Hospital. My EMS buddies voted us “Most Heavily Armed ER in Da City”
Another ED, another town: the ER staff had a drill in the event of Armed jackwagons: overhead page “Roll Call!”, whereupon all staff met in the parking lot. Anybody missing? Gun up, retrieve ’em. Go home. AMF!
We weren’t gonna be working there any longer, anyhow, in that event, so who cares about administration’s shit hemorrhage?