Divemedic

I’m Not Your Punching Bag

When I got a Bachelor’s Degree in EMS administration, my capstone research project was about violence against healthcare workers. Emergency medical workers are the victims of workplace violence more often than any other profession: more than police, prison guards, and convenience store clerks. I don’t know why, but people generally have no problem attacking EMS and emergency room workers. Scenes like the one in this post are actually more common than you would think.

I have always taken the position that no one should have to be a complacent target of someone else’s misplaced intoxicated rage. Many employers view self defense as a form of violence. I have even had coworkers (nurses, EMTs, and paramedics) tell me that “we are held to a higher standard, and shouldn’t succumb to the instinct of defending ourselves.”

Bullshit.

I don’t care what profession I am in- I should not have to be, and refuse to be, someone’s punching bag. That doesn’t mean that my response shouldn’t be proportional to the level of the attack. A woman hitting me like that is going to be put in a wrist lock. If you have an effective wrist lock, you can work against the joint just a bit to cause pain compliance. If they struggle more, twist a bit harder, and they will bend away from you. It’s an amazingly effective technique in controlling a violent patient without causing injury. Just don’t overdo it, or you will wind up having to explain and treat a broken bone.

If you couple it with pressure on the ulnar nerve, forcing it to be compressed between your fingers and the olecranon, it causes a good bit of pain without causing permanent injury. It’s essentially compressing “the funny bone” and, properly applied causes the same sort of pain you feel when you hit your elbow and feel the fire sensation running down your arm.

It’s a skill worth learning to subdue people without permanently hurting them.

By Divemedic, ago

Hot Safe, Cold Safe, Caching, Staging

I recently modified my gun safe from a digital lock to a manual combination lock. This will ensure that no one has a back door code to get into my safe. The downside to this is that the mechanical lock is a great deal slower dial in than simply typing in a combination, and the lock is harder to manipulate in the dark, meaning it’s more difficult to enter my safe in a hurry. Additionally, my gun safe is quite large and won’t fit in my bedroom closet without the wife getting pissed at the loss of storage space.

We are moving to another house (under construction) within the next few months. Now is a great time to consider how to meet security storage needs. How can I store firearms to protect them from a diverse set of threats while still making firearms accessible for access in the event of a break-in?

I have been looking at my options, and I think that I have the answer. See the title above for that. My large gun safe will be the “cold safe” and is located on the other side of the house from the bedroom- in the man cave.

The “hot safe” will be in the master suite, and will contain loaded firearms available for fast access. It will likely be an electronic one with a fingerprint lock. I am looking at a Vaultek RS 500i for that. Fast access, and secure enough against most thieves. Even if it IS compromised with a backdoor, I won’t lose but a gun or two. The bonus is that it is only 14 inches wide, so it will not steal much room from the suite, but it can simultaneously hold a shotgun, a couple of ARs, and 2 or 3 pistols, all with magazines and ammo. This allows for EDC to be locked away and also means I won’t have far to go for heavier weapons than my bedside handgun.

For staging, I already have the means for securely keeping a handgun and a long gun in my truck, along with a couple of hundred rounds of ammo. All of it secure, unobtrusive, and out of sight, while still being readily accessible.

For caching, we all need to give thought into a weapons cache or two. Put a couple of off paper firearms in each cache. Say, a handgun, a cheap AR, some ammo and a few magazines. All sterilized of fingerprints and any other means of tracing back to you.

By Divemedic, ago

Training Camps

It was reported as far back as 2015 that Isis and Hamas were operating in the area of Mexico that is directly across the border from El Paso. Politifact even repeated the story, but claimed it was false because Judicial Watch refused to name their sources for the story.

Once the attacks on Israel were carried out by Hamas, a reporter with Pro Publica reported that, according to her sources, it was confirmed that Hamas had been operating a training facility in that area.

Newsweek immediately responded by “fact checking” the claim, and declared it to be false. Newsweek had this to say:

Newsweek was unable to find any evidence that Hamas had, or has, a training camp in Matamoros, Mexico. No searches on a variety of terms predating the current conflict returned any results even suggestive of a link between Hamas militants and training camps in Matamoros or elsewhere in Mexico.

That’s odd, since all they had to do was contact Judicial Watch, or read the reports from 2015.

Even so, the Pro Publica reporter who repeated the story last month has been receiving visits from the FBI over the past three weeks, with the agents demanding that she reveal the names of the agents who were her sources. Because the FBI opens investigations and interviews people who spread rumors. The mere fact that the FBI is investigating the leak and not the claim itself speaks volumes as to the veracity of the report. Ms Fields noted the same thing:

“I would never work with them [The FBI]. And I want everyone to think about this. They’re more interested in knowing WHO my source is and not the info they have to share so that it can be investigated.  That says a lot.”

My belief is that, with our porous border, it is a virtual certainty that there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Islamic terrorists within our borders. To ignore this in light of the dozens of terrorists that carried out the WTC attacks of 1993 and 2001 is foolish. Those two attacks involved only 26 terrorists. How much damage can be done by several hundred or a thousand of them?

Even more frightening is the consideration that the FBI, itself the secret police of the Biden administration, is apparently unconcerned. In fact, the entire Biden administration is allowing it to happen with open borders, even actively assisting those who wish to pour across the border.

Such an attack, or series of attacks, is eventually inevitable. Once that happens, what will be the response of the American people? Of course, they will scream and bleat for a strong, decisive leader to protect them. Will the commies attempting to seize power wait for the inevitable attack, or will they stage it?

The election season is coming, and 2024 promises to be as bad as the one from 2020. I expect more violence and a more diverse set of threats than ever before. You should review your security arrangements.

By Divemedic, ago

This is Why

My regulars know that I am not a fan of libertarians. To understand why, read on:

This was my reply:

No, but they did leave you defenseless to face that mob without the most effective tools for defending yourself from that mob. So if you voted for the politicians who passed gun control, you are getting exactly what you voted for.

Like liberals, socialists, anarchists, and communists, the libertarians believe in the theory that everyone is good and will always act with kindness and fairness towards their fellow man, even with a complete absence of government.

In theory, if humans were innately good we wouldn’t need governments, laws or religions to keep people in line. That’s the core of those belief systems.

That is, at best, wishful thinking. To quote agent K from Men in Black:

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

To espouse a political theory that relies on anything else is to engage in magical thinking. One might as well believe in the tooth fairy. People are illogical beings motivated by selfish, basic emotion and will kill you if they believe it will give them whatever it is that they want. As the US collapses, people will become more dangerous, especially if they believe that you are the key to getting whatever it is that they want.

By Divemedic, ago

They Used to Lynch Horse Thieves

Remember when I said when the police can’t or won’t enforce the law, citizens will begin DIY law enforcement? It bears repeating: Police are actually there to protect people who have been accused of crimes and protect those people to ensure that their rights to a fair and impartial trial are protected. Once people feel like there is no justice to be had, they lose respect for the law. Anarchy can be the only result of this.

That happened on Friday afternoon in Birmingham, AL. A man whose car was stolen didn’t feel like the cops were doing enough to find his stolen vehicle. They tracked it down to nearby Birmingham and followed it. When they eventually confronted the thieves, a shootout ensued. Two thieves received life threatening wounds, with two others being hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries. No bystanders were hit. The police can’t have citizens making them look incompetent, so they want to arrest the owner of the vehicle for taking the law into his own hands. The press refers to the thieves as “victims” of a shooting.

The running shootout caused 2 miles of the Interstate to be a crime scene, with shell casings littering the roadway. This happens because the police can’t or won’t enforce the law. In the nine years that I have lived in this house, my vehicles have been the target of attempted burglaries twice: Once resulted in no arrest. The second time, the burglar got probation and his record expunged, even though he broke into four vehicles, stealing one of them. One of the cars broken into was a police cruiser that he stole a fingerprint reader from, another was a truck where he stole a handgun, on top of stealing one of the vehicles.

In the last 23 years, I have had 13 interactions with with the police, and I can’t say that any of those interactions were positive:

  • In 2000, my car was broken into, and my stereo, radar detector, cash, and other items totaling about $600 was stolen from it. The crime scene investigator came out and took fingerprints. They got a hit, gave me the name of the person, and asked me to sign a paper saying that this man did not have permission to be in my vehicle. A month later, I was told that the criminal would not be arrested because the crime was too minor to waste resources on.
  • In 2001, I was pulled over for running a red light. I let the cop know I was carrying, even though Florida law doesn’t require me to. He then threatened to kill me. I don’t inform any more.
  • Same year, I got a traffic ticket for $184, which I paid. Eleven years later, the court sent me a letter saying that they miscalculated the fine for the ticket, and I owe them another $32. I refused to pay it because the statute of limitations had passed and there was nothing that they could do about it.
  • In 2004, a cop told my girlfriend how to use the courts to steal my stuff by claiming that I had committed domestic violence. It took me months to get it straightened out. 
  • I foolishly told the above story to a GF in 2012 and that one copied the scheme. When I beat it in court, she openly told the judge that her new boyfriend was a cop, and he would find a reason to have me arrested. My attorney asked the judge to make sure that statement was entered into and part of the record for the trial.
  • In 2005, I had someone steal a check for over $200 from my mailbox, forge my name and deposit the money into his bank account. The number of the account that the check was deposited into was printed on the back of the check. I went to the station to report the crime. I had a copy of the check. All the cop had to do was go to the bank, get the name of the account owner, and make the arrest. Anyone could have done it, it wasn’t a hard crime to solve. The cops told me that they didn’t have the manpower to solve a crime for such a small amount of money. On the way home from the police station, I passed 6 cops with cars pulled over, writing traffic tickets.
  • As a paramedic in 2010, I ran a call on a report of man who was unconscious and slumped over the wheel at an intersection. When I got there, he was obviously drunk, so I reached in and took the keys out of the ignition and put them on the vehicle’s roof. When the cops got there, they let the man call his girlfriend and let her give him a ride home. They said that they couldn’t prove that he was behind the wheel. I told them I would testify, but then the cop told me that his shift was over soon, and he didn’t want to stay late to do the paperwork. I found out later he was a friend of one of the cops.
  • In 2016, I had to draw a gun on someone who then fled the scene when he claimed to be a cop and tried to “arrest” me but wouldn’t show ID or a badge. I called the cops and the one who showed up didn’t even take a report. Exactly zero effort was made to catch the guy.
  • In 2018, I had a police supervisor tell me that silencers and machine guns were illegal. I offered to bring in NFA items with the proper paperwork, so the cops could be trained to recognize the proper forms and know the law. They refused, and told me “Keep that stuff out of my town or you will be arrested.”
  • Also in 2018, an armed man was burglarizing cars in my neighborhood. He was caught on my security cameras. The cops used my footage to catch the burglar, but he reached a plea deal that included expunging his record. All he got was probation, even though he broke into four vehicles, stealing one of them.
  • In 2022, I was assisting in the treatment of a patient who got violent with me and had to be physically restrained. He was a retired NYPD detective. He swore that I attacked him for no reason and tried to choke him. He called me a “punk ass bitch” and said that he was a retired NYC police officer, and that he would find me on the street and “fucking kill” me. I was interviewed by police detectives, and suspended without pay until I was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
  • In January of this year, a woman threatened me at work. She threatened to follow me home to see where I lived, then wait until I went to work and murder my family. I formed my employer to call the police, but they did nothing but take a report. That’s fine. At least there is a record if I have to smoke the crazy bitch at the end of my driveway.
  • Then I watched a police officer use his Taser to attack a prisoner while the prisoner was shackled by all four limbs to the hospital bed.

As the wheels come off, you will see more and more of this. People WILL lose faith in our legal system. Things WILL get much worse.

By Divemedic, ago