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There have been 121 officers killed in the line of duty so far this year.
 57 were killed in vehicle collisions of some sort
12 died from heart attacks
2 died in falls
1 killed by a person with his bare hands
2 drowned
46 were after being shot by people using firearms. Of these:

3 were actually shot in previous years and died from complications in 2010 (1996, 1998, 2009)
16 were killed by people with guns of a type that I could not identify
1 was killed by a man with a shotgun 

17 were killed by people wielding handguns, including
– one in American Samoa, where handgun ownership is already illegal
– one by an illegal alien with an illegally possessed handgun
– two in Puerto Rico, where permits are required to own handguns

– One, Travis Murphy of the Phoenix PD, was listed by ODMP as having been killed by a man with a rifle, but he was actually killed by a Convicted Felon who was armed with a  handgun.
– One was shot by the son of a police chief using his father’s weapon (in addition to the other four below)
– Four of them were killed by other police officers, or by a handgun taken from a police officer by the suspect
– One by an armed security guard during a domestic disturbance involving the guard and his wife

Of the nine killed by people wielding rifles:
1 died in a hunting accident
One was killed by a man with a .30-30
One by a man with an SKS
Two by a man with an AK-47 type rifle (the only case this year that I could confirm involved a weapon that was on the Clinton gun ban list)

In short,
– more cops are killed in traffic accidents than by gunfire
– More cops were killed by other cops’ guns than by so-called assault weapons
– Of the 43 deadly police officer shootings that occurred in 2010, at least ten of them were perpetrated by people who were prohibited from gun ownership already, and therefore more gun control laws would have been useless. It was already illegal for them to have guns, and making it double illegal would have done absolutely nothing.

Source is the Officer Down Memorial Page

In a previous post, I discussed the criteria for refusal competency. We covered the reasons why a paramedic would transport a person who has impaired faculties to the hospital. The question we will explore today is another tricky one: When does a person who is impaired by alcohol or other intoxicants become a patient?

This was brought on by a call I ran recently that put my opinion at odds with the opinion of another medic. In this incident, we had been sent to the scene of a home where the caller had dialed 911 because a man was unconscious in his yard, and then woke up and stole a bicycle. When we arrived, a cop was already there. I asked the cop what the guy’s problem was, and got the answer: “He’s an idiot.”

The subject (note that I did NOT say patient) was standing there talking to various bystanders, and only spoke Spanish (not an uncommon occurrence) but the caller/homeowner was translating. The subject also reeked of booze, denied having ID, and was from Mexico (all pretty common conditions in these parts). He denied having been unconscious, and claimed he was just sleeping. He also said that he did not want to go to the hospital. The translating bystander said that his Spanish seemed normal and unslurred.

A brief huddle ensued, and the following decisions were reached:

– The cop didn’t want to arrest him for petty theft, saying the jail wouldn’t take him since he was drunk, until he had been to the ER for evaluation. He also didn’t want to take him to the ER, because it would be hours before the prisoner would be released from the ER to go to the jail, and the cop had better things to do with is time.

– The medics decided that he was not a ‘refusal’ because in order to be a refusal, people who are drunk cannot refuse. Besides, in order to refuse, you must first be a patient.

– An hour later, another crew found him passed out drunk in the gutter, and transported him. This medic was pissed and wanted to know why we didn’t transport him against his will, seeing as how he was drunk.

So what makes a patient? When does a person with whom you have made contact become a patient?

I claim that a person who either has a medical complaint, or a visible medical problem is a patient.

The other medic states that since alcohol intoxication has a diagnosis code, that all intoxicated people are patients and must be transported, even if they have no other complaint or injury. The medic says that drunk people can possibly step out in front of cars, and he doesn’t want the liability.

I responded by pointing out that male pattern baldness also has a diagnosis code, and unless the intoxicated person is drunk to the point where he cannot stand, is passing out, or has some other problem, he is not a patient. I also point out that people have rights, and I am not going to infringe upon them by forcing a person to the hospital simply because they are drunk.

What say ye? At what point does a person who is drunk become a patient? When do you begin the chain of events that forces a person to go to the hospital against his will?

A lot of bandwidth has been spent trying to define just exactly what the Second Amendment means. We all know the words:

The one Congress passed:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The one passed by the States:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The words of this Amendment have been repeatedly debated. One word that is continuously debated and changing is “arms.” The collectivists believe that arms means what the founders had access to: muskets. Many pro-gun people believe that arms means the individual arms of the soldier, and that crew served weapons, artillery, and nuclear weapons do not count. Justice Sotomayor believes that nunchuks are not “arms.”

I believe that arms are – well, arms. That is weapons. All weapons. That includes everything from pocket knives to tanks, artillery, jet fighters, and yes, even nukes. You see, I believe that the Constitution means exactly what it says. It says arms, and it is just as dishonest to redefine the words that were used in drafting it to change it as it is for others to do the same.

If you can redefine “arms” to exclude nukes, then why can’t someone else redefine “militia” to mean the National Guard? Or define free speech to mean only speech within your own home is free? The answer to that is: you can’t.

Now I am not saying that I think people should own nukes. I am saying that the Constitution as written prohibits the Republic from infringing on your preexisting right to bear arms. If you want to add an amendment  that says: “Arms, for the purposes of the Second Amendment to this Constitution, does not include Nuclear Weapons or Biological Weapons” then the problem would be solved, and solved in the way that the founders intended.

Monetize the debt. What this means is the Federal Reserve would create a trillion dollars with the click of a mouse, and buy $1 trillion of the US debt. This would increase the amount of money in circulation by a similar amount, and make the dollar worth less.

There is currently $8.6 trillion in circulation. After this move, there would be $9.6 trillion, making the dollar worth 11% less. This is how the Fed is going to improve the debt situation that is threatening the economy, they are going to print our way out. They are taking the expedient way out of paying off a debt that is equal to more money than exists, by simply creating more money. That is why gold closed today at a record $1,270 an ounce. When Obama took office, gold was near $700 an ounce, and when Bush was inaugurated, it was near $300 an ounce.

Hyperinflation is coming. I am thinking it is time to convert those savings dollars to gold, if you haven’t already. My guess is that the big monetization will start after the November meeting of the Fed, scheduled for the day AFTER the election, so the inflation that follows will not affect the elections.

At least the money is going to worthy causes, like the stimulus money that was spent teaching African men how to wash their dicks.

I support the Muslims who want to build a Mosque near ground zero. If they buy the property, they pay for the building, and they want to worship there, then that is their right to do so, and I support that. After all, it does not infringe on the rights of one single person. With that being said, the only possible reason for them to do this, is so they can be “in your face” and provoke outrage. I disagree with them. It is still their right.

I support the Preacher who wants to burn Qurans today. If he buys the books, has the burning completely on his own land, and that burning does not infringe on the rights of others, then it is his right to do so, and I fully support that. With that being said, the only possible reason for him to do this, is so he can be “in your face” and provoke outrage. I disagree with him. It is still his right.

The First Amendment protects your right to say what you want, and to worship as you please. I will defend your rights under that Amendment, even when I do not agree with you. That is the real test of freedom: will you defend the rights of someone with whom you do not agree? If you will not, then you are not for freedom, you just want freedom for those with whom you agree, and that is not freedom, it is conformity.

For those who cry that the military will be placed in harm’s way because of the speech of the preacher, I say to you that our military is SUPPOSED to be in harm’s way to protect the rights of her citizens. When I enlisted, I swore to support and defend our Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. That was not an idle promise.

For those who are opposed to book burning, I say to you that book burning is stupid, but in this age of instant publishing, I say that burning a book is more a statement than it is a real threat. I cannot state it any better than Breda has:

In an age where I can carry the complete works of William Shakespeare on a device small enough to fit in my pocket, book burning is primitive and irrelevant. I can download and delete the Qur’an over and over, all day long. It means nothing. And in the end, all books will succumb to the rot of time, crumbling to dust, without the help of a zealot’s flame. There are no sacred objects.

Book burning is wrong, because it has been used in the past to stifle free speech. In this case, it is the opposition to this preacher that concerns me. The police and FBI threatening a man with prosecution for speech is far more chilling and worrisome than his act of burning a few of his own books that he purchased with his own money in a mutually beneficial transaction.

Who could doubt that this looks suspiciously like threats and intimidation?

– Police announce that they are taking down license numbers of all who attend the church’s Koran burning
– Eric Holder states that Terry Jones (the preacher) will be charged with a hate crime if he burns the Korans.
– The FBI meets with Jones on Thursday
– Thursday afternoon, Jones announces the burning is off.

There have been some complaints about.. irregularities at gPal. They have a section over at Calguns where people’s posts are reportedly being edited and deleted. At this point, I cannot recommend that anyone do business with them.

Proving to me that CalGuns.net and GPal are criminal enterprises, they have deleted the thread at CalGuns where customers were posting their complaints that gPal is not paying out funds, and is not responding to emails and telephone calls.

This proves, at least as far as I am concerned, that I will never do business with either party, and will advise everyone I know to refuse to deal with them. Dirty business, indeed.

I want to take a couple of minutes to follow up on my tachycardia post from the other day. I left off on wide complex tachycardias, and I feel like this is a follow up that needs to be done.

As I said in the other post, we assume that all wide complex tachycardias are VT unless proven otherwise. The first question that we need to know is: does this wide complex tachycardia have a pulse? If the answer is no, then we work the patient as if it was a VF/VT code. If there is anything that a person with an ACLS card in his pocket should know how to do, it is work a VF/VT code. For crying out loud, they train cashiers at WalMart how to do most of this, and if you can’t, then maybe you should turn in that ACLS card and throw in an application to WalMart.

Anyway, if the patient has a pulse with this tachycardia, the next question we should ask ourselves is whether or not this patient is critically unstable as a result. There is only one thing that counts: Are we perfusing the brain? There are two fairly reliable indicators that we can use to determine this: mental status and blood pressure.

If the patient has altered mental status, or has a systolic blood pressure of less than 90mm Hg, then this patient is critically unstable and needs immediate intervention. Synchronized cardioversion is the way to go here. Time is tissue. Going with drugs at this point is costing you brain tissue: time to get the IV, time to drip amiodarone over 10 minutes, or time to push the lidocaine is going to cost the patient brain tissue.

If the patient is not critically unstable, then we have time to find out what we are dealing with: Is this VT or is it SVT with an aberrancy? We can tell by running a 12 lead. Run a 12 lead EKG, and if leads aVF and I are both showing negative deflection, then your QRS axis is in the upper left quadrant, meaning XAD or Indeterminate axis. This is an indicator that your patients heart is experiencing retrograde conduction. The foci, or pacemaker, in this heart is in the ventricles, and you are dealing with VT. Otherwise, it is SVT with an aberrant conduction.

Hope this helps. Good luck out there!

After all, it is hot out there, so the union workers hire non-union labor to picket in their place. At minimum wage, with no benefits. They are everything they accuse the businesses of being. Hypocrites.

I have two children. I divorced my wife when they were young. My son was eight years old, and my daughter was six. I know it was hard on them, and I always regretted that. When my ex wife and I divorced, both of the kids took it pretty hard.

I paid my court ordered child support, which in Florida is a punishing amount (payroll deducted). My child support was $1400 a month, and that left me only $800 a month after taxes. I was always broke.

The actions of my ex wife didn’t make things any easier. When I would go to pick the kids up for visitation, the ex-wife would refuse to let them see me unless I gave her more money, and when I refused, she would tell the kids that I didn’t take them with me because I didn’t love them. My son wouldn’t believe it, and would tell his mother to stop badmouthing me.

When the kids were allowed to come over, they always came without clothes, and the ones they were wearing were so worn as to be unsuitable for going anywhere. When I would ask about that, she told me that if I wanted to take them anywhere, I had to buy them clothes.

The kids would come to me and tell me that their class was going on a field trip, or they needed supplies for school, or some other event that required money, and their mother told them if I didn’t pay, they would do without. Of course I paid.

Once, the mother’s new boyfriend called me at home and told me, “Your daughter just called me daddy. Just thought you should know,” then laughed and hung up. That incident alone shows how restrained and in control I am, since I did not go down there and… well.

Just before my son turned 15 and he started costing more to raise, his mother threw him out- she said he was too hard to control. He came to live with me, got straight A’s, and graduated high school two years early, at the age of 16. He graduated college and the fire academy, all before he turned 20.

When my daughter turned 15, her mother caught her hanging around with a ne’er do well boyfriend with an arrest record, doing drugs, and skipping school. She sent my daughter to live with me. It was three years of fighting. Three years of school skipping, catching her with drugs, her being brought home by the police, her getting arrested, and me being threatened with violence by her boyfriend for interfering. The cops were not help, and neither were the courts. Three years of being told that she couldn’t wait to move out and be rid of my “bullshit rules” so she could live with her “soul mate.”

On her eighteenth birthday, she left and went to live with her boyfriend and his parents. A few months after she left, I was at her high school graduation. That was the last time I saw her until Christmas, when she came by to ask if I had bought her a present. She had broken up with her “soul mate” and he stalked her for six months or so, until she got a restraining order.

That was over two years ago. My daughter now lives in an apartment with 8 roommates, and has another skeezy boyfriend who uses all sorts of mind expanding chemicals. They both wait tables for a living. Still, I try not to express my displeasure, after all, I remember what it was like to be 20. We have been speaking, off and on for about the last year.

Until this morning. She had friended my brother and my nephew on a social networking site, and it seemed like family relations were improving. Then, my daughter began posting pictures of her illegal substance use, pictures of partial nudity of her and her friends partying, and other mature themes. My brother asked her to tone it down, as her 9 year old nephew could see it. She replied that she would not censor herself for anyone.

I jumped in and asked her to keep in mind that what goes on the internet can hurt you later in life, and also reminded her of the importance of family. She promptly told all of us to f- off.

They joys of parenthood. Why am I expected to endure behavior from relatives that I would never tolerate from strangers?