Feds Target Houston FFL's: A $700 million initiative to strengthen the U.S. role in the fight against Mexican drug cartels will place Houston at the center of efforts to shut down gunrunning to Mexico, federal officials said... The initiative places new agents in Houston to quickly expand Project Gunrunner, a federal effort to staunch the illegal flow of guns into Mexico. A "large majority" of 100 federal gun agents being transferred to the border region in the next 45 days will be assigned to monitor purchases at the 1,500 gun stores in the Houston area, a federal official confirmed... ATF is trying to bring down at least three Houston cells it contends supply weapons to the Gulf Cartel, according to documents filed in local U.S. District Court. Dallas gun store owner Donnie Durbin, president of the Texas Gun Dealers Association, said dealers have no control over what qualified buyers do with firearms after they purchase them. He said the ATF should bring more agents to target gun traffickers, not increase the number of compliance officers who audit gun dealers... http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6347008.html --- The Beat Goes On: Fears that a liberal presidential administration will impose more restrictions on gun ownership have triggered a frenzy of gun buying at local suppliers, who are struggling to restock their shelves with firearms and ammunition. "It's blow-off-the-shelf sales," said Dennis Serpi, owner of Master Class Shooters Supply in Monroe [NY]. "The whole country's in a buying panic that can't be controlled." Most of the buying is fueled by unsubstantiated fears that more liberals in control of government will result in new firearms restrictions, area shop owners said... Still, Second Amendment advocates have grown suspicious about the new president, especially since his comment during the presidential race about Americans who "cling to guns or religion" during times of hardship, gun shop owners said... Gun permit offices in Orange and Sullivan counties have seen their new permit numbers hit 200 and 100, respectively for the first three months of 2009, a doubling from the same period a year ago. Ulster County saw a small increase in 2008, though that could have resulted from a backlog in unprocessed applications in 2007, said Sheriff Paul VanBlarcum. Despite huge revenue drops in manufacturing, gun makers are seeing strong profits... http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090328/NEWS/903280320/-1/rss01 --- A Safety Reminder: A thread on Evan Marshall's Stopping Power Forums discusses the risks associated with getting the wrong rounds into handgun magazines. Personally, I once had a problem getting a S&W 6906, newly returned from a gunsmith, to function reliably until I realized that I had inadvertently grabbed a box of Cor-Bon .380 ACP (9x17mm) ammo, instead of their "9mm+P" (9x19mmm) load. (In those days, both were sold in identical boxes with the caliber marked in typewriter-size letters on one of the end flaps. When I trained on the US Park Police range in DC, in January 1994, I noted that they have a very strict policy of allowing only one caliber of ammo on the range at a time for this very reason. While I do own autoloaders in different calibers, I now store most of my ammo in military .50-caliber ammo cans, clearly marked for caliber. http://www.stoppingpower.net/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16799 --- For Whatever It's Worth: Revolver champion Jerry Miculek offers a series of video lessons. Note that they are oriented toward competition, not self-defense. There are several things I would not teach this way. Foremost among them, I do not recommend the crossover grip. It may work all right with a Centennial revolver, whose hammer is fully enclosed, but, with a revolver with an exposed hammer, there is the possibility, under stress, that your support-hand thumb can slip forward far enough to block the rearward travel of the hammer. I prefer consistent techniques that will work under the widest variety of conditions. Yes, I do normally teach a different grip for the double-action revolver and the autoloading pistol. In any event, the videos are worth watching, even if only to help understand why you may prefer to do things differently. http://www.myoutdoortv.com/pdk/web/smith.html?feedPID=00zG15zm84msK0GbWemanhJ0KNWQYqM4 --- The Life of Arthur Savage: Arthur W. Savage was a restless overachiever. He had already made his mark as an explorer, cattle baron and coffee grower before he invented the Model 99 lever-action rifle in 1893 that set new standards for innovation in the U.S. gun industry. The founder of Savage Arms Co., a maker of rifles and shotguns based in Westfield, Mass., is also credited with designing the first radial tires... Sizing up the firearms made by Colt, Remington and Winchester, Savage saw he could make a weapon mechanically superior and more powerful than any rifle at the time. He planned to make a lever-action rifle that could fire larger caliber .303 pointed bullets used by the [British] military. It would fire faster than bolt-action single-shot rifles. The rounds would pack a bigger wallop while traveling faster and farther... Pointed bullets were too dangerous. Stacked end to end, they typically detonated when striking the primer at the base of the cartridge. To nix the problem, Savage designed a rotary magazine wrapped around the firing mechanism. The pointed bullets were fed vertically into the gun's firing chamber. The weapon was the first hammerless rifle. It used a spring-action firing pin, rather than a clumsy metal hammer, to fire rounds... http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=21&issue=20090327 --- From Force Science Research Center: I. Important Clarification: Should ABC be CBA in treating wounded officers? Is it true that an old standard of first aid training--attending to Airway, Breathing, and Circulation (bleeding) in that order when treating injured parties--is now obsolete? In a report about downed-officer rescues published in Force Science News [Transmission #118, sent 3/16/09], Dr. Matthew Sztajnkrycer contended that when caring for downed officers, ABC should be reversed to CBA. In other words, get bleeding controlled first, then worry about airway. In that article, Sztajnkrycer noted that 2/3 of preventable deaths among combat-wounded soldiers are related to bleeding, and recommended that officers be taught "new combat aid skills accordingly." However, his survey of law enforcement personnel indicated that officers felt that airway management should take priority over control of bleeding, in keeping with the traditional ABC approach. A TRAINER OBJECTS. Possibly speaking for more readers than just himself, a senior instructor at a prominent training center who has 15 years of EMT experience, strongly took issue with Sztajnkrycer's CBA recommendation. He emailed the following: "American Red Cross and American Heart Assn. protocols for CPR indicate always checking the Airway, Breathing, and then Circulation because if a non-responsive patient's airway is compromised due to a bad airway position, the small, quick act of opening the airway will save their life." He recalled personally saving a teenaged girl's life after an MVA by following just that procedure. "She was non-responsive and not breathing," he explained. "Once I repositioned her head opening her airway, she spontaneously began to breathe. Had I attended other issues first, she would have died." He cautioned that Force Science News should not suggest that officers "disregard well-established medical protocols that have been in place many years." THE RESEARCHER REPLIES. To guard against any misunderstanding on this issue, we offer the following response from Dr. Sztajnkrycer, who is a member of the Force Science Research Center's advisory board and chairman of the Division of Emergency Medicine Research at the Mayo Clinic: "To clarify, I am not advocating a general abandonment of the ABC approach. I continue to train civilian medics and doctors in this way, and ABC does serve a valid purpose, especially in conventional medical and trauma care. No airway equals fast death, pure and simple, no matter what else you do. "The paradigm shift I proposed applies specifically to 2 circumstances: 1) penetrating trauma (from gunshot wounds, IED blasts, etc.), and 2) downed-officer rescue in the setting of an active threat (although it could be expanded to any care-under-fire situation). "Until recently the military model for battlefield trauma care followed the civilian EMS model, specifically focusing on ABCDE (ABC + Disability + Exposure). If someone was bleeding to death, the approach was to secure an airway, insert chest tubes if needed, and then put in 2 large-bore IVs and deliver a minimum of 2 bags of saline to replace what was being lost, rather than to stop the person losing more blood. "After the Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 (made famous in the book and movie Black Hawk Down), the medical after-action report raised some serious concerns about transferring civilian trauma-management doctrine to a combat environment. Out of this was born the concept of Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC). PREVENTABLE-DEATH REALITY. "TCCC took an evidence-based approach to the management of battlefield trauma, and looked at causes of preventable combat death. It found that 2/3 of preventable deaths were due to isolated extremity hemorrhage; soldiers who were shot in an arm and/or a leg only, and bled to death. Most of the remaining preventable deaths came from chest trauma (specifically tension pneumothorax). Only about 5% of preventable deaths were related to airway problems. "Based on the available evidence, it was decided to emphasize the control of life-threatening bleeding over all other medical issues when providing care in the kill zone. A tourniquet is quick, and saves lives. The rest can generally wait until some cover is found. Hence the different mnemonics CBA, XABC (eXsanguination [blood loss] ABC), and most recently MARCH (massive hemorrhage, airway, respiration, circulation, hypothermia/head injury). "Will soldiers die as a consequence of this re-prioritizing? Possibly. As many as 5% of preventable combat deaths involve airway issues, and airway management is not considered appropriate for the kill zone. However, the data would argue that emphasizing something quick and easy that will save 13 out of 20 lives is more effective than something that is complicated, slow to perform (and therefore delays extraction from the kill zone and places everyone at risk), and still only saves 1 life out of 20. EYE-OPENING STUDY. "Interestingly, although ABC is well-entrenched dogma, there is very little solid evidence to support it. It seems to make sense, and has stood the test of time, so we do it. The nice thing about TCCC is that it is supported by an increasing body of evidence that shows that it works. "In terms of airway management in a tactical setting, there was an eye-opening study presented at the Special Operations Medical Assn. meeting in Tampa last December. It had 2 very important conclusions. "First, the number of patients requiring airway management remains small, and for the most part their airways are literally bloody messes. These victims have suffered trauma to their faces and necks, and are choking to death on their own blood. Jaw thrust/chin lift will not work in this scenario. Conventional rescue airway devices for emergency ventilation will not work because of all the bleeding (a bummer, since this is our tactical airway device of choice). For the military, the method of choice for definitive combat airway management appears to be a surgical cricothyrotomy. " Second, the study found that a subset of victims needed airway management not because of direct head/neck trauma, but because of a decreased level of consciousness. However, unlike the case alluded to in the email from the experienced trainer, this is not the MVA victim with a head bonk and blunt closed-head injury. This is someone shot somewhere other than the head/neck, who is unresponsive because of bleeding and shock. "In this group, no patient survived regardless of airway management. If they had such bad shock that they became unresponsive and needed airway management, they died. This new data would appear to support the emphasis on controlling blood loss over airway management in the kill zone. "Now, I realize that civilian tactical emergency medicine is different from military medicine in Fallujah or Kandahar. I am also not saying that TCCC is the gospel for civilian law enforcement. For example, in the airway study, cricothyrotomy was chosen over the more common civilian EMS approach of endotracheal intubation in part because it is too logistically difficult for the military to maintain the proficiency of all its medics in medication-assisted intubation. "However, based upon the evidence coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and extrapolating to the rescue of a downed officer, I think there is pretty sound medical reasoning to limit care in the hot zone to quickly controlling life-threatening hemorrhaging if feasible and moving to cover. EXIT THE KILL ZONE. "What you should not be doing is staying in the kill zone, trying to perform a civilian ABC assessment, and exposing yourself, your team, and the downed officer to more threats. "To save lives, I am suggesting that under certain very specific circumstances, such as a downed-officer rescue, we take our cues from TCCC and do not focus on airways until we find cover. In other words, reverse ABC to CBA." Note: If you Google "Tactical Combat Casualty Care" you will find innumerable articles on this protocol and its 3 goals: To save lives that would otherwise be lost...to prevent additional casualties...and to complete the mission. For instance, the U.S. Army Medical Dept. Journal for April-June, 2005, carries extensive coverage of the subject, with impressive field reports. Dr. Sztajnkrycer welcomes dialog on this and other subjects related to his downed-officer research at: Sztajnkrycer.Matthew@mayo.edu . ================ (c) 2009: Force Science Research Center, www.forcescience.org. Reprints allowed by request. For reprint clearance, please e-mail: info@forcesciencenews.com. FORCE SCIENCE is a registered trademark of The Force Science Research Center, a non-profit organization based at Minnesota State University, Mankato. ================ --- From John Farnam: 23 Mar 09 More self-deception, from a friend currently in Baghdad: "Some progress to report: Most 'clearing-barrels' are now gone, as star-wearers here (after how many years?) have finally figured out that eliminating unnecessary gun-handling greatly reduces gun accidents. Imagine that! The bad news is that the miniscule minority of what we call 'headquarters-types' who even carry pistols, carry them in leg-holsters, with spare magazines on the same side. Many don't carry spare magazines at all. Some even carry pistols in shoulder-holsters, worn backward in order to get the pistol out of their way as they fly their desks. Either way, most don't have a magazine inserted, and none have a round chambered! Not one carries a flashlight, blade, nor IBD. They're not ready to fight, because it has occurred to none of them that they'll ever have to! A small minority of us (mostly your students) carry pistols, fully-loaded of course, in self-procured kydex holsters, with a minimum of four spare magazines. In addition, we all have flashlights, blades, IBDs, concealed back-up guns, et al. When riding in an armored convoy last week, I was the only person, out of thirty passengers, to have with me both an M-4 and a pistol, with spare magazines for both, all ready to go. Others were only armed with a pistol, and, again, most didn't even have a magazine inserted, nor a round chambered. Some were unarmed altogether. They constituted little more than a hoard of tourists! By contrast, all 'Combat Arms' types here are heavily armed, all the time, and all demonstrate competent gun-handling skills. They know and understand they may (God forbid!) have to actually fight sometime, any they also know they don't get to make an appointment!" Comment: It's not just a matter of "inadequate" nor "improper" training. Our training philosophy is fatally flawed! We're so afraid to even talk about, much less confront, real fighting, that all we seem to be able to do is train people to win pistol matches! It is also counter-productive when soldiers are assured by those up the food-chain that this "combat-zone" is now a "safe" area, and nothing is likely to happen. This is an expression mostly of wishful thinking and represents a disservice to all. How often are people killed around here? Only once! /John (Note the phenomenon of "pistol as badge," as in the Florida police chief who did not even realize that she had lost her handgun after she went home from work. I heartily agree with John's comment about training people to win pistol matches instead of winning fights.) 24 Mar 09 What happens afterward? From friends in the DHS System: "I've spent months working on our 'Homeland Security Plan.' The prospect of widespread social disorder, with violent, criminal gangs predictably taking advantage of generalized infrastructure breakdown and weak/inadequate response from authorities (as we plainly saw during the Katrina Disaster) isn't currently integrated into any homeland-security plan, despite dire warnings from many of us! The Administration does not want to admit it needs a 'Plan-B' for the likely eventuality where public order cannot be restored within seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours is the limit of endurance, before whatever local infrastructure that remains after a disabling incident, collapses entirely, necessitating a regional/national response. Think of the abrupt, generalized societal breakdown that will surely materialize seventy-two hours after multiple disasters/attacks take place simultaneously! We Feds cannot possibly manufacture a viable 'Plan B' on the fly, and, as noted, none is in place now. Any species of public order will not be restored for weeks, or months. To live through that period, individuals will need significant capabilities, good equipment, plenty of ammunition and other necessities, and competent training. Who lack the foregoing will be out of luck, and no one will help them. Who think they'll be rescued are naive fools! Even today, in nations like Mexico and South Africa, creeping, chronic societal breakdown, related to corrupt/failing national governments, has necessitated that perceptive individuals develop long-term coping/exit strategies for surviving these endemic, ever-worsening threats." Comment: The Federal response to the next generalized disaster(s) will be characterized by "General Abandonment!" Those caught up near the epicenter(s) will be instantly written-off, as will those dwelling within the ever-widening perimeter. The self-contained have a chance. The unprepared have none! /John (Recall that gangs from other cities conducted seaborne landings in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. Again, you may wish to consider amateur radio as a backup form of communication. While Morse code will get through under conditions when other modes may not, the Morse-code requirements for all three levels of currently issued of US amateur-radio licenses were dropped in February 2007.) 25 Mar 09 Lessons from calamity. This from a friend in VA: "This past Sunday, at 5:00 AM, a young couple was jogging together, as they regularly did, in the local neighborhood where they lived, only a few miles from where I live. Both were precipitously attacked by multiple VCAs. The man was murdered (beaten to death), and the woman is in the hospital, in critical condition. Police have no leads nor significant evidence to reveal the identity of the attackers. The woman may recover enough to provide information. She may not! The attackers, two or three, emerged from a parked car and used baseball bats or similar blunt instruments. Robbery was the apparent motive, at least at the beginning. These facts have emerged: (1) Both victims were CCW-permit holders, but neither was armed at the time and place of the fatal attack. (2) The man was a decorated Special Forces Soldier (retired), trained in hand-to-hand fighting. (3) The attack took place in broad-daylight, in a quiet, upscale, residential community. The community is stunned, of course. Police are doing the best they can, but cases where attackers and victims don't know each other and have no obvious connection are difficult to solve." Lessons: (1) We call them "side-arms" for a reason. At least one needs to be "at your side" all the time. Aspire to be a competent, self-contained, independent Operator. And, expect neither support nor understanding from naive VBCs. (2) Don't arbitrarily divide your life into "safe" and "dangerous" parts, places, nor activities. Fate may neglect to celebrate your dear fantasy! I know people who have CCW-permits, but don't carry, and they're ever-ready to treat me to a nauseating dissertation of their idiotic excuses. The foregoing exposes the lethal fallacy of such self-deceptive thinking. (3) When your spouse (either gender) is squeamish about "the whole gun-thing, " help them get over it. You need a partner, not a burden! (4) Be aware of "pattern-behavior." Regularly change-up routines. Don't become predictable. Stalkers will use your predictable routine against you, as was likely the case here. (5) Don't deceive yourself that your martial-arts training/prowess will protect you against heavy odds. No matter how many black-belts you have, against multiple, simultaneous VCAs, you will likely not prevail, when unarmed. A single, dashing hero, casually dispatching several bad guys with glamorous judo-moves, is something that happens only in movies! (6) "Police protection" is a contradiction of terms! Don't fill your head with false expectations with regard to actual services police can provide. Police investigators are basically "armed archeologists." We might catch these guys, and we might not. Patrol officers may be there to help you, and they may not. We get paid the same either way. And, whatever we manage to accomplish after you're dead, will probably be of scant interest to you anyway! /John (As I have said before, item 2 from John will likely prove to be his greatest contribution to what he prefers to cal "the Art." In a space of nearly 20 years, back in California, I was involved in four high-threat incidents, which occurred in different environments, at different times of day and night. The one thing all had in common was the lack of a certified letter, telegram or phone call alerting me in advance that my life would be put in danger that day or night. My own wing chun instructor's last instructor was once followed from his studio by another automobile, whose occupants got him to pull over. Overconfident, he toyed with the first guy, who challenged him, while the second guy circled him and laid him out with a baseball bat to the head; fortunately, he regained consciousness and was able to drive himself to a hospital.) 26 Mar 09 Lexicon of frequently-used Quip abbreviations: ADEE, Avoid, Disengage, Escape, Evade AOJP, Ability, Opportunity, Jeopardy, Preclusion BUIS, Back-up Iron Sights DOA, Dead on Arrival DRT, Dead, Right There IBD, Israeli Battle Dressing VBC, Victim, by Choice VCA, Violent, Criminal Actor -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .