Wooden Swords and Laser Guns--How Do I Practice Using Deadly Force?

Remember Choose Your Own Adventure ™
 books? How about the Time Machine ™
 series from the same publisher? 
Were they great, or were they the greatest?

This is why people think I've read the Book of Five Rings.

Time's up, sucker. They were the greatest. I still quote facts about Jupiter that I learned from a Choose Your Own Adventure ™book about a mission to the moons of Jupiter, and I'm talking about teaching middle school science class, here. Did you know that Jupiter has 63 moons and 
Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury?

But my favorite was probably from the Time Machine ™series, and it was a mission to travel back in time and acquire a sword used by Miyamoto Musashi. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but there was a successful ending available. The final choice was presented in a scene with Musashi in his famous cave as he lay dying. Musashi recognizes this weird, eternal person who keeps popping in and out of his life, and agrees to allow you to take one of his swords. After pondering what you have learned from Musashi (other than that bushido requires a willingness to cheat) you choose Musashi's well-worn bokken and leave his steel swords by his side. Musashi approves; this, he says, is the sword that he has used the most in his life, the one that taught him the most. The others are almost like your mom's fine china, only useful for special occasions. If one of the swords contains any of his soul, it will be the humble wooden training tool.

It wasn't until later that I learned that Musashi's legendary fondness for wooden weapons wasn't all about a philosophical decision to embrace training and learning; he also really had a thing for beating people to death with the bones of trees. We all have our quirks, I guess. But the impact it had on me at the time, which I think has lasted, was a fascination with the idea of a warrior as a student, someone for whom training gear and good teachers are much more important than the actual deadly weapons to be used. We're all fond of telling each other that you can't purchase skill, but if you're willing to pay in time, repetition and fatigue, and you're open to new ideas, you can. I think that's neato.

Nowadays, although I have a bokken stashed somewhere, that's not what need to train with my primary weapons. I used to carry a knife wherever I could; when I realized I could buy a blunt trainer, I did so, but my "training" was sporadic. I still carry a knife most of the time, but I've added OC spray to it. That's been more difficult to practice well with, and I know it's a hole in my options. But the big recent change has been the acquisition of an Illinois CCL this year. With the ability to carry a firearm with me has come the realization that I (speaking strictly for myself) was not completely comfortable with my level of skill. It's great to carry the thing, but to what avail, if you're not sure you'll have the confidence to use it if the time comes? So I started to seek out training.  I did MAG20 Classroom, followed by MAG20 Range. I did my 16-hour Illinois CCL training class. I've taken an 8-hour force-on-force class from Black Flag Training, four hours on Illinois law from Andrew Branca of LOSD fame, and the four-hour emergency medicine class from Kelly Grayson (the one I reviewed this week.) Every time I take a shooty class as opposed to a thinky class, I notice something: my performance starts slow and improves dramatically as I shoot more. That's a clue, I guess; these skills are perishable, and I'm not getting my money's worth from this or that course if I don't practice the skills over time.

So I've taken steps in 2014 to shoot more. I switched to 9mm to save money on ammunition, and I've begun buying 9mm ammo in greater bulk to save more. I've joined my local USPSA group, the Springfield Tactical Shooters, who run one stage of USPSA every Thursday night locally. And I've committed to shooting live fire once per week (a commitment, however, that I've already had to reset once after taking most of April off because of insanity in the family.) Right now, I do that by shooting Dot Torture once per week to try to establish a record of progress.

That's all great, but it's never enough. I want to be committed to dry fire at home, I do, but I have three kids in that home, and because of my family situation, security of my firearms is very important. Moreover, I've never really become comfortable with dry fire. I store the guns upstairs, but there are no safe directions up there. I have safe directions downstairs, and I generally have my carry gun on me at home anyway, but then I've got to separate from the ammunition--and I'm still not really happy with that solution. So I've invested in a couple of pieces of gear that promised to help out with these problems, and I think I'd like to think through what I've solved, what I haven't, and what's next in writing. You're welcome to read it if that seems like something you'd enjoy. Of course, because I live in 2014, my favorite "wooden sword" is a "laser gun." 

Pew, pew!

Short version: I currently have a $12 piece of yellow plastic and a much more expensive laser pistol. In upcoming posts, I'd like to explore what each one does best, what each one is lacking, and why I I'm still kicking myself for not buying yet another laser pistol at NRAAM this year. Also, if you are a time traveler and you're going to ask me for my weapon at the end of my life, I suggest you just time it to show up sometime after my actual death and then just take the one you want. I don't want to be a pain in the ass. Green light, bro.

Do CSGV Twitter Interns Dream of Electric Sheep?

I think maybe somebody accidentally bumped the reset button on one of CSGV's Tweeters while I was Turing-testing it today (or was it Turing-testing me?)

"I've never seen a turtle... But I understand what you mean." 

"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. . ."

See that at the end? Suddenly they just reset to talking points like nothing happened. It's mathematically possible that in the dimension a CSGV intern inhabits, nothing has happened. Ponder this until you have achieved enlightenment, and if you meet the Buddha on the road, cause him mild discomfort.

Ambulance Driver Class on the Care and Feeding of Medical Emergencies for Shooters, or: How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love the Tourniquet

“Air goes in and out, blood goes round and round. Any variation on the theme is a problem.”

About a month before NRA Annual Meetings kicked off in Indianapolis this year, Ambulance Driver put out a call for students. In real life, AD is Kelly Grayson, emergency medicine subject matter expert and gadfly extraordinaire, and when he’s not running critical care transfers for the voracious and merciless EMS collective known as “The Borg” or writing books, he does a lot of teaching. This time, Kelly and friends had decided to create a class for the average gun owner on what to do about a medical emergency at the range or in the field (including, but not limited to, first aid for gunshot wounds.)  Why’s that matter to you? Well, it might not, but this is my blog, and you’ve got some nerve coming in firing questions. Besides, I think there’s a good chance that this class could be added to Kelly’s offerings, and that means it might come to your town one of these days.

Bro, do you even tourniquet?

Let me cut to the chase: if you aren’t at least an experienced first responder  with experience with gunshot wounds, I think you’ll benefit from this class. Kelly brought three friends in as instructors, including the author of Too Old toWork, Too Young to Retire and two other experienced medics, one with extensive experience in Detroit. Any one of the four have probably treated more GSW than I have car accident injuries, and their experience showed.  Bringing help also meant that the instructors had the manpower to break the class into four sections for small-group hands-on instruction in CPR, use of AED’s, and application of bandages and tourniquets. That time was valuable, and it looked to me like the instructors were consistent and efficient in running their individual groups. I was not expecting OldNFO to stand up deliver a history of hemostatic bandaging (products like Quik-Clot) but it was fascinating.

Aw, snap. Knowledge is about to drop on you like the other shoe, son.

The agenda was intelligently basic and can be summarized as three big questions:

·      What can we do about acute cardiac or respiratory problems at the range? (What if Joe has a heart attack at a remote range?)

·      What can we do about gunshot wounds to the extremities?
(What if Joe shoots himself in the leg at a remote range?)

·      What can we do about thoracic gunshot wounds?
(What if Joe gets shot in the belly or the chest at a remote range?)

What if there's inappropriate touching?

Negatives? Well, obviously, a four-hour course is not going to turn anyone into a medical superhero, so if anyone was hoping to learn to repair wounds surgically in the field with a fishhook and line, they would have gone home disappointed. The course could go longer easily; I believe Kelly mentioned that it may be extended in future versions, and I think that makes sense.

Positives? Brisk pacing, not a lot of superfluous discussion or information, good balance of lecture and participation, well-considered agenda of basic information, and a good job of addressing varying skill levels from medical laymen who’ve never really thought about medical emergencies at the range before to practicing nurses and doctors.

Now you're cookin' with gas, ya big lug! But seriously, you should probably take that thing off at some point.

In the end, I walked out with knowledge and confidence I hadn’t brought in with me, and that’s a win. In particular, I picked up new knowledge and much firmer confidence in my knowledge of thoracic wounds, especially sucking chest wounds, and I no longer fear the tourniquet. I also walked away with a compact emergency kit stocked with a good field tourniquet and appropriate bandages, gloves and cleaning supplies, plus an occlusive chest seal for sucking chest wounds (which has helpfully been covered in notes with a Sharpie™ because I walked in late without a pencil or paper on my person.)

Be prepared! But if you can't manage to be prepared, at least be prepared to be weird. 

It must be noted that the use of St. Francis Hospital’s excellent conference room and the food and drink supplied by Brownells out of the goodness of their hearts added to the experience for most of the attendees.  Personally, I haughtily refused to partake of the delicious breakfast pastries or drink the soda and juice provided, because I am an arrogant monster. But if you’re into that sort of thing, you can see how having one of the giants of the industry step up to support a small class like this one—a class with, it must be admitted, zero application to either Crossfit™ or shooting terrorists in their faces—makes a difference.

My thanks to Brownells, to St. Francis Hospitals in Indianapolis, to Kelly Grayson and TOTW and their fellow instructors. Going forward, I’m going to be sharing a version of what I’ve learned out to members of the Sangamon County Rifle Association. The SCRA met two nights ago, and between my account and the praise delivered by Snooze Button Ronin, I think we have some interest in hosting Kelly for a similar class in the future. I’ll be watching with interest to see if it becomes available!

Check Your Privilege (in which I annoy my friends.)

So there's a "Check Your Privilege" meme going around the gun blogs, and so far, I've only seen it approached from one direction: the idea that "privilege" is obviously a stupid and fictional concept created by silly people in universities to make white people and male people (especially gender normative cismale fascists) feel guilty. The idea seems to be that "check your privilege" doesn't make sense, because white people and men aren't all rich, and they often face real struggle in their lives.

Here's the thing: that's not how privilege has been explained to me in the past, nor is it how I use the term in my life. So I'm going to follow the instructions of the meme (I will "check my privilege" and tell my "story of privilege") but first, I'm going to lay a couple of ideas out here.

• Checking your privilege is not generally intended to mean wallowing in guilt or self-hatred over the racism of your ancestors or your oppression of post-lesbian transwomen. The point of understanding privilege is mainly to remind myself that there are problems others face that I simply do not face, and may not completely understand. That wouldn't make me a bad person, just a human being--nobody can know everything, and nobody is capable of perfect empathy.
• Check your privilege does not mean "shut up." There are certainly people who say the one when they mean the other, but they're using it wrong, and I'm not obligated to obey them. I'm also not entitled to use them to discredit people who simply want to make a genuine effort to see another person's point of view despite serious differences. Like the "shut up!" people, I can do that--I have the power to do it if I choose--but it would make me wrong.
• Among reasonable people of good will, "check your privilege" is the equivalent of "your fly is open" or "did you mean to leave the house without pants today?" Taking my privilege into account is something I want to do for myself, because I want to understand other people and also myself. When someone points out that I've forgotten to do it this time, that's generally not because they're trying to be mean to me; they're reminding me of something that they know I prefer to do, like zipping my fly before I leave the bathroom. 

Now, given all that, what's it look like to check your privilege? Well, for me, it's not stories of how hard my immigrant great-grandparents had it, or tales of how poor we were when my dad's factory job was moved to another state, or how hard I had to work to get through college rustling drunks for the school and signing my paychecks directly to the school, even though those things happened. It's not the stories about detasseling corn or walking bean fields in the summer sun, though I did that. The thing about all my stories of hard work and lean times is that none of those actually change the fact that I was and am a privileged person.

Generally speaking, people don't tell others to be patient with me because I "tend to be emotional," as opposed to women, who "tend to be more logical in their thought patterns." I don't get treated that way because men don't generally get treated that way.  Yes, yes, I know, we hunted the mammoth and we dig the coal, etc., but that's a privilege nevertheless. I can also walk down the street without people shouting propositions at me, even if I decide to walk alone or late at night.* I read the "Everyday Sexism" Twitter feed when I can, and the women who post their experiences are going through things I never have--often things I would have said don't happen. Are they all liars? Or does my privilege hide these experiences from me and color the way I see the world? I think that's the most plausible explanation.

The last time I went through a "roadside check" was last fall, after midnight, on a main thoroughfare in Springfield, IL.  I was bringing my son back from the emergency room after he'd gotten a laceration on his head stapled closed. Normally, I avoid those checkpoints, but I stopped for this one. A cop shined a flashlight into my car, looking for anything "in plain sight" in the passenger compartment, inspected my license and insurance creeds, then asked me where I was coming from and where I was going. I was tired and cranky (my son had not been doing something smart when he hurt his head, and my patience was already strained.) I snapped at that cop a little bit; I demanded to know why he needed to know that information. Basically, I copped an attitude. He backed off and sent us on our way. Would that have worked for one of my black coworkers? I dunno, but we suspected it would at least have ended with them being put through a lot more hassle than I was.

That's a privilege.

I'm a man married to a woman. People don't generally demand that I pretend not to be married to her, or that I pretend not to love her, to spare their feelings. Nobody has ever demanded to know how they should explain my marriage to their children, and nobody's trying to outlaw it, either. That's a privilege.

And, yeah, I'll go there: I'm a "cis male." I was born with the body that matched up to my sense of self. I never had to justify my existence to anybody. My body hasn't been perfect, and it has its quirks, but I don't have to explain to people that I'm not trying to trick everyone I meet. No one accuses me of being a pervert for going to the bathroom. I don't get told that I'm just confused, that I don't know who I am, or that the all-powerful creator of the universe will make it all go away if I just pray and wish hard enough (meaning, of course, that if it doesn't "fix me," it must be because I'm doing it wrong.)

Those are privileges, and I have them. I didn't ask for them, and even if I were willing to give them up, I couldn't. They come with the deal. They don't make me a bad guy, and I don't feel guilt or shame for having them; I just keep them in mind, because they tend to lie to me.  They tell me what the world is like, what works and what doesn't, and they make it harder to see that the world isn't like that for everyone.

*Usually. There was that guy in Houston who wanted me to cross the street to tell him the time . . . 

I think I might be back . . . maybe.

I guess I’m back?  Once again, I traveled to meet old internet friends, and most of them gave me a ration of shit for not writing anymore, and I just sort of cheerfully batted it back like it didn’t bother me, and then . . . I came home and looked at the old blog again. The truth is that I like to write, but life does get in the way. There are aspects of my family life at home that I don’t always feel at liberty to share, because the actions of some people close to me are such that discussing them in public might amount to shaming them, even if that weren’t my intent (and if I start writing about those parts of my life, the urge to shame people publicly from time to time will be there.) Maybe that’s not even such a terrible thing, but then again . . . the internet is forever, right? And we’re talking about young people making very bad choices . . . . they could be totally different people in five years or ten, and nothing I write about them on the internet is going to go away. I’ve often wondered if that’s one of the lines between a dilettante like me and a “real” novelist or essayist, that the “real” novelist would “write what he knows” and let the chips fall where they may, even if it meant that people he loves were held up to public ridicule or shame going forward.

Maybe the solution is to put a new blog up at www.donniegwinn.com (snazzy, no?) and be completely transparent about my identity, but carefully censor what I say about the people in my life and the problems I face. That seems like it will make good blogging pretty tough.

Or, maybe the solution is to put a new blog at another domain I registered a few months ago (not my name) and start over anonymously, telling only close friends who’s writing there, and just write about everything that’s happening in my life, both as a way to get writing inspiration and as a way to survive it. 

Of course, I could just journal all this stuff privately, but that seems like a tough way to become the center of attention.  ;)

Y'all Know What Day It Is, Right?

Y’all know what day it is, right? That’s right; it’s the First of May. Don’t start the video if profanity or sex are problems for you . . . it’s NSFW in a good way.

(But still clearly NSFW.)

Aw . . . . I'll tell you what: I even found the clean version for you.  I'll just warn you, though, this is Jonathon Coulton and Paul & Storm live, so "clean" is relative. But this was considered suitable for performance with kids in the audience:

You are welcome.

Catch-22: Life Insurance Edition

In which Yossarian discovers that you can't buy your life insurance cheap if you're Morbidly Obese, because people who are Morbidly Obese are at risk of dying of their obesity (that's what the "morbid" part is about, it turns out.)  And yet, if you decide that you do not want to be Morbidly Obese anymore because sunsets are beautiful and your children are adorable, you also cannot buy your life insurance cheap if you have lost too much weight in the previous six months.

One could suppose that Morbid Obesity is a sign of insanity, while movement toward Mere Obesity is a sign of sanity . . . the very thing Catch 22 is designed to punish.  However, it's probably a simpler mathematical explanation at work:  Morbid Obesity is one sign of impending (sweaty, wheezing) death.   However, rapid weight loss is another sign of impending death, possibly from (whispering) The Cancer or very possibly (again whispering) The AIDS.

Sigh.  It is to wait.