Wednesday, October 05, 2005

NRA "To Make a Major Announcement"

They're doing "a series of press conferences."

Speculation?

Jerry Kilgore's involved--we already know they're backing him.

Do they have something to say about Harriet Miers?

Is it something else?

Guess we'll just have to wait and see...

Yeah, THIS'LL Work

I no sooner get done posting about cops getting their guns taken away and the foolishness of relying on gadgets as a substitute for trained human operators, and this foolishness resurrects itself.

Sure, Joseph Petrella--that's just what I'd want to have hampering my dexterity and getting snagged on things in a tactical situation--your stupid glove. And maybe you should install a smart lock on the glove so the perps can't remove it from the downed officer and use it to activate the gun...

Doesn't your garage need cleaning or something?

More From the "We’re the Only Ones Professional Enough" Files

Two breaking stories:

A Philadelphia police officer is recovering from bite wounds during a struggle with a suspect who took his gun.

The officer's partner shot the suspect, avoiding a repeat of a shooting at a hospital in Langhorne, Bucks County, last week during which a policeman was killed with his own gun.

and:

An officer's gun was fired inside a Smyrna hospital, but no one was hurt…authorities say an agitated jail inmate…became irritated and began to scuffle with the Smyrna police officer guarding him. The two wrestled on the floor, with the inmate firing the officer's gun once while it was still in its holster

Years ago I wrote an article about "smart guns," which were originally developed to address cops being killed with their own service weapons. Of course, just as I predicted, police are exepmpted from pending personalized weapons mandates for a simple fact: they realize how foolish it would be to trust their lives to gadgets and have the political clout to reject them.

What was the solution for takeaway incidents identified then by weapons and tactics expert Ken Good, that still holds true today?

"If a weapon is taken from an officer, I personally believe it is primarily a training issue. Most folks seem to try and solve most tactical problems through some sort of hardware improvement without looking at the core system. The human operator should be the primary system to be improved upon. Many departments are dangerously low in their delivery of ongoing advanced officer training. If an officer cannot be trusted to deploy and keep his or her weapon, please don't give them one in the first place!"

Speaking of someone who shouldn't have been trusted with a gun in the first place, here's another takeaway incident involving someone--what would you call her--"semiprofessional enough?"...