Officer Ray Dilworth was hit in the head with a simunition bullet at a training facility off Columbia Avenue.What were the "Only Ones" training for there, a reenactment scene from "The Deer Hunter"?
Simunition rounds are basically fake bullets made of gunpowder and primer. [More]
[Via Harvey]
7 comments:
Depending on your tolerance for force-on-force training, Simunitions ammo may have a place. "Only One" issues aside, they have long been used in tactics competitions such as the National Tactical Invitational, and it can be argued that we really have learned some things about the dynamics of personal defense through these games.
(Personally, I have long wrestled with the Rules violations implicit in the concept of these sorts of force-on-force exercises. I can see that there is learning value there, but I just don't know if I am willing to offer that potential confusion to my life-and-death decision process.)
The issue here, of course, is not Simunitions, and it is possible that it may not even be the tactics or gunhandling (I don't have enough info to tell, given that it may have been force-on-force training). It absolutely is the apparent lack of protective gear. (NTI, for example, is absolutely draconian about safety during its force-on-force stages, and although it feels weird to say such a thing, I have no problem with such authoritarianism in that context. Among other things, no one is forced to go to NTI.) Perhaps one can simply insert a "file photo" Only One joke here, and be done with it.
For me, the best one of those was offered by the Jeff Cooper master instructor who taught me basic pistol. He asked the class, "What do you think the most dangerous job in police work is?"
The answer, of course, is rangemaster.
Other the the misleading description of sim rounds, I don't really see the newsworthyness of the article. Having been on the receiving end of sims many times, I dont understand what the big deal is. As long as basic protective gear is worn, sims are mostly safe. Accidents do happen, but the training value from sims makes the assumption of risk more then worth it. The worst injury I have seen from sims was broken skin on the bridge of the nose, and extremly sore groin, both from taking a shoot from less the 10 ft. (I inflicted one and received the other).
The plastic on them is about that of a shotgun wad, so I could see it possibly doing some damage, but there HAD to be something else involved here.
See here and here.
My assumption, and I admit it's that, is that it was fired at extremely close range--thus the "Deerhunter" crack.
I hear ya, but I was thinking "reaction" as in flinching into something like a wall.
Blank rounds (simuntions and others) have blinded, maimed or killed for ranges under 15 feet from the blast effect generated by the primer, gunpowder charge, and wad, even ordinary paper.
If you give me the opportunity and I smack you upside the head with a baseball bat, won't you learn from that experience?
Mau!Mau! Who poop last?
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