Vendor: “The Blastomatic 3000 is the ultimate solution to your tactical needs. It is ideally suited to take down a knife-wielding mugger at bad breath distance or a Hadji at 1000 yards. It slices, it dices, and it’s made from 100% distilled hippie tears.

Ambulance Driver: “What’s the chance of me getting one for T&A for a month or so?”

Vendor: “…”

TOTWTYTR (apologetically): “He means ‘T&E’. You’ll have to forgive him, we don’t take him out in public very often.”

AD: “Why do people act so offended when I mention tonsils and adenoids?”

I hope that the post title at least captured the attention of my anti-gun readers, and keeps you reading.

Those of you who read this blog know my political views. I'm a  socially liberal, fiscally conservative libertarian, although the pelt of my Wookie suit is not quite so full and glossy as some.

I am a Christian who supports the rights of gays to marry. I am a southern white male redneck who believes minorities and women deserve equal treatment, but I also believe that quota systems like Affirmative Action are covert racism, fostering the notion that minorities cannot succeed on their own merits.

I believe in legal immigration, and I devoutly believe in the words of Emma Lazarus inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I also believe we should secure our borders, and that there should be an easier avenue toward legal immigration. That does not include blanket amnesty for current illegal aliens.

I believe abortion is a sin, yet I refuse to impose my moral beliefs upon others in the form of laws. I believe religion should stay the hell out of our government, and government should stay the hell out of our religion.

I believe in God, but I distrust preachers. And I believe that most of our Founding Fathers felt the same way.

I believe that any civilized society should take care of its citizens who cannot care for themselves, but I believe government has proven itself incapable of doing so without creating an even larger class of people who won't do for themselves. I believe our government, outside of some very narrow strictures, screws it up more often than it gets it right, and that our system of government is headed for collapse if it continues trying to be all things to all people.

I believe that we owe it to ourselves, and the generations to come, to ensure that does not happen, and that the means to do so is to vote out the politicians who refuse to acknowledge – by word AND deed – that the government cannot keep providing these things for us.

I believe in freedom, and I am a law-abiding man. Yet I also believe that we have too many laws as it is, and that more of them are infringing on our freedoms every day. And there is a limit to how much I will obey. There is a line beyond which I will not be pushed, even by my government.

I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

I believe that Bull Durham was a heckuva movie, obviously.

I also own a whole bunch of guns, including a few of those so-called "assault weapons" many of you want to ban following the horrible events last Friday.

I know that many of you, hoplophiles and hoplophobes alike, come here for the EMS stories and the medical commentary and the humor. And I know that most of the hoplophobes just ignore the firearms posts when they pop up in their RSS feed.

I hope you keep reading now, because it is indeed time for that meaningful conversation on reasonable gun restrictions.

The problem is, for the conversation to be "meaningful" and the restrictions actually "reasonable," both sides have to be speaking the same language. It is difficult to debate facts when one side operates from a position of monumental ignorance. Knowledge replaces unreasoning fear and emotion with rational thought, and that is what I propose to do here.

I say this because I have spent the last week debating gun control on Facebook with intelligent, college-educated and well-meaning people… who are utterly ignorant of the subject.

I engaged a commenter on a friend's facebook thread who basically called me a liar when I stated that many people hunt with AR15 platform rifles. I was about to offer proof of that, when further in his comment I discovered that he also believes that fully automatic weapons are still available to civilians, that you can buy them without ID or background check, and that they are commonly used in crime, and that you can go to gun stores and gun shows in America and buy a rocket propelled grenade. He then went on to state that three of his friends had converted their AR15's to full-auto fire within the past 10 years, and that he had fired these weapons.

So the anti-gun guy from Arlington, VA aids and abets a Federal felony, and consorts with felons. Good to know.

I was unfriended and banned from further debate after that. He continues to rail on about "Why do you neeeeed to own an AR15?" while owning a whole fleet of expensive, vintage ambulances with no airbags or seatbelts, powered by big gas-guzzling V8 motors with no catalytic converter that he doesn't neeeeeeed, either.

Debate with such people is not possible. I am sorry, but you do not get to characterize your points as rational and the restrictions you propose as reasonable if you debate from a position of such monumental ignorance.

So here is what I propose to do: If you don't know jack shit about guns, or you are afraid of them, or if you think tightening gun restrictions is the answer to prevent further events like the massacre at Sandy Hook School, tell us your concerns right here. Tell us why you hold those beliefs. Tell us why you think it is a good idea.

And I swear to you, we will debate you calmly, rationally, and without belittling you. We will treat you with respect and courtesy. We will afford you the courtesy that is NOT extended to Second Amendment advocates who try to debate on anti-gun forums, because invariably the owners of those forums delete or modify pro-gun comments, or shut down comments entirely when their emotional points are countered with facts. Or unfriend you, like my former friend Steve.

I will not do that here.

I am not the first Second Amendment blogger to make such an offer, but I am one of the few that has a substantial non-gun readership. I'll give you a forum here, to debate the issue, and be educated. We may not change your minds on the issue, but at the end of the day, we hope to educate you enough that you are debating a rationally considered moral principle and not one of unreasoning fear based on ignorance.

If you still believe we shouldn't have guns, then at least we can agree to disagree.

We'll do the debate in the comments. If they get to be too long, I'll put up subsequent posts on the subject.

Before we begin, let's set the ground rules:

1. No personal attacks. That goes for anti-gunners and pro-gunners alike. Insult someone here, get nasty, and you're banned permanently. That goes for my friends as well. If an anti-gunner insults you, you leave the discipline up to me. Do not take the bait. Anti-gunners, you do likewise. You can attack an argument all you want, but attack a person and you eat ban hammer. Personal attacks and misbehavior will see the commenter banned, and their comments held up for public ridicule and mockery. There will be no warnings.
2. Anonymous comments are allowed. I realize that many commenters do not wish to engage in public debate under their own names. That's cool, as long as your comments are respectful and constructive. If you attack people from a position of anonymity, that just makes you a coward and a troll, even if you're on my side.
3. Provide facts and figures wherever possible. If we're going to debate, "I feel" is a weak position. Back up what you say with facts and figures if you can. Not all of the facts and figures are going to agree. And be prepared that when some of you quote figures to support your position, your opponents will point out why your apples don't compare to their oranges.
4. Ridiculous statements beget ridiculous statements. If your debating position is "Guns only have one purpose, and that is to kill! ZOMG! Eleventy!" then you forfeit the right to dismiss as a non sequitur anyone who counters with other everyday objects that kill more people than guns.
5. No piling on. Pro-gun people are going to outnumber the anti-gun people here. If another commenter has already adequately countered an anti-gun comment with solid facts and figures, refrain from adding your own comment slightly rephrased purely because you want to get your snark on. On the other hand, anti-gunners, if your response to having your points is refuted is little better than, "Uh uh, did not!" then prepare to have someone else enter the discussion. Stubbornly ignoring the facts is not debate.

Those are the rules. Let the meaningful conversation begin!

At least one physician pundit displays some common sense.

“Hi, I’m Edwin, and I own firearms!”

Right now, in the shadow of the horrors of the Sandy Hook shooting, it feels as if every gun-owner is on edge.  Some are apologizing, distancing themselves from gun advocacy groups.  Some are saying all the right words, “well, my target gun is locked in a safe.”  Like telling your Baptist Preacher grandpa, “my whisky is in a cabinet and is only for medicinal purposes, of course.”  Some are saying, “well, I like guns, but nobody needs automatic guns that can be sprayed across a room.”

The thing is, we didn’t want to talk about this. We wanted to let people grieve, to try and find solutions to unpredictable events.  The gun control crowd politicized this first. They launched into the predictable tirades against the very people who, after all, didn’t commit the crime.  So we’ve responded.

Read the whole thing.

Gun control is the complementary and alternative medicine of public health policy. It is homeopathy and acupuncture and chelation, and what little positive benefit we see from it is more wishful thinking of the placebo effect than actual results. It never fails to astound me how so many educated, intelligent people who purport to believe in evidence-based medicine can still swallow this snake oil from the hucksters and carnival barkers who peddle it.
 

Physicians advocating social engineering under the guise of public health.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.  ~ C.S. Lewis

And that's all I have to say about that.

I took KatyBeth and her little brother to a movie matinee on Wednesday. As she often does, she asked me, "Why are you carrying your gun to the movies, Daddy? Nobody's going to hurt us in there."

This is why.

12 families lost loved ones. 59 more lie in wait.

Out of respect for the dead, I will say no more. Unlike some, who would dance in the blood of the victims, politicizing the issue to further their own agendas, I will not.

Most of you know where I stand anyway.

We have no way of knowing whether an armed citizen would have limited or escalated the carnage. We simply do not. All I know is that events like this are why *I* carry a weapon, and always will. Follow your own conscience in that regard.

For the next few days, please, let's refrain from speculating and using this tragedy to support our particular political beliefs. Let's just say a prayer for the victims, and another for their families.

We have plenty of time to be assholes to each other in the coming weeks.

Before I got my concealed weapons permit, I open carried for two years. Every day I left the house, I had a pistol strapped to my hip in plain sight.

I carried in Wal Mart.

I carried in restaurants.

I carried at the hardware store.

I carried at many a gun store.

I carried pretty much everywhere I was legally allowed to carry, and I pretty much avoided the places that banned firearms on their premises. They exercised a legal right to ban firearms in their place of business, I exercised mine to take my business elsewhere.

And in all that time, I got asked three times about my weapon. A cop asked me in the checkout line at Wal Mart about whether I knew my 1911 was cocked and locked, and if I felt safe carrying it that way. I smiled and said yes. He shrugged and went on about his business. Another cop looked at my Glock, asked if I liked it, and then gave me some good advice on aftermarket night sights for it.

A clerk at Wal Mart asked me if I was an off-duty cop, and I said, "No, I'm a paramedic."

"They let paramedics carry guns?" she asked incredulously.

"They even let Wal Mart clerks carry guns," I smiled gently. "It's your right as a law-abiding citizen."

Hopefully she left that encounter knowing more about her 2nd Amendment rights. Maybe she didn't learn a darned thing. But at the very least, she saw a man openly carrying a weapon, and didn't see him as a threat. And when I told her I wasn't a cop, she still didn't see me as a threat.

I'll score that a win.

Apparently, there's a big kerfluffle on the 'net over open carry versus concealed carry. It's not a new debate. It's kinda like shingles – embarassing and unsightly the first time they break out, and subject to break out again painfully and without warning, as long as you draw breath. Sometimes, it's some yahoo carrying a shotgun into a public library to make a point, and sometimes it's a professional shooter and firearms guru – *cough* Rob Pincus *cough* – fanning the flames.

Farmgirl and Caleb both posted (agreeing) on the subject: just carry your gun in whatever way you choose, and don't be a dick about it.

To illustrate that point, I'll tell the following story:

Three years ago, coming back from the shooting range at Blogorado, I hit a deer. Seeing my disabled vehicle and an opportunity for blogfodder, my gunblogger compatriots stopped to help me clean and butcher the deer provide vehicular assistance stand around offering pointers, make fun of my skinning technique, and post pictures of my asscrack on the Internet.

By the time the local deputy arrived, there were a dozen heavily armed people standing on the side of the road in the dead of night, laughing uproariously, including one of them (me) who was, I am embarassed to say, simulating a sexual act with part of the carcass.

The deputy, who looked all of fourteen years old, took all this in, shook his head, and started his questioning with the Deer Fornicator. To his credit, he didn't breathalyze any of us, he didn't call for backup, he didn't prone me out on the pavement, he didn't even secure a single weapon from any of us. He just completed his accident report, chuckled at the crazy gunbloggers, and went on about his patrol.

Why?

Because we weren't being dicks about it, that's why.

…let's talk about how I transport people who have threatened – or allegedly threatened – to do harm to themselves to the Emergency Department for psychiatric evaluation.

In my Lines In The Sand post that torqued TJIC enough that he equated me with a Nazi death camp guard, I stated that words have consequences, and that the consequences of threatening to kill yourself may include the cops or EMT's holding you for a psychiatric evaluation against your will. Still, let's talk about how it happens.

When commenter Aaron suggested that I need to find a new line of work that doesn't require me to violate people's civil liberties, I replied that being a paramedic isn't just a line of work for me, it's who I am.

TJIC's rejoinder:

How is this argument not exactly the same one that a member of the religious police in Saudi Arabia would make?

"Worshipping Allah through my work is the most important thing in my life. Don't want me to beat you with a stick? Fine. Just don't speak your theological doubts out loud."

Why, exactly, is your self actualization more important than my liberty?

I see that you still haven't developed any sense of proportion to go along with your lack of manners, TJIC.

Because beating someone with a stick for apostasy is exactly like taking a psych patient to the Emergency Department for evaluation.

Because saying "1 down, 534 to go," is exactly like actually firing a shot at the President, right?

Still, let's talk about how it happens.

I have to have a credible threat, first of all. The patient has to admit to threatening self harm, or a credible witness has to attest to it. That means someone willing to sign an affidavit or otherwise give a sworn statement to police, or identify themselves by name on a 911 tape, etc.

Louisiana law carries substantial criminal penalties for swearing falsely in this regard; up to one year of imprisonment, which may include hard labor, and up to $1,000 in fines. I have seen people charged with this, when their part in the drama play included making false statements to the police.

But if the patient himself says, "Yeah, I said I was going to cut my wrists, but I didn't mean it," we have no way of knowing which part of that statement is false. You don't get to take it back.

Words have consequences. And no, those words have to constitute a credible threat, not something like the example you cited, "If I have to eat one more bite of this leftover soup I'd be better off dead."

There's your absolute lack of proportion again.

Likewise, if I have a specific threat but reported by an anonymous source - "Hey, 911? I just heard somebody shouting at 123 Anywhere Street that they were gonna off themselves by taking all their pills at once." – and I find a patient with slurred speech and lethargy denying they made such a claim, but with an empty vodka bottle and an empty bottle of prescription painkillers nearby that should still have 28 pills in the bottle…

… then yeah, I am going to cart that patient's lethargic ass off to the hospital, no matter what they say. And I'm going to sleep like a baby afterwards. If that makes me a moral coward and a tool of government oppression in your eyes, so be it. Your approval isn't necessary to my sense of self-actualization, either.

The law is messy, and it doesn't always work like it should. There are aspects of it that I am personally uncomfortable with, like transporting cutters to the hospital, for example.

I fully realize that, for some people, cutting themselves is a coping mechanism for stress. It helps them maintain clarity and focus. They are no more suicidal than the rest of us.

To my mind, it's a damned poor coping mechanism and there are plenty of healthier ways than self-mutilation, if for no other reason than to avoid getting taken to the hospital for a psych evaluation because someone who doesn't understand your coping mechanism thinks you're insane.

Still, I don't get to make that decision. A doctor does.

And in this situation, I am acting as a physician extender. In Louisiana, involuntary psychiatric holds can last up to 15 days. The physician usually orders it via a mechanism known as a Physician's Emergency Certificate. When *I* take you to the ED for that evaluation, it's done under that physician's auspices. You must be evaluated by a physician, psychologist, or mental health nurse practitioner within 12 hours to determine if a PEC is warranted. If one isn't warranted, or they don't evaluate you within 12 hours, you get to go free, with nothing more than an ED visit to show for it.

If the cops take you, it's generally under the auspices of the elected parish coroner. The effect is the same: to get you to the hospital for the PEC evaluation.

There are checks and balances, too. If the PEC orders you involuntarily committed – again, for up to 15 days – you are required to be evaluated by the elected parish coroner or designated deputy within 72 hours of admission. If their evaluation does not agree with the physician's, you go free. If the original involuntary commitment came from the coroner, you have 72 hours to be evaluated by a psychiatrist. If his evaluation does not agree with the coroner's, you go free.

So, effectively speaking, the most a sane person is going to be held against their will is 72 hours.

If an additional stay is required beyond those 15 days, you must be evaluated within 72 hours of the end of that 15 day period by the coroner and the psychiatrist, who both must be in agreement to extend the hold for another 15 days.

Beyond 30 days, the bar is set far higher, which brings us to my next subject:

Line 11f of ATF Form 4473 asks:

Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective (which includes a determination by a court. board. commission, or other lawful authority that you are a danger to yourself or to others or are incompetent to manage your own affairs, OR have you ever been committed to a mental institution?

Note the phrases I placed in bold print.

This is NOT the same thing as a temporary psychiatric hold, or even a temporary involuntary commitment.

Note the term "adjudicated mentally defective."

Adjudicated, as in court proceedings. Judges, lawyers, juries and all that. In most cases, it requires more than a hearing before an administrative law judge. That means you get a civil hearing complete with jury, a chance to respond to the petitioner, your own choice of lawyer or a guardian ad litem appointed by the court, and time to prepare a case.

A 72-hour Physician's Emergency Certificate doesn't even come close to meeting that legal standard. In my state, court proceedings are usually required to hold a person beyond 30 days.

The instructions for Form 4473 define "Committed to a Mental Institution" as: 

A formal commitment of a person to mental institution by a court. board, commission. or other lawful authority. The term includes a commitment to a mental institution involuntarily. The term includes commitment for mental defectiveness or mental illness. It also includes commitments for other reasons, such as for drug use. The term does not include a person in mental institution for observation or a voluntary admission to a mental institution.

Louisiana RS 28:53 states:

A.(1)  A mentally ill person or a person suffering from substance abuse may be admitted and detained at a treatment facility for observation, diagnosis, and treatment for a period not to exceed fifteen days under an emergency certificate.

(2)  A person suffering from substance abuse may be detained at a treatment facility for one additional period, not to exceed fifteen days, provided that a second emergency certificate is executed.  A second certificate may be executed only if and when a physician at the treatment facility and any other physician have examined the detained person within seventy-two hours prior to the termination of the initial fifteen day period and certified in writing on the second certificate that the person remains dangerous to himself or others or gravely disabled, and that his condition is likely to improve during the extended period.  The director shall inform the patient of the execution of the second certificate, the length of the extended period, and the specific reasons therefor, and shall also give notice of the same to the patient's nearest relative or other designated responsible party initially notified pursuant to Subsection F.

After that, further detainment at the treatment facility requires that you be adjudicated mentally defective. The Form 4473 instructions go on to state:

A person who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution is not prohibited if: (I) the person was adjudicated or committed by a department or agency of the Federal Government. such as the United States Department of Veteran's Affairs ("VA") (as opposed to a State court, State board, or other lawful State authority); and (2) either: (a) the person's adjudication or commitment for mental incompetency was set-aside or expunged by the adjudicating/committing agency; (h) the person has been fully released or discharged from all mandatory treatment, supervision, or monitoring by the agency; or (e) the person was found by the agency to no longer suffer from the mental health condition that served as the basis of the initial adjudication. Persons who fit this exception should answer "no" to Item 11.f.

So much for the belief that Leviathan can deny you your 2nd Amendment rights if I haul you off for a psych evaluation. I know that those of you who live behind enemy lines in May-Issue Land are subject to the whims and capriciousness of local police chiefs, but out here in Free America, it's pretty cut-and-dried.

If it was only a 72-hour hold, you have nothing to worry about.

If it was only a transport to the ED, and a 72-hour hold was deemed unnecessary, you have nothing to worry about.

If you were committed for even 30 days, and fully discharged with no court-mandated requirement for outpatient care, you have nothing to worry about.

If the court determined that you were crazier than a shithouse rat, and that even though you committed no crime for which you could claim not guilty by reasons of mental defect, that the safety of yourself and society was deemed preserved by locking you up for six months or six years, after which you were deemed competent to manage your own affairs and were set free… you have nothing to worry about.

This is the United States of friggin' America. Even as bad as things are now, we don't just lock people up in the gulag because they're a little odd. If that were the case, TJIC would be writing his little anarchist missives in crayon, snail-mailing them to me and begging me to post them in my comments section.

So don't let the fear of Big Brother confiscating all your guns deter you from seeking mental health counseling, calling a Suicide Hotline, or deter you from calling 911 because you legitimately fear a loved one may harm himself, yet you don't want to see his civil rights trampled on.

The bar is set a lot higher than that.

Seems Uncle Ted, in the midst of throwing a little raw meat to the masses while stumping for Romney at the NRA Annual Meeting, went a little too far with his rhetoric.

At least, in the eyes of some people.

To be honest, I didn't watch a single one of the pundits and politicians in St. Louis. Seemed a waste of time to me.

The pundits did what pundits are supposed to do – and believe me, Ted is more pundit than rocker these days – which is whip up the crowds.

And the politicians did what politicians do, which is tell us what we want to hear, not necessarily the truth. They're going to talk to us differently at the NRA Annual Meeting than they would elsewhere on the campaign trail.

Seems Ted is worried about the slim conservative majority in the Supreme Court, and what the next four years will spell if Obama gets to appoint a couple more judges to his liking.

He also opined that "the government is wiping its ass with the Constitution."

You know, it would be a lot easier to repudiate the man if he weren't right.

I am worried that we'll wind up with a liberal majority on the Supreme Court if Obama is re-elected, a majority if justices who don't believe in the immutability of the Constitution as written.

And I do agree that the government is wiping its ass with the Constitution, except that I lay the blame on both sides of the aisle. The only difference between Republican and Democrat these days is what part of that document they're wiping with.

But it seems that the part of his interview that the hand-wringers deemed most incendiary was Nugent's assertion that if Obama were re-elected, "he'd be dead or in jail within a year."

Yeah, that's a little extreme, but I am reminded of the election and re-election of George W. Bush, where many of those same hand-wringers hysterically vowed to move out of the country rather than endure four years of GWB.

None of those Hollywood types actually moved, and the media promptly forgot those vows.

Methinks they'll try to hang Ted's statements around his and Romney's neck for as long as they can, though.

And while I don't think Ted will be eating his salads from the roots up if Obama gets re-elected, nor playing Cat Scratch Fever to entertain his fellow inmates, if you had told me ten years ago that the government would so encroach on our lives that sane and reasonable people would draw lines in the sand, beyond which violent resistance would be considered…

… I'd have said that you, and those people considering such actions, were crazy.

Now I'm not so sure.

… and nobody gets shot.

No fisticuffs ensue.

Nobody craps on a cop car.

Nobody gets arrested.

Nobody calls for overthrow of the government, other than at the ballot box.

There are no drunken brawls, no ambulances called, no… nothing.

Nothing, that is, except close to 74,000 men, women and children gathered to celebrate the amendment that guarantees their personal freedom.

Anti-gun groups want America to believe that women are not involved in the shooting sports in large numbers. At the America's Center, amid the horde of people winding their way through the exhibit hall, I saw enough women to populate a large shopping mall on the day after Thanksgiving.

I mean, there wasn't a direction you could look without seeing women. Young, old, single or accompanying male companions, pushing strollers – some filled with children, and many filled with gear purchases – women stylishly dressed, women frumpily dressed, women clucking in disapproval at the attire of some of the booth babes, and women dressed scantily enough they could be booth babes…

The media wants America to believe that Second Amendment advocates are a bunch of religious right wing, older white males, and many of them probably racist. And while the faces in the crowd were predominately white, there were black faces as well. I had the pleasure of having dinner a couple of times with Rick Ector, of Legally Armed in Detroit.

Rick is as passionate a Second Amendment advocate as you'll find, and he lives in one of the most violent cities in America. He makes his living by teaching people to be responsible for their own personal safety. He empowers women by giving them the tools and training to face a male attacker on more equal terms. He organizes open carry rallies. He walks the walk.

He also happens to be black., and this white, southern redneck got along with him just fine.

Among the white faces at the hotel bar, there were black faces, wearing ball caps proudly proclaiming their status as veterans – Special Forces, this ship or that battalion – all warmly sharing fellowship with their white counterparts.

Funny, they didn't look ostracized to me. They looked like… us.

There were children galore, most of them accompanying their parents, yet plenty of the older ones roaming the exhibit hall on their own, politely examining the wares of the various vendors. There were cute little girls in Glock caps, clutching their autographed poster of Tori Nonaka every bit as proudly as if it were signed by Hannah Montana or the professional athlete of their choice, and come to think of it, it was. Tori is an elite athlete at the tender age of fifteen.

There was Leadchucker's kid, grinning from ear to ear, holding a Thompson submachine gun. Those of you who fear and do not understand guns may shudder in revulsion, but I see a boy holding a tool, and obviously taught to do so safely.

There was Danno's son, of Sandcastle Scrolls, proudly showing off the challenge coin he got from R. Lee Ermey. He was covering the event as media, even though he's still in junior high school.

I spoke to St. Louis police officers, medics at the hospital where I was filming video yesterday, pub managers, security guards at the America's Center, street vendors and janitors, and the words they used to describe the convention crowd were polite… pleasant… good tippers… easygoing… well-behaved, and well… boring.

And boring, I think, is the highest compliment we can be paid. I'm not sure you realize just how unusual that is. I've done some large event medicine here and there, and to gather so large a group of people in one location is a massive undertaking. Something always happens, even at EMS conventions 1/10 the size of this one.

Yet, at the 2012 NRA Annual Meeting, nothing did.

I think that speaks well of us.

Pub Manager: “i’ve worked convention crowds in this town for ten years now, and I gotta say, you NRA people are the nicest, most pleasant bunch I’ve ever dealt with.”

Ambulance Driver: “Careful now, that doesn’t fit the media perception. We’re supposed to be racist, ignorant rednecks bitterly clinging to guns and religion.”

Pub Manager: “Since when does the media get anything right?”