We need to get our priorities straight

I am a gun owner, hunter and outdoorsman, have an extensive background in emergency services including 38 years as a firefighter/paramedic, and 30 years as a firearm and use of force trainer for police and civilians. As a teacher in these subjects it has always been my goal to help save lives. I have had the good fortune to experience the reactive aspect of being an emergency responder to 911 emergencies, and the preventative aspect of educating people from all walks of life to prevent, avoid, or survive serious injury, or criminal attack.

I find it most interesting how many times I am told that logic dictates that prevention must be the focus, as though there are no other aspects to security. This has occurred in several venues from the classroom, to published commentary, to my time on a school security task force focused on protecting our kids from attack.

Prevention is always a goal. However, even though fire departments have a fire prevention bureau and police departments have their crime prevention units, do they still not also have fire and police stations manned by personnel ready to respond to emergencies? Are they not being logical? Could it be that some in the community are unclear on the concept when they claim that others are bereft of critical thinking skills, i.e., “not using common sense and logic.”

I spent a lifetime in fields where a fellow citizen’s emergency was our everyday routine. Discussion of medical emergencies and other violent encounter emergencies is not some esoteric mental exercise for me. I have seen the results of failure to prepare for an emergency or the failed “tactics” sometimes employed by people, including those that should know better who are charged with the safety of our children. This is not a place for further experimentation with failed ideology, such as gun-free zones. News flash, it doesn’t work. How do we know, besides the obvious body counts? Some of the perpetrators that lived tell us that they picked a gun-free zone because they knew they would not encounter opposition, or that responders would be too late to matter.

I also taught for years a course to police adapted from the Navy called Tactical Combat Casualty Care or TCCC. In the Care Under Fire phase, guess what the priority is for one to be able to render first aid to the wounded? Stop the incoming fire. Shoot the guy(s) shooting at you. This concept applies to an active shooter/killer situation for cops or civilians as well, however offensive to some people’s sensibilities that may be. We are past the prevention phase, killer there now, killing in progress. And some think that a citizen defender, of whatever level of training, may put other people at additional risk of injury? More than the killing taking place now, unimpeded? More than while we wait for a police response, with continued mayhem occurring during their response time? Really, a risk that is statistically far less in fact than what we know the criminal killer is going to do for sure? Seriously, some are more worried about the armed citizen than the crazed killer?

In the medical field we have a term called triage, French for “sorting.” It is a way of prioritizing care in the face of too many bad options. Most know it by the example of a choice of losing a limb to save a life or not rendering care to a critically injured person to save more likely viable patients in a mass casualty event. The medic(s) are charged with making that call.

Triage is also sometimes necessary in non-medical situations like a killer rampaging through a public venue such as a school, place of worship, or the mall. Yes, just like in some police responses, innocents MAY be occasionally wounded and/or killed. If the police officer does not make that triage decision, the killer will continue to kill people, FOR SURE. It is no different with an armed citizen, other than they are there, NOW, just like the perpetrator is there NOW, wreaking their mayhem NOW. SOMEONE must DO SOMETHING NOW to SAVE LIVES.

As far as firearms go, my school motto is, “It is your right to own a firearm, it is your responsibility to use it wisely and safely.” All rights have commensurate duties and responsibilities.

If you are more concerned about an armed citizen than a gunman on a rampage, your priorities are wrong, and this thinking defies logic.

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Robert B. Smith is a Post Falls resident.