From a reader, GP.

On Saturday, trying to do the right thing led to Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas being put in handcuffs and briefly detained.

The incident happened at the White Deer Rodeo in the town of White Deer about 40 miles from Amarillo, according to the Texas Tribune.

A statement from Jackson’s office said he was attending the rodeo when he was “summoned by someone in the crowd to assist a 15-year-old girl who was having a medical emergency nearby.”

The statement that Jackson, who was a White House doctor for former President Barack Obama, was informed by a relative that the girl needed help in addition to the assistance being provided because “no uniformed EMS providers on the scene at the time.”

“While assessing the patient in a very loud and chaotic environment, confusion developed with law enforcement on the scene and Dr. Jackson was briefly detained and was actually prevented from further assisting the patient,” the statement continued.

“He was immediately released as soon as law enforcement realized that he, as a medical professional, was tending to the young girl’s medical emergency.”

The statement noted said Jackson was “in the stands during the entire rodeo, in full view of the assembled crowd, and was not drinking.”

It sounds like a boilerplate statement from a chief cop concerning a screwup, yes?  Wait.  It gets much worse.

In a Facebook post in which she referred to Jackson as “ER DR” (which he is professionally), Linda Dianne Shouse gave her summation of the incident.

“I have never been more disappointed in our Rescue Team!!! I got called to render aide to my 15 year old cousin that was unresponsive at the White Deer Rodeo tonight!! She is not from here and was seen at the ER last night as she was told for dehydration and anemia!! I assessed her and she was NOT dehydrated! She was responsive to my voice but not aware of her surroundings. Respirations in the 40s. As I assessed her I noticed she looked as tho it was hypoglycemic episode,” she wrote.

“My cousin who is a BSN in a trauma hospital, myself and an ER DR were working on her. Had her responsive to her whereabouts! ER Dr agreed with me that she was seizing due to possible hypoglycemia. Sheriff’s department put a blood pressure monitor on her below her waist. I rose it to heart level and as she is awake and respirations are slowing down I placed a small piece of gum in a ball UNDER her tongue to give her some sugar. (Better than nothing).”

“Deputys screamed at me and not listening to any thing US medical Professionals had to say, they punched me in my chest and forced me back with a palm to my face as well causing me to fall backwards!! ER Dr was thrown to the grown and ARRESTED!!! I am beside myself!! Prayers for Bailey!!!!!” she concluded.

They’re all blessed to be alive.  It’s a wonder the cops didn’t discharge firearms at everyone around them.

You’re never in more danger than when the cops are around, and no situation is so bad that it cannot be made worse by the presence of the police.

Four cases, affecting three potential controls were sent back to the lower courts; AR bans, Standard Capacity Mag bans, and Conceal Carry considerations. All of these cases have countrywide implications.

The video is 8 minutes.

Don’t worry, park staff quickly responded.

An eight-year-old girl was camping with her family at Olympic National Park in Port Angeles, Washington, over the weekend when she was attacked by a cougar, officials said.

The National Park Service said the attack happened at Lake Angeles about 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. The cougar fled the area after the girl’s mother screamed at it, FOX Seattle reported.

Park staff quickly responded to the area and treated the girl for minor injuries. She was transported to a local hospital for further evaluation, the service said. The area was also temporarily closed to the public.

“Due to the extreme nature of this incident, we are closing the Lake Angeles area and several trails in the vicinity,” Olympic National Park Wildlife Biologist Tom Kay said in the release. “Out of an abundance of caution, the Lake Angeles Trail, Heather Park Trail, Switchback Trail, and the entire Klahhane Ridge Trail are closed until further notice.”

Wait for it…

If found, the cougar will be euthanized and removed from the park for a necropsy. Officials said this may provide clues for why the attack occurred since cougars are rarely seen and attacks against humans are rare.

Oh, yes, another rare instance of a wild animal attack. These rare instances sure do happen often.

And via Liberty Park Press.

It has been legal to carry firearms in national parks since 2010, though an advisory from the National Park Service notes, “In areas administered by the National Park Service, an individual can possess a firearm if that individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm and if the possession of the firearm complies with the laws of the state where the park area is located. 54 U.S.C. 104906.”

A supplemental note at the end of the advisory adds, “Visitors should not consider firearms as protection from wildlife.”

Work that one out, ugh.

That’s the good part.  The unfortunate part is that they remanded the case back to district court to determine the scope of relief (to whom this decision applies).

I do like Don Willett’s concurrence.  I’ve followed him for quite a while.  I wish he had been chosen for supreme court rather than Barrett.  Or Kavanaugh.

Watch the entire video.  Here are my initial thoughts.

“It was an honest mistake.”  No, it was honestly a dumbass mistake.  A different state – literally, the officer entered the wrong state into his database.

You’d think that brandishing a firearm at someone and the reckless endangerment that entails would necessitate some personnel error reduction training.  For example, they should be using STAR (Stop, Think, Act, Review), self-checking, independent verification, repeat backs, phenetic alphabet, and a whole host of very simple tools to prevent these sorts of stupid errors.  From wrong tag numbers to wrong-home SWAT raids, the error rate among cops has to be higher than even in the medical or pharmaceutical professions.  As I’ve pointed out before, they could take a page from the books of commercial nuclear power generators and the airline industry.  Imagine if we held cops to the same zero error-rate as FFLs?

Second, that cop who was shouting orders is much too dramatic for me.  He needs to take his finger out of the trigger well and calm down.  It’s not okay to muzzle flag people at the range, but for some reason cops think it’s okay for them to do it to innocent people.

Third, the policy is stupid.  It would had been much more effective if they had simply gone up to the window and knocked on it and asked some questions, perhaps revisited their initial work to come up with the wrong state tag.

Finally, having the people walk backwards on a freeway is about the dumbest thing they could demand. The individuals they’ve stopped have absolutely no way of knowing that they’re correct that the freeway has been shut down. After all, they’ve been stopped for no reason at all by an idiot who entered the wrong state into his database. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. My bet, however, is that a DA would have refused to charge them if someone had been run over because of “qualified immunity,” which as we’ve seen before is an unconstitutional abomination borne out of DAs and the judicial bench protecting their own.

This is just stupidity in action.  Watch as these cops make enemies of people, abandoning any hope of having people talk about “supporting the blue.”  It’s happening all over America as police departments hire the lowest IQ people they can find, and cops abandon the constitution and continue to listen to their dumb police academy trainers.

Here is their contact information.

American Hunter.

What was supposed to be a short walk last fall turned into a lot more. Lost or misdirected depends on which one of us you ask, but either way it was a long slog through a thick swamp. It was below zero earlier that morning in Maine but had warmed up, and I was overdressed. I had pounded through my one bottle of water pretty fast. I had no trouble finding more, but remembered that the stream I was following originated in an active beaver dam. Beavers carry giardia. I’ve had it before and I never want it again. I was very thirsty by the time I got back to the truck and more interested in water than hunting. You can be sure I had a way to make water safe in my backpack the next day.

Hunters have two concerns: camp water and field water. Camp water must be safe to drink, wash dishes, brush your teeth and even make coffee. Hunters in the field also need an easy and lightweight way to make water safe to drink day to day. No water supply, no matter how remote, is safe to drink.

Be cautious about water that guides or other people insist is “safe.” They may have developed an immunity to the impurities in the water.

This is certainly true.  I once worked at a Christian camp in the mountains of S.C., and our water was fed from a spring but stored in a concrete block house that had to be contaminated with various sorts of microorganisms.  Working the entire summer there brought immunity to whatever contaminants were in the water.  By contrast, campers sometimes had stomach illnesses for the first few days of their stay, and sometimes the entire week.

I also passed an AT through-hiker on the trail once and asked him what he does for water.  He said, “When I see water I face-plant in it and drink as much as I can.”  He hadn’t had any problems, and this encounter happened in Virginia.

It’s always best to pre-filter any water to remove the chunks and debris. Coffee filters work great for this. T-shirts are okay, but dirty underwear is a poor choice.

Large debris and turbidity must be removed.

In Camp
• Boiling: Perhaps the best known and easiest way to deal with contaminated water is boiling the water. Boiling will kill bacteria and other disease-causing microorganisms. At high elevations, though, the boiling point of water drops. To be 100 percent sure, boil for at least 10 minutes at sea level and add 10 more minutes for every 1,000 feet of elevation.

• Chemicals: Water purification chemicals are usually either iodine- or chlorine-based. But most are not 100 percent effective against giardia and cryptosporidium. They are best used in conjunction with a filter.

One of the best and least expensive chemicals you can use to purify drinking water is regular, unscented 5 percent to 8.25 percent household bleach. Mix one-half teaspoon of bleach per 5 gallons of clear water. If the water is cloudy, double the bleach. A slightly stronger mix, 1 tablespoon of bleach per 1 gallon of water, is great to disinfect dishes and cooking areas.

Aquatabs tablets are used all over the world to kill off waterborne germs, but they are chlorine-based and alone may not be effective against giardia.

Potable Aqua iodine tablets are the iodine-based treatment. Because iodine tastes awful, the kit comes with two bottles of tablets; the second has ascorbic acid to remove the taste. It’s not a good idea to ingest this much iodine in your water long-term, but for a few days or weeks it’s fine.

• Filters: Filters are the best choice for safe drinking water for hunters. A gravity fed, high-capacity filter will work at making safe water all day if it is tended well. These work well for a camp-based operation where water can be filtered into a large holding tank or a clean 5-gallon jug.

In the Field
The key here is to carry something lightweight and portable in a backpack or pocket to treat the water you find as you hunt. There are three choices:

• Chemicals: The two-part system used by Aquamira Water Treatment Drops uses chlorine dioxide, which is what municipal water systems have used for years. The company says it will kill off giardia and cryptosporidium, making this a good choice for hunters. As with any chemical treatment, it takes time to work. I once used Aquamira Water Treatment Drops while packing out a sheep in the mountains of Yukon. I was thirsty and my companions were impatient, so I drank it too soon, before it had time to act, and wound up with a stomach bug.

• Ultraviolet Purification: Ultraviolet (UV) light works on DNA and prevents microbes from reproducing. (I wonder if we can use it on Congress?) Without reproduction, the microbes become far less dangerous.

Water treated with UV still contains microbes. They remain present in the water, but their means for reproduction are turned off, so the water is safe to drink.

UV works best with clear water so pre-filtering is a good idea. The UV light must be able to penetrate the water. The upside is UV adds nothing to the water for you to ingest. Also, the amount of water it can handle is almost limitless because as long as the unit remains working you will never run out.

Steripen is the best-known company for consumer UV water treatment. I carry one of the company’s rechargeable units in my backpack when hunting as it weighs almost nothing. It’s also a good choice for travel in Third World situations where I sterilize the hotel water before drinking it.

• Filtration: Portable filters are designed for backpackers, hunters and other people on the move. They are relatively light and fit easily in a backpack and are available at most outdoor stores. If you are in a North American wilderness situation or even in most rural locations, water that is filtered is pretty safe to drink.

I have three water filters.  One is a larger pump filter for quantity, the next size down is a Sawyer squeeze, and the smallest one is a Life Straw.

Do the Life Straws actually work?  Yes, they do.

Well it finally happened.  Rossi actually came out with a nice looking rifle, with a pistol style grip, fairly good looking Walnut stock, with at least the appearance of a good fit and finish.  At least that’s what you’d conclude from the picture.

Right now it’s in .30-30.  It might be nice to have for a price point < $1000 (street price will be lower).  I expect it will be “unobtanium” for the time being, but time will tell how they meet demand.

So the next step for Rossi will be to make one of these in Walnut, with the pistol style grip, chambered in .454 Casull.

At Recoil they have a short assessment of the new CZ 712 G3 shotgun.

GunMagWarehouse also has a writeup.  Before pushing this to the web sites, CZ had the sense to send a gun to Target Focused Life for review.  Here is his writeup, and here is his video review.

BLUF: A few nits here and there, but overall a good review of a reasonably priced shotgun.  Gun Dog Magazine also has a review.

He finds some problems and dishonesty.

Americans have a God-given right to make machinery, including machinery that propels a projectile.

If you recall, a federal judge completely vacated the ATF’s frame and receiver rule, and after appeal to the Fifth Circuit to issue a stay on the judge’s decision, the Fifth Circuit told the ATF that they weren’t likely to prevail.  It’s a bit more complicated than that, because there were non-challenged provisions vacated along with the stupid main points of the frame and receiver rule.  But the ATF doesn’t care about that, and neither do the plaintiffs.

Well, the ATF got their panties in a wad over all of that and had a girl-fit, and they have sent this to the Supreme Court.

Here is their paperwork.  Most of it is laughable.  In fact, it’s so stupid that I’m not going to lift prose out of it.  You can read it for yourself.

Let’s rehearse this again.  What the ATF is saying is that they don’t want people to be able to do what the colonialists did back in the days before and preceding the war of independence.  That is, make their own machinery, if said machinery can propel a projectile.

The FedGov wants them all serialized, because guess why?

I’ve said it before.  I consider the entirety of the serialization schema to be immoral and unconstitutional.