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Hello from East TN

SovereignAxe

Regular Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
791
Location
Elizabethton, TN
New to the forums and carrying, but not new to guns.

I'm a member of a hunting and fishing association in my area, and my grandfather is an administrative member. It is because of him that I am getting my permit. They hold handgun training classes, which are required to get your HCP in TN. He foot the bill for the class, I just had to pay for the permit (which is outrageous at $115, but at least it's not the expensive to renew).

I finally turned in my paperwork to DMV to get my permit, now I get to play the waiting game because TN is of course not a constitutional carry state. My stance on that issue is divided, but I'll not get into that right now.

le sigh. I had a much larger post that just got accidentally erased except for the autosaved text above. Cliff notes from what got erased:

I have a Walther P99, don't know what holster I want but I'll make a thread in the holster forum for that.

I'm a lefty

I'm a college student 1 semester away from a BA in studio art with a minor in photography, emphasis on photojournalism.

I'm a registered independent, but I call myself a Constitutionalist.

I cringe every time I hear journalists talk about guns, especially when I hear the words "high capacity CLIPS." So yeah, I don't plan on being your typical gun clueless journalist.

One thing I will expand upon from what got erased is my issue with open carry. The way I see it, OC gives up your element of surprise with the BGs. However, what I've gathered from reading this forum is that OC raises 2A awareness, and that the more people seen carrying, the more a would be BG is going to think twice about pulling something for fear of running in to one of us. Is the general consensus here that those two pros outweigh my first con? I've seen that a lot but I haven't seen it debated against my issue about the element of surprise.

With all of that said, I hope to learn a lot here, and to have some good discussions with everyone.
 
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SovereignAxe

Regular Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
791
Location
Elizabethton, TN
I have! Most of it I already know, but it did help clear up a few things, like gunbuster signs.

Like the hospital I work at has them at every entrance, but their wording leaves them open to interpretation. They say no carrying of concealed deadly weapons. Still, I know a couple of the security gaurds (who carry Springfield xD .45s! \m/ \m/ ) who've told me that the policy is no handguns except for LEOs, so I wouldn't press the issue with them.
 

okboomer

Regular Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Oklahoma, USA
Yes, evidently you aren't supposed to shoot the BG, and then provide medical care, you are supposed to let someone else shoot them, wait for them to be delivered to the hospital along with the BG that shot them coming to finish the job, then heal them :banghead: /sarcasm off

Welcome to the forum, c'mon in and set a spell :cool:
 

Tess

Founder's Club Member
Joined
Jun 15, 2006
Messages
3,837
Location
Bryan, TX
<snip>

One thing I will expand upon from what got erased is my issue with open carry. The way I see it, OC gives up your element of surprise with the BGs. However, what I've gathered from reading this forum is that OC raises 2A awareness, and that the more people seen carrying, the more a would be BG is going to think twice about pulling something for fear of running in to one of us. Is the general consensus here that those two pros outweigh my first con? I've seen that a lot but I haven't seen it debated against my issue about the element of surprise.

The other side of that coin, though, is that (in general) BGs are cowards. If they see that potential targets are armed, they will likely think twice about doing whatever they were planning to do. And the open carrier has faster access to the sidearm (minutely faster, but faster nonetheless).

Welcome to OCDO.
 

SovereignAxe

Regular Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
791
Location
Elizabethton, TN
Yes, evidently you aren't supposed to shoot the BG, and then provide medical care, you are supposed to let someone else shoot them, wait for them to be delivered to the hospital along with the BG that shot them coming to finish the job, then heal them :banghead: /sarcasm off

Welcome to the forum, c'mon in and set a spell :cool:

Well, on the one hand I couldn't tell you how well trained the security officers are at identifying friend or foe, or at handling their weapons, and they're generally pretty quick-responding to anything on the 1st and 2nd floors within a few seconds (floors 3-7 are obviously going to require exponentially longer response times). But at the same time, do I really want to put my life in their hands? Well, let's just say that some of them look more capable than others.

Oh I'm not sure if this is what you were getting at, but to settle anyone's fears about being to brought to the hospital as a GSW victim and having the BG come and finish the job, the patient is put under a restriction so that nobody can find out they're here by talking to the hospital, even their own mother, until it's been confirmed that the wound was self-inflicted or the BG is in custody.
 

okboomer

Regular Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
1,164
Location
Oklahoma, USA
Well, on the one hand I couldn't tell you how well trained the security officers are at identifying friend or foe, or at handling their weapons, and they're generally pretty quick-responding to anything on the 1st and 2nd floors within a few seconds (floors 3-7 are obviously going to require exponentially longer response times). But at the same time, do I really want to put my life in their hands? Well, let's just say that some of them look more capable than others.

My guess would be NO, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do ... bet you think about scenarios based on which one responds first :lol:

Oh I'm not sure if this is what you were getting at, but to settle anyone's fears about being to brought to the hospital as a GSW victim and having the BG come and finish the job, the patient is put under a restriction so that nobody can find out they're here by talking to the hospital, even their own mother, until it's been confirmed that the wound was self-inflicted or the BG is in custody.

But can they stop a BG with a gun in their face from walking in and finding the wounded BG, or wife, etc.? I know most metro hospitals have secure doors now, but in my small town, getting through to the ER ward is not difficult ... most of it was just /sarcasm/ anyway (hence the /sarcasm off) :D
 

SovereignAxe

Regular Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
791
Location
Elizabethton, TN
My guess would be NO, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do ... bet you think about scenarios based on which one responds first :lol:



But can they stop a BG with a gun in their face from walking in and finding the wounded BG, or wife, etc.? I know most metro hospitals have secure doors now, but in my small town, getting through to the ER ward is not difficult ... most of it was just /sarcasm/ anyway (hence the /sarcasm off) :D

haha yeah, I know exactly which ones would be first and which ones would be last.

Without revealing too much about how secure our doors are (which anyone that wanted to find out could spend an afternoon walking through them all and learn a lot, but I wont make it easy on anyone), getting into the building itself during the day is easy which should come as no surprise-it's a public place. The ER would be a little tricky, but definitely not impossible.

Honestly, I feel pretty safe in the hospital. If something happens, there's always a place to run-it's so big there are plenty of places to hide. Plus in an emergency there are phones everywhere, or if not, the operators are a cell phone call away, and will have security on-scene in seconds (some of the anyway lol). The one place I feel a little less comfortabe about, and this is something I've discussed with my female coworkers before, is the parking lots. They're lit, somewhat sparsely, but what's worse is that the employee lot is on the back side of the building, so it doesn't get patrolled as often. And right now we're doing contruction that prohibits the ability for anyone to drive from the front of the hospital to the back, and would require anyone, including security, to take a left out the entrance onto a 4 lane state hwy (which has a traffic light), and make another left into the employee lot. If there's anywhere I wish we could carry, it's to and from the parking lot-which legally we can, but we can't check our weapons when we enter and leave the building, so there's no way for us to carry legally.
 
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