"“It’s not a matter of if it can happen here, because it does happen here. It doesn’t require a mass shooter to kill a firefighter. It requires one bullet and one gun,” Chief Carbone said."
I'm surprised it has taken the FD's to start protecting the firefighters.
There was an incident several years ago in upstate New York where a whacko called the FD and then started shooting at them. There have been a few more instances since where first responders have come under fire.
The Chief is right. First responders don't care about anything other than helping those in a bad way, and eventually some whacko is going to start taking them out.
Other than the last sentence (one bullet, one gun), he spoke several times mentioning the act of shooting, or a descriptive of a shooter, not once blaming the need for their new vests on 'guns', but pointing out the criminal use of the gun by someone. Maybe he was saying that to counterpoint the large number of weapons the LV lunatic used, it only takes one shot....
I don't see an agenda here other than safety for first responders.
Being that my wife works in the E.R and has flown with Life Flight, when you call 911 for a medical emergency, the fire department is the first to respond as EMS. Then the ambulance arrives and takes over. My wife has told me HORRIBLE stories about responding to a gunshot victim only to find out the spouse was the shooter and threatened to kill the paramedics if they helped the victim. By the time the police arrive, they barely saved the victim's life. Firefighters are truly the "first responders" so they are the ones walking in to the unknown of a situation.
In 97 my house burned to the ground, total loss. I met several fine people and hold them in the highest esteem. Those that would do them harm are the lowest of the low, this has nothing to do with gun control its a people control.
The problem isn't guns its people, we need to pass more laws to control people. Oh wait pretty sure the laws are already there. Well **** what should we do now? Lets make it look like we are doing something by disarming law abiding citizens, we know it wont help but we will look like we are doing something.
My Daughter and Son-In-Law are both medics. She an EMT, he a Paramedic. My daughter has always worked in the outlying areas of Atlanta. Tony has often worked in the Inner-City of Atlanta at the #1 trauma center, Grady Hospital. He had frequently spoken of having to wait on PD to arrive, or in some cases they had to subdue or even abandon a patient because of threats to them via the use of knives, guns, ball bats, or even just a big burly person. At one instance, he grabbed the child, ran to the ambulance and they evacuated the area and parked to treat the child.
I'm glad that my daughter is now with a different company and only transports patients to and from their treatments. Tony is now a flight medic for an air ambulance service. The only time he has to worry about getting shot at is when they transport to and from some of the South American countries or to the Middle East and Africa. Oh, and sometimes they fly into Chicago.
I mentioned this to my son-in-law and he contradicted the original article that said Polk County was the first to issue vests. When he worked for Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, they had vests. Grady Memorial isn't a city hospital, but it is subsidized by taxes from several metropolitan Atlanta counties. Atlanta began issuing vests in 2008 to their first responders.
Maybe they were referring to Polk County being the first in the area or in Florida, but they apparently weren't first in the nation to make bullet proof vests a standard issue.