With regard to home or personal defense, everyone knows the line: “When seconds matter, help is minutes away.” Such logic is the reason many of us carry daily or keep a firearm bedside. But what about those moments outside the home, perhaps in a remote location? We are indeed our first responder but it remains important to understand the term “first responder” applies to more than just those personnel carrying a sidearm.
A critical situation — when emergency medical services are necessary — can happen anywhere, and it may occur when no threat is present. It could be a rural range, when you and friends are stretching the rifle out to a mile. Or in the backcountry, chasing elk. Accidental discharges — whether user or equipment error — are a scary reality. They happen.
In these moments, that line we can recite like the Pledge of the Allegiance becomes: “When seconds matter, help is hours away.”
OVER 50 YEARS OF TRAUMA AND LIFESAVING EXPERIENCE
Dr. David Acuna, 62, has been a trauma surgeon for 30 years and serves as the Trauma Director at Wesley Medical Center, a Level I trauma center in Wichita, Kansas. A first-generation American with a father from Argentina, Acuna grew up a farmer in Ohio but at a young age became fascinated with the world of trauma and surgery. He trained in the early ’90s in Dayton, Ohio, which, at the time, was the number-one dual-homicide city in the nation (meaning two people died during the incident).
