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I was doing some thinking the other day (yes, my head still hurts ) after several of my friends had, thankfully, non-injury auto accidents...as a CHL holder, let's say you get into an accident that renders you unconscious, you're packing and concealed on your body (say IWB)...you get the ambulance ride to the hospital, they need to start cutting clothes to gain access to injured areas...and surprise, surprise..."he's packing a GUN!"...etc...is there a protocol at most Texas hospitals to safely/securely deal with your firearm without them freaking out? I'd like to know that if something like this happens to me that once I recover from any injuries that I'd not have to worry about my weapon. Anyone experienced this? How about with a 30.06 posted hospital?

It depends upon the EMS team's or hospital's policy, but most of the time they call the police, who put the weapon into storage.

The police are always at vehicle collision scenes, of course; and most ER's have an off-duty officer working on the side.

If you are injured that badly, the weapon is going to be the least of your concerns.

Whether a hospital is posted 30.06 is completely irrelevant to being brought in on a gurney. You have to violate 30.06 intentionally or negligently.

- Jim

Anyone heard of a Peace officer failing to document and put into storage a fire arm?

Reason I ask is that I had a guy I know who had a fire arm in his vehicle, non CHL holder was changing a tire on a vehicle on the shoulder of the road. He was approached by a Police Officer and during the interview the PO determined that this guy was possible over the legal limit. Was arrested on PI and the officer took inventory of the contents of the vehicle. The gun was not documented and was not turned into the evidence room. Once the guy got out and the gun had not been turned in, he contacted a supervisor that he knew and the gun appeared in the evedince room a few hours later.

Second hand story,.

That kind of thing is not rare. Sometimes tow truck drivers steal from cars that they are towing. Sometimes things "go missing" from evidence rooms. Sometimes police officers are the culprits. Sometimes it's non-LEO employees.

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- Jim

I was doing business in Ozona and hadn't eating anything all day. The meds that I'm taking didn't react to well to my empty stomach and my blood suger drop. I passed out in the middle of the very busy truck stop. Luckly no one noticed my pistol when I passed out, when I came to again they told me that they had called the EMS. A local sheriff showed up just before the EMS I told him that I had a CCP, he asked where my gun wa and I told him he could unholster it and secure it. He held on to the pistol untill I was releaed from the clinic (Very nice guy, he also stayed at the clinic with me). You should have the look on everyones face when the office pulled that gun from my back.

Well, not ON me but close. I was commuting on my motorcycle last fall when a driver pulled out from a side street and nailed me in the side, hitting me in the saddlebag best I can figure. Ended up that my bike got pushed into oncoming traffic and totalled, and I hit the ground and got knocked out and got a concussion. That morning from before the crash even initiated until just after lunch is blank, other than a couple of moments of clarity.

One of those moments was me sitting on the curb and calling my wife to come pick me up and take me the rest of the way to work. My phone is kept in my saddlebag with my gun, the one I got hit in. At the time, I wasn't sharp enough to question how I got my phone. (I was "sharp enough" to argue with the EMS folks that I didn't need to go to the hospital; they eventually won the argument when I passed out again.)

When I came around in the hospital shortly after lunch, the gun was in a bag with the rest of my stuff (clothes, etc.). I think this stuff was given to my wife when she showed up at the crash site. I later noted that the holster showed signs of skidding across the pavement. Thinking back, I guess when the EMS got there, my phone and gun were likely in the middle of the intersection and they picked them up and brought them to me (I guess, since I got the phone) and then gave them to my wife when she showed up. No one at the hospital or involved in any official capacity ever even asked me about the weapon.

I was pretty impressed with their actions, thinking of the situation they had to deal with. Maybe the gun was still lying in in/near the motorcycle wreckage, giving them a pretty good idea that it was mine? When I got to the bike at the police impound yard, the lid of that saddle bag was completely separate from the motorcycle, so I don't think it was contained at all. Especially in addition to consideration of the holster damage.

p.s. Safety gear is worth the effort! Helmet, leather jacket, boots and gloves, and I left the hospital that afternoon with on serious nor permanent injuries.

Levand16 wrote:I was doing business in Ozona and hadn't eating anything all day. The meds that I'm taking didn't react to well to my empty stomach and my blood suger drop. I passed out in the middle of the very busy truck stop. Luckly no one noticed my pistol when I passed out, when I came to again they told me that they had called the EMS. A local sheriff showed up just before the EMS I told him that I had a CCP, he asked where my gun wa and I told him he could unholster it and secure it. He held on to the pistol untill I was releaed from the clinic (Very nice guy, he also stayed at the clinic with me). You should have the look on everyones face when the office pulled that gun from my back.

LOL, great story! Im glad your ok.

I went to my doctor with a complaint about muscle pain in my left arm and shoulder.

The nurse practitioner that interviewed me wrote my description down as "pain in right shoulder radiating down arm and chest" which did not truly describe what I was experiencing.

The next thing I knew I was being loaded into an ambulance with nitro under my tongue and an IV in my arm, to be trasnported to the hospital so they could treat my heart attack.

While I was being prepped for transport I asked one of the EMTs to put my gun in my car for me, so that my wife could retrieve it. The looks on their faces told me that they had probably never transported a CHL who was carrying before, and one even asked "You carried a gun to the docter?" I told them I carry everywhere that is legal and I had reservations about being tansported to the hospital while carrying.

I also had reservations about being transported at all, having objected that as a former EMT myself I doubted that what I felt was muscle strain from working in the yard, and which is the way I described it, was really a heart attack and that I did not need to be transported.

One of the firemen took my gun, after I cleared it, ad locked it in my car for me, locked in the box next to the spare tire per my instructions, and all was good, at least as far as my gun was concerned.

OTOH, the hospital kept me for hours before deciding that I was not having a heart attack and scolding me about it. They even told me that I had described my pain as radiating, which I had not, and that my EKG from the doctor's office was irregular because the leads had not been applied properly, which I was suspicious of, and that everything they saw indicated that my heart was healthy even if I am overweight and have high blood pressure and cholesterol, also things I could, and had been trying to, tell them.

The nurse actually got quite snotty.

I asked the doctor's office to call my wife for me, I didn't have my cell phone with me, it was in my car in a dashboard hands free mount, so they said they would. They called my home phone number, not my wife's work number, and left a voice mail that said "We have just sent your husband to the hospital, he is having a heart attack." No mention of which hospital or anything else, on a message she wouldn't have received for hours.

Luckily the hospital let me call her office while I was being admitted, so she went and retrieved the gun on the way to see me.

We were very chagrined to hear the voice mail after we got home that night.

I fired the doctor.

Jimlongley, always remember, as long as you are "with it" you can decline transport from EMS. If you tell them that you don't want to be transported and they take you anyway, you can legally sue the pants off of them. That said, the Paramedics around here, employed by a private EMS service which is attached to the local hospital, have a way of convincing/scaring people who don't need to go to the ER that they will die if they don't. I hear rumors that the medics get bonus pay if they convince a certain number of patients to go in with them since the hospital doesn't get paid unless the patient rides to the ER!

txfireguy2003 wrote:Jimlongley, always remember, as long as you are "with it" you can decline transport from EMS. If you tell them that you don't want to be transported and they take you anyway, you can legally sue the pants off of them. That said, the Paramedics around here, employed by a private EMS service which is attached to the local hospital, have a way of convincing/scaring people who don't need to go to the ER that they will die if they don't. I hear rumors that the medics get bonus pay if they convince a certain number of patients to go in with them since the hospital doesn't get paid unless the patient rides to the ER!

I objected strenuously from before the time the medics arrived, the doctor and her staff paid no attention, lecturing me about how dangerous it would be for me to let this conditon go untreated and insisting that they were seeing bad things on the EKG. When the EMTs arrived, they hooked me up and ran a strip of their own, which didn't seem to be all that bad, and kind of sloughed off my objections to being transported.

The firemen were nice, but firm, when I suggested that I would rather not be transported. They told me that although their EKG didn't show anything, it may be that conditions have improved slightly, but they may get worse and become a crisis. So off to the hospital we went.

As a former EMT myself, I had a tendency to go along with what they said, even if I disagreed with the doctor and her staff. The department here is paid and has no stake in whether you actually go to the hospital or not.

In retrospect I should have flat refused, but after a while they had me worried.

txfireguy2003 wrote:Jimlongley, always remember, as long as you are "with it" you can decline transport from EMS. If you tell them that you don't want to be transported and they take you anyway, you can legally sue the pants off of them. That said, the Paramedics around here, employed by a private EMS service which is attached to the local hospital, have a way of convincing/scaring people who don't need to go to the ER that they will die if they don't. I hear rumors that the medics get bonus pay if they convince a certain number of patients to go in with them since the hospital doesn't get paid unless the patient rides to the ER!

yea but then theirs always the natasha, whatever her name is,that just died from a slip. --- you just never know

seamusTX wrote:That kind of thing is not rare. Sometimes tow truck drivers steal from cars that they are towing. Sometimes things "go missing" from evidence rooms. Sometimes police officers are the culprits. Sometimes it's non-LEO employees.

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- Jim

their is good and bad people in every field of work -- you have to watch everyone nowdays

Just finished the EMT-Basic course in December. There is certainly a built-in bias in the training towards transporting someone who gives any inkling of having a heart problem (or head injury...or acute abdomen...). No mention was made of garnering more cash for the ambulance service or hospital, but there was some emphasis on a) heart problems sometimes present with minimal or unusual signs, and b) you're much less likely to get sued/criticized for transporting a non-problem patient than leaving someone behind who should have been transported, even he signed a "refused treatment" form. And some people are stubborn about dealing with actual bad signs and symptoms, not least of which are firefighters and EMTs! Having said all that, I have seen our local paramedics recommend non-transport to patients who had similar signs and symptoms to yours, e.g. muscle pain, EKG OK.

The fact that the nurse practitioner screwed up writing down the chief complaint is a major boo-boo tho. That seems to be the root of the problem. All water under the bridge I guess, off you went, checked out OK, and your insurance paid for most of it I hope.

As to the original post topic, I have not run across an armed patient in all the first responder calls I have done as a vollie firefighter, but I doubt that any of us or the local EMS guys and gals would me much perturbed by it. A number of us are shooters as well. We often encounter firearms in residences when we make our runs, but as along as they aren't being pointed at us, no big deal.

ELB wrote:Just finished the EMT-Basic course in December. There is certainly a built-in bias in the training towards transporting someone who gives any inkling of having a heart problem (or head injury...or acute abdomen...). No mention was made of garnering more cash for the ambulance service or hospital, but there was some emphasis on a) heart problems sometimes present with minimal or unusual signs, and b) you're much less likely to get sued/criticized for transporting a non-problem patient than leaving someone behind who should have been transported, even he signed a "refused treatment" form. And some people are stubborn about dealing with actual bad signs and symptoms, not least of which are firefighters and EMTs! Having said all that, I have seen our local paramedics recommend non-transport to patients who had similar signs and symptoms to yours, e.g. muscle pain, EKG OK.

The fact that the nurse practitioner screwed up writing down the chief complaint is a major boo-boo tho. That seems to be the root of the problem. All water under the bridge I guess, off you went, checked out OK, and your insurance paid for most of it I hope.

As to the original post topic, I have not run across an armed patient in all the first responder calls I have done as a vollie firefighter, but I doubt that any of us or the local EMS guys and gals would me much perturbed by it. A number of us are shooters as well. We often encounter firearms in residences when we make our runs, but as along as they aren't being pointed at us, no big deal.

Not to take this off-topic, but where'd you take your EMT-B class? I'm up at BSBEMS taking my emt-b course.

ELB wrote:and your insurance paid for most of it I hope.

I wish, I even considered suing the doctor to recover the part that wasn't covered, but that seemed to be more expensive than just bearing the expense myself. In the end I just called the doctor and told her she was fired, you should have heard the bluster I got back on that.

I have been taking the Allen Fire Department's Citizens Fire Academy recently, I think maybe the next time we have a Q&A with the chief I will ask how many times they have had CHL related issues.