The Safety Solutions Academy Podcast Interview Shows are intended to help and bring a new viewpoint to the discussions that SSA typically has regarding personal safety, self-defense and defensive shooting. Today’s guest, Dr. John Edeen, does a great job of that.
Dr. John Edeen, MD is a pediatric orthopedic surgeon currently in practice in Austin, Texas. Dr. Edeen is a veteran of the United States Navy.
John is a hunter, a defensive shooter, a concealed carry permit holder, an NRA Instructor, has dabbled in competitive shooting and is a self proclaimed defensive training junkie.
I met John in NE Ohio when he attended a course hosted by Safety Solutions Academy and we have kept in touch since.
Dr. Edeen is currently serving as the membership director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership and has placed a significant amount of effort in helping to spread the word and the message about DRGO. You can view his media page here.
As a person and as a parent I am relatively attentive to safety. In fact, I would say that I routinely err on the side of personal safety and security in the choices that I make for myself and in my family.
That hasn’t stopped my kids for choosing otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong. My kids aren’t reckless. They are normal healthy, active kids. That means from time to time we have injuries to deal with. Over the past few years between the two of them, we have had 3 fractures to deal with.
Today’s conversation with Dr. Edeen goes beyond guns. We talk about how John got involved in guns, kids and injury prevention, athletic injury, the Second Amendment and the Medical Profession, why hospitals should permit concealed carry, DRGO and much more.
As I reflect back on the interview with John, there are a couple of things that jump out to me:
Visit DRGO.us. Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership is an organization that goes well beyond doctors. It is focused on providing information and expanding the rights of anyone that is involved with the medical profession. That is all of us.
Take a few minutes to consider if there are ways you can help your kids lead a safer life. That trampoline you have? Yeah, you are better off selling it to a pedophile on craigslist than keeping it…
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You can read the transcript of the podcast beginning here:
Paul: Hey folks welcome to the Safety Solutions Academy podcast. My name is Paul Carlson I’m your host and I’m glad that you’re here with me today. If you’re listening to this you probably know that the SSA podcast has been going through kind of a rebirth and today’s a little bit of a special day. Today is going to be our first interview show. I’m going to talk a little bit about the format of the podcast in general at the end of the podcast so stick around if you want to kind of get an overview of what’s going on.
But right now I want to talk a little bit about the guest that I just wrapped up interviewing, his name is Dr John Edeen M.D. He’s a pediatric orthopedic surgeon out of San Antonio Texas and I wanted to talk with Dr. Edeen because quite honestly I had a good bit of contact with orthopedic folks lately. My kids have been doing normal kid things and breaking bones over the past couple of years and John is a fellow that I met through training. He was up here in Cleveland Ohio for some training courses and offered to you know anytime I needed help with the kids to help out and what do you know I needed that help.
So I wanted to talk to him about safety in general with kids and orthopedic injuries. It’s the Safety Solutions Academy podcast were not just about guns right. But the cool thing is Dr. Edeen is also a gun guy. He’s a veteran of the United States Navy, he’s the membership director of the Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership; Drgo.us is the website. So he’s very involved in the firearms community and actually in second amendment rights. And so it really makes him a perfect match for the Safety Solutions Academy podcast.
We talked with Dr Edeen today and we talk about how it is that he got involved in firearms. We talk about the medical industry, the medical profession and its general aversion to firearms and how that’s been challenging for him and what he hopes to do about that both personally and with DRGO.
We talk about injuries to children with relation to sports, with relation to just doing normal things that kids do and what it is you and I as parents might be able to do to help keep our kids safer. It’s a great conversation I really enjoyed it of course that’s also because Dr. Edeen is my friend. You’ll hear me call him just plain old John throughout the interview; not out of disrespect but just out of him being a buddy. And I’m looking forward to him coming back up to Ohio for some training this summer which he has planned.
So sit back and enjoy the interview and remember hangout at the end and I’ll tell you about the whole format of the podcast. Don’t forget to check out safetysolutionsacademy.com; you can find the show notes for this show and all the resources and links that we talked about if you head to safetysolutionsacademy.com/john. Again that’s safetysolutionacademy.com/John. Now enjoy the show.
Well John I really want to thank you for joining me here on the Safety Solutions Academy podcast here today how are you doing?
John: I’m doing great Paul thanks for asking me to participate in your podcast you know I listen to it all the time. I’m glad that you’re getting them a little bit more frequent now and you provide some real good information for everybody.
Paul: Well I appreciate that John and you know you’re appearance here is long overdue. We have been talking about getting on the podcast and doing an interview for almost 9 months now and finally I’ve gotten some legs under me and have gotten in the groove of doing some podcast and so I’m glad to have you on as really the first guest in our interview series that were going to be doing. So it’s kind of a coveted spot John you should feel good.
John: Well it’s nice to be at the head of the line I like it.
Paul: There you go. So Safety Solutions Academy our podcast certainly has a lot of focus on firearms. Firearms are my passion, when it comes to self-defense it’s one of the things I’m most interested in that aspect of self-defense as a lot of folks are. But at the same time we touch on a lot of general safety topics which really makes you a perfect guest to really give a good overview of safety from some standpoint.
And so today were going to talk both about the gun arena and what it is that you’re involved with as far firearms go and we’ll also talk general safely which ties directly into your background as a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. And I’m really looking forward to this chat so. What do you say we start out on the gun side of things, sounds good?
John: Sounds like a plan.
Paul: Alright so how did you originally become involved in guns? I don’t know your background from that standpoint. Maybe you grew up in a gun family or maybe there’s another story. But you know think back on how it is you really got started.
John: Well my background is actually Salvation Army so we didn’t have guns in the home. My parents were Salvation Army officers and I spent most of my time in New Jersey and New York so there weren’t a whole lot of guns in the household. I really got started in guns when I was in the Navy. I did my orthopedic training at the Naval Hospital in Oakland California.
And back in 1992 my racquetball partner and I were playing at a game of racquetball and I hit the ball and turned to wait for his return and I hear this clunk and “Ugh” and he hit the ground and there was no return. I turn around and he’s holding his knee and he had dislocated his kneecap. So he was pretty much out of doing athletic activities so a couple weeks later he invited me to go out to a gun range up in the Oakland hills. And he had I think a Jennings 22 pistol, a Beretta 380 and a tube fed 22 rifle.
So we started shooting regularly he brought his wife out and you know and the three of us went shooting. And then a little thing called the LA riots happened; Rodney King and all that kind of stuff and Oakland was no better. You didn’t see it on the news but there was definitely a lot of upheaval and unrest so I decided it’s time to buy a gun.
After that I actually was transferred to Jacksonville Florida and I picked up a I think a Sig P220 and I think a Remington 7400 semi auto rifle and you know a mini 14 and a bunch of other things. But you know that was the start.
Paul: It sounds like from the start handguns were your primary focus and you know that makes a lot of sense from the self-defense standpoint is that how things stayed for a while until you know you got the 7400?
John: Yeah well I bought the 7400 this was kind of during the assault weapons ban and all that kind of stuff too so you just couldn’t go out and buy an AR. So that was a reasonable substitute it was certainly a potent calibre and can be, in fact I’ve taken down deer with that rifle subsequent to that. So that’s actually a very nice deer hunting rifle and I’ve used that in deer hunting.
And I probably really didn’t get my first AR till probably five or six years ago. So yeah it’s mostly been handguns. I do shot gunning as well I like bird hunting and things like that. I’ve been known to shoot a duck, a quail, a pheasant and a few other things, geese.
Paul: And then do you put them inside each other and cook them after you shoot them…..?
John: Yeah, yeah that’s just too hard.
Paul: That’s interesting a couple commonalities there you know especially the upland bird hunting that’s actually how I got started in guns. I didn’t get started from a self-defense standpoint mine was completely helping out an uncle who needed someone to tag along on a hunting trip that was actually a sales meeting and I needed to entertain a client’s son. You know so upland bird hunting is just a fun thing.
Something interesting that you’re bringing up here John, there’s a couple of interesting things obviously being a physician and being involved in guns is probably not necessarily the most common thing but also at the same time you are someone that was in California so in the 90s what was it like with handguns and such in the state of California from a self-defense standpoint did you have the ability at all to carry that gun or was it home defense only? How did that work out?
John: Yeah it was home defense only at that point in time. I didn’t even try it, I wasn’t even aware of the concealed carry movement in those days and so I just had it for home defense and also just to shoot you know to get some marksmanship training. And I didn’t really get into the concealed carry stuff till I got here in Texas.
Paul: Which makes sense.
John: Yeah but I wasn’t even aware of the gun law issue in the 90s. It probably wasn’t quite as restrictive as it is now. I mean there’s been a lot of laws passed in California which have made things much more restrictive and they’re trying to pass even more now as we speak.
Paul: Yeah it’s a frustrating situation that’s for sure. You mentioned the list of guns including a Jennings as being the first gun that you headed out to the range with and that makes me think that you probably got pretty good at dealing with malfunctions early on. You know there are all kind of things that are amazing and fun and enjoyable about guns and there are some things that are frustrating. Can you think of a time, and kind of take us back and tell us a story in a frustrating situation with firearms that you’ve had. Maybe its rights related maybe it’s you know a purchase you made.
John: I mean there’s lots of frustrating things about firearms but I think one of the most frustrating things was I do Appleseed. And I was doing the qualification test and for those who aren’t familiar with Appleseed it’s a combination of American Revolutionary war history and rifle marksmanship using just the G.I. sling and your body position only.
There’s no sandbags or tripods or anything like that and you’re shooting at 25 meters at these targets which are shrunk down to simulate 100, 200, 300 and 400 meter shooting and this qualification test is actually not easy you have to shoot a 210 out of 250 possible points in order to get your rifleman patch. And I was shooting well I felt good I felt like my shots were going right where wanted them to go and my follow-through was good and I was calling my shots and all my shots are hitting the bottom of the paper.
And I’m going what the heck is going on and I finally figured out that my scope mouth had loosened and so you know it was very frustrating. And then the next time I did an Appleseed I shot a 201 and you needed the 210 so those are frustrations but they’re good kind of frustrations.
Paul: Have you been back to an Appleseed since and you know gotten your qualification that you were after?
John: Not yet, in fact the range that we shoot at is having some legal issues with a neighbor right now so we haven’t had any Appleseed’s in Fredericksburg which is about a 45 minute drive from San Antonio but I’ll get it don’t worry. If there’s one thing I am its persistent and I will certainly do what it takes to get there.
Paul: When you shoot Appleseed what are you choosing to use for your rifle?
John: I use a 1022 rifle that has a 4X scope on it and I have a custom stock because using an optic you need a elevated cheek piece in order to get your eye, especially when you’re shooting prone you have to be able to get your eye right behind the crosshairs. And they teach you how to stabilize the stock using the G.I. sling and you can do it like a biceps loop and then it hooks into the front of the gun and you loop your arm into it and it’s a very stable triangular shape and so you can really get pretty good and they teach you about natural point of aim, and trigger control and all that kind of good stuff. They teach you about how to sight your rifle in and so really it’s an excellent, excellent, excellent instruction and the best thing about it, for a weekend it’s like sixty dollars.
Paul: Yeah, it’s a fabulous program.
John: It’s excellent
Paul: and I’ve not yet taken the time to participate and that’s been an error on my part. I’m really looking forward to getting involved in an Appleseed program some place in the Midwest because I’ve heard such amazing things about it from so many people and I really would like to jump in there.
John: And the best part about it is it’s an all volunteer organization so nobody is getting any money. All these guys are passionate about it, you get hooked, it’s like a drug, it’s very addictive and you could use very simple semi-automatic 22 calibre rifles. The 1022 is ideal, to upgrade it with a peep sight and there are commercially available peep sight that you can put on, makes it a little bit better because it’s more adjustable, so you can adjust your point of impact to your point of aim, and a simple GI sight cost twelve dollars. So you could use a standard off the shelf rifle, add some sights to it and get the GI sling and you’re good to go.
Paul: So you’re really saying that for under $350 if you don’t have to travel, you can spend the weekend learning some good rifling skills.
John: Oh absolutely.
Paul: That’s sound pretty cool. That’s something I need to get involved in, maybe I’ll give it another year and get one of my daughters involved too. That’s pretty awesome.
John: They’ll have a great time. They especially recognize the children which I think is important because it’s got to be generational, it just can’t die out with my generation, or your generation, we have to keep it going.
Paul: Yeah, and that’s one of the problems that I see in the fire arms industry. For instance, I’m a member of a club here in the area which is great, I love the club, it’s fabulous, but they have a rule where I can bring a guest one time in that guest’s life, and so, it makes it almost impossible for me to bring folks out and introduce them to shooting. I have to get board member permission and it’s really a situation that I think is short sighted.
They’re concerned about litigation, they are worried someone is going to have an accident or make a mistake that’s going to close down the club, and what they are doing in that short sightedness is closing down the club, because well there’s fewer and fewer people interested all the time and we’ve really got to reach out to those folks so it’s great to hear that Appleseed is doing those kind of things.
So you know we’ve kind of move into the next area I wanted to talk about which is the great part of guns obviously Appleseed has a lot going for it what is it that you think of as your most exciting or most energetic or most thrilling time with firearms on the positive side as oppose to those frustrations?
John: Well I think it was probably the first time I shot a large animal, I shot a deer, and it was back in December of 2003. I was at a very good friend of mine’s ranch down in Pearsol Texas which is about an hour drive South of San Antonio. It’s like a 14,000 acre of beautiful ranch; wild, and he doesn’t believe in the putting out the feeder in blind. We stalk, we walk, we sit, we rattle, and we’re sitting there, after hunting for a good chunk of the morning, and we see this buck, thirteen point buck chasing these does.
So we sat down by a tree and we started rattling, and sure enough that guy came back, and so I put a back pack on the ground, roll over slowly, got my sight pictures, squeezed off a shot and dropped him right there in his tracks. An of course, you know you get that buck fever and the shake and all that kind of stuff. It was kind of a good thing because 10 yards behind him there’s was this 20 foot drop off down to a dry creek bed. So we didn’t have to drag him out of that. It was good and that was the same day they captured Saddam Hussein too, that was a very memorable day in many ways so that I mean that was a lot of good stuff.
There are so many good things with firearms though, I mean, taking a qualification test and passing it, and you know after working for four days to accomplish what you need to accomplish, those kind of things are all really good.
Paul: Even just the learning that goes into setting up a firearm for a specific purpose, whether it’s that gun you’re getting ready to take on the hunt or getting ready to use for a competition, it can be just a really satisfying learning experience as you have to dive into those new things and then to accomplish something like, taking a quality animal with a gun, that’s a great feeling no doubt about it. No doubt about it.
You brought up hunting, you obviously got into guns, you mentioned self defense, so you’re approaching shooting from multi facets. You know there are a lot of folks that approaching from just one direction. If you have to classify yourself as a kind of a shooter, you’re either a hunter, you’re a self defense shooter, or you’re a competition shooter, where would you most associate yourself?
John: Well yeah, I’ve done some hunting and I certainly enjoy birds and public game and I’ve even done a little competition stuff. I’ve done a 3 gun which was a lot of fun it’s just that it’s too time consuming for me, I just can’t do the preparation it takes. I really consider myself self-defense and frankly I think I’m a trainee junkie more than anything else.
I didn’t even really start getting any formal training until about 2005, a good friend of mine that lives about a block from here has a ranch about a hundred miles out and he invited me to come to his ranch and participate in a training class that he had set up and he got a former special forces guy and a Texas depart of public safety, state troopers, SWAAT guy as instructors, so I bought my Sig 22045 and I had a couple of extra magazine and another friend who lives across the street from me, I lent him a gun and my holster and we went and took the class and as a bonus he bought a CHL instructor.
So I learn how to hold a gun, I learn all those basic principles that really, unless you get instructions you really never learn. You really don’t, you can’t fix yourself, you need somebody to look at you and help you figure out what you’re doing wrong and to fix it. My shooting improved dramatically after that instruction and I also got my concealed handgun license, and although I didn’t carry very much in those days I still have the ability to do so, so I thought that was pretty good.
But then about 2010 I went out to Front Sight and took their four day pistol course and I again it was an another eye opening experience, it was even more of what I got with these other guys, and I think I did pretty well. I went out by myself, I didn’t have anybody with me I just said I’m just said I’m going to try this. I’m just going to jump in with both feet and see how it goes. The next year I went out and did their rifle course, and I brought my niece’s husband with me, who’s a really good gun guy, he lives out in Washington State and we met in Las Vegas and we had a great time and again we learn a lot of very good stuff.
Again I went back out and did the four days pistol course, and I got distinguished graduate and I’ve done combat focus shooting, advanced pistol handling with Rob Pinkest. I did a low light no light class with Ben Brand and Bob Maine. That’s when I met those guys and we were shooting in the dark with flash flights, and that was another eye opening experience. You don’t really realize the importance of having light to; a) to identify your target but b) You got to practice with that thing because if you have too bright of a flashlight, that light comes off your sights and you can’t see. So you have to figure out how to hold the light so you can actually see your sights and see the target and not get blinded by the thing.
Paul: It’s an interesting challenge isn’t it?
John: Yeah, it is. But unless you take a class and do it and figure out how it is done and find different ways of doing it, when the time comes and you pull your flashlight out and you’re getting blinded by the back splash on your light, that’s not a good time to find that out.
Paul: So would you say that’s the biggest advantage of taking training courses, is the fact that you’re put into the circumstances that you might not normally put yourself into, and forced to learn things that you might not have otherwise learned?
John: Absolutely, you know, Tom Gresham says you know, I never thought of that. You know a lot of people go through some of his scenarios, the most common thing they say is I’ve never thought of that. If you take training, somebody else has already thought of this trust me, and you learn from their experience. I like to say, a smart person learns from other people mistakes.
Paul: Right. Right.
John: I don’t want to have to invent all the things, I do surgery that other people have already invented. Sometimes you have to modify things to fit what you have, but there are specific techniques used in doing surgery. It’s the same thing with firearms, there are specific techniques you need to know how to do that are the most efficient and effective way of defending yourself.
Paul: I think those are two really good comparisons too because the stakes are in many ways equal when we’re talking about self defense with firearms and we’re talking about you doing a medical surgery. I think that’s a really important conclusion to draw is that if we have things that we know work, we may want to modify those things but we want to use those things, that means we actually need to learn what it is that other people have done before because those lesson that we’re learning they weren’t learned the easy way like we’re learning in the class necessarily.
John: Exactly, you don’t want to have to pay the price. Believe me, my patients don’t want me learning on their children, okay, or their parents. They want me to be an accomplished, skilled surgeon not a rookie who’s trying to sort it out, and figure it out by trial and error.
Paul: None of us want be to learning in the middle of a self defense situation either. You know humans do do a good job of improvising but why improvise when there is such a huge body of knowledge out there. When I look at it from a business owner stand point, one of my goals is to fail as often as I can in my business, which may sound odd to people. I don’t want to fail necessarily. However, when I fail I learn something from that and I can then go back and revise and do it right the next time. That’s because it’s a business, it doesn’t have a pulse, it doesn’t have a family that’s depending on it, it doesn’t have parents that love it, it’s just a piece of paper filed with the state. That’s the big difference we can’t learn through our own failures and survive very long and self defense it’s a big key.
John: Yeah
Paul: Well as we think about that you know we’ve kind of dove into the idea of back into the medical realm and obviously as Dr. John Edeen M.D. being an orthopedic surgeon is a big part of your life. You dedicated a tremendous amount of time to make that happen and yet at the same time you’re a firearms enthusiast and those two roles probably have some let’s call it collisions or some disagreements or they just don’t seem to get along very well. What’s been the biggest issue for you as a medical professional and a firearms enthusiast?
John: Well yeah you’re right. There are some segments of the medical community that are decidedly anti-Second Amendment. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association even the American College of Surgeons has an anti-gun bent to it. But the biggest thing that frustrates me I think is trying to deal with the gun free zone issue. That’s really why I got into this thing, you know once I decided to conceal carry and to take responsibility for my own security I run into this stupid sign every time I walk into a hospital that says take your gun off and leave it somewhere else and we’ll protect you with this sign.
And so I started to try to get things changed and I found that that was a very difficult proposition. In 2013 I actually tried to get a resolution passed through our County Medical Society; I’m on their emergency preparedness committee.
Paul: Okay.
John: And I got voted down 22-2. I mean it’s unbelievable that they don’t understand that you know a plastic sign doesn’t provide security. And then I even walked around with a petition in 2014 and I talked with hundreds of employees; nurses, technicians, other doctors, EMTs that were coming through and talking about maybe what do you think about trying to set up a program where we allow some of our concealed license holder employees to carry while they’re working in case there is you know a active shooter type scenario. Because you know that the security guards don’t carry guns they carry tasers and if there is an armed person they’re down in the emergency room nine stories and two blocks away.
Paul: Right.
John: You know that’s not going to work either. And I got almost 500 signatures before the CEO of the hospital called me up and said you know well you’re violating our hospital’s anti-solicitation policy which is just an excuse for saying stop.
Paul: Right.
John: You know or we’re going to make your life hard. Well you know I have to make a living at that hospital and I certainly don’t want to have an adversarial relationship with the administration of the hospital because I really do want to work with them to get this thing done.
Paul: Sure yeah, you know there’s a point where being an adversary stops being beneficial and sometimes folks have a hard time understanding that and those are the folks that are collecting unemployment and if you really want to get things changed you have to find some ways to work together.
You know there are so many different ways that I can go with this conversation. I guess I want to start out with kind of going back to that rift between the gun community and the physicians in general. Not all physicians by any stretch. Why is that there? What is the driving factor in the medical profession not understanding firearms?
John: I think part of it is ignorance that they don’t understand that they’re subject to the same stuff on TV that we are and many of them live in the ivory tower in these academic medical centers. And you’re dealing with academia that tends to be politically liberal to start with. And we have lots of folks who are in the gun community in the medical profession, believe me there’s a lot of very realistic people.
They tend to be among the surgical specialist I think that’s a mindset. It’s also surgeons are more action oriented, they do things whereas the neurologist just think about a lot of stuff and occasionally can do something but most of the time they’re really not able to do much of anything they just postulate as to what’s going on.
Paul: Well there go all my neurology doc listeners thanks Dr. Edeen.
John: But I’m just saying as an example.
Paul: Yeah I know, I know exactly what you mean.
John: I mean they’re not hands-on.
Paul: I really like the way that you kind of segmented that out. I don’t know the statistics of you know what segments of the medical profession are more likely to be firearms people. But I think about the sign that says hey don’t carry a gun in here you’re protected by this piece of plastic. I don’t think there are any surgeons out there that have a plastic sign over their patient over there dislocated patella or whatever they’re working on that day and wave the sign thinking that that’s going to fix the problem of the broken body.
John: Yeah it doesn’t.
Paul: And that’s the same mentality.
John: Yeah, I think the people that work in ER also see this very up close and personal.
Paul: For a different reason though right?
John: Yeah I mean they see it, they see the results.
Paul: Right.
John: And surprisingly a lot of those guys are actually on our side because they realize that you know the tool in the wrong hand causes carnage, the tool in the right hand stops the carnage.
Paul: Right.
John: And so several of our writers and doctors for responsible gun ownership are actually ER doctors. And they have a lot of experience and they’ve written….We’ve got neurosurgeons, we’ve got people who do you know all kinds of different things that… We have a psychiatrist that writes for us. That’s very important because of the politics of the guns control people are trying to disqualify people who have the slightest psychiatric thing going on. They’re trying to take away their rights when they’re not dangerous. They have a problem but it’s not you know a dangerous problem.
Paul: That’s one of the things I worry about our community itself driving towards. I mean I understand that mental illness and firearms can be a problem but where is that line drawn and who is drawing that line. That’s a really big issue that we need to be very careful about.
John: That line needs to be drawn between the psychiatrist and the courts. It cannot be some bureaucrat….
Paul: Right.
John: Saying if you saw a psychiatrist you’re no longer eligible to possess a firearm…
Paul: And there are some…
John: That guy had his rights just taken away without due process. And this is still a country where due process is very important and you have to be able to be allowed to defend yourself against having your rights taken away. Because if they get taken away you’re going to have a really hard time and it’s going to be very expensive to get them back.
Paul: And I think it’s also important to note that people that have struggles whether those are physical struggles, whether they’re emotional struggles, whether they’re psychiatric struggles those people are much more likely to be victims than someone that’s not facing those same struggles.
John: That’s true.
Paul: So now not only have you taken away a right without due process but you’ve taken it away from someone that may be more likely to need to defend themselves than the average person. And again you know I’m not a professional I can’t make this judgment. I think you’re right on the money in saying that the person, the doctors, and the courts need to work together to figure out what the right solution is on an individual basis.
We can’t have a blanket law that says if you’ve ever been prescribed medication X or if you’ve ever visited this kind of a Doc you’re done. That’s not what we want.
John: No we can’t have that that’s not what this country was founded on and we have to back and look at you know the founding documents and we see that you know our founders were very wise when they put the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights because it’s what backs up all the other amendments and keeps them from being trampled on by a tyrannical government.
Paul: People forget that, they forget why it’s there. You know it’s not about hunting it’s about exactly what you just said a tyrannical government. It’s interesting you know you mentioned a little bit ago Dr Edeen you talked about the security guards being in the emergency room. You know that sign is there on the way into the emergency room where the security guards there? I mean, let’s talk a little bit about threats that hospitals face. Why should a hospital be a carry zone as opposed to a criminal empowerment zone?
John: Victim disarmament zone or whatever you want to call it. Well first of all emergency rooms are very high stress areas. There’s people with acute either medical or trauma or surgical illness. You know in the big cities in the major trauma centers the gang bangers who are having a war out on the streets they end up in the emergency rooms and sometimes the other gang comes right on in behind them and the next thing you know you got a gun battle going on in the emergency room.
Health care professionals have a very high rate of on-the-job injury because of people when they’re at their worst their controls go away. I can’t tell you the number of recovery room nurses that are either accidentally or just the kid doesn’t understand; they get hit by a teenager waking up from anesthesia.
It’s dangerous you know and then you have people who are under extreme stress and they’re having the worst day of their life and they’re injured or their sick and they have social issues with their family members. And you know you see all the drama that can happen in life well that happens in hospitals to.
And it just doesn’t happen in the emergency room it happens up on the floor. You have a child that’s in the hospital with an injury or whatever; the parents are divorced you’ve got bio mom and dad-in-law and you have bio dad and mom-in-law and they’re all interacting and sometimes they don’t get along and stuff can happen. It can get pretty hairy sometimes.
When they call the security guys and they have a taser that’s great but what if one of those guys is carrying a gun and decides you know what I’m tired this I’m taking my kid and I’m getting out of here and I don’t care who’s getting in my way.
Paul: How can they possibly be carrying a gun because there’s a sign by the door?
John: Yeah that’s right and there’s no metal detectors either. Surprise surprise it’s not like it’s an airport where everybody gets screened. The hospital that I work in covers a huge city block and its 10 stories high. I don’t know how many, it must have at least a dozen different entrances
Paul: Right.
John: How are you going to secure that type of structure?
Paul: Right.
John: And that’s against regular crime. At Gun Rights Policy conference this year I talked about the terrorist threats against hospitals. So you really want to pull your hair out start thinking about somebody who’s actually planning on attack on a hospital and what kind of damage they can do. So there’s all kinds of things that you know a hospitals is a soft target. They’re ripe for either a criminal attack or even a terrorist attack especially in this day and age you know. ISIS out there and they’re vowing to come here. All the stuff that we just saw in Europe, that’s all practice for what’s going to happen in this country.
Paul: Yeah it’s really kind of sobering in a lot of ways and I don’t think it’s a reason to stop living life and lock yourself up in your home but it is a reason to really start to take your own safety seriously and the issue that I have with these areas where people are prohibited from carrying guns is it means that someone else is responsible for your safety and that’s just not acceptable.
You brought up airports and I recently was on a trip and I flew and of course I took my firearms with me and when I arrived at my destination I had had my bag secondarily screened. My suitcase of course it was locked they needed a key from me. When they returned the key to me I double checked to make sure everything was taken care of. Did you lock that bag sure no problem.
I get to the destination the bag was unlocked. You know two hand guns….. So these are our security “professionals” that are supposed to protect us and they’re not bad people they just make mistakes. We need to be able to be responsible for our own security and that goes with hospitals as well.
We need to be able to take care of ourselves and I think that’s an important thing. And the terrorist threat against hospitals; I mean what major hospital doesn’t have a nuclear medicine section of the hospital.
John: Absolutely.
Paul: You know that’s a concern to me.
John: And there is a history you know in 1995 there was a Chechen takeover of a hospital in a town called. When the terrorist left they took the radiation core of an x-ray machine with them and after that threatened to use it does a dirty bomb. They never used it fortunately but they use the threat against Russia as a dirty bomb. So these guys….this is all a playbook, this is nothing new this is stuff that they’ve already thought of.
Paul: Yeah, it’s interesting stuff. So if we kind of boiled down what it is that we’ve been talking about for the past few minutes it sounds to me like one of the missions you see for DRGO is the removal of prohibitions against concealed carry in hospitals. Would that be a fair statement?
John: That’s part of it?
Paul: What else?
John: We look at a lot of things that come out of the Bloomberg School of Public Health and we take that apart and rip it apart and make commentary on it and show you know it’s kind of like what John Lot does with some of the studies. We do our own stuff with that as well, but we make comments on stuff that’s out there in the medical literature and stuff that comes out stating medical reasons for doing this and it’s all based on old debunked studies that were revised.
I know Dr. Wheeler back in the 90s testified in front of Congress to defund the CDC because they were doing biased research that the conclusions were already made before they….
Paul: Right.
John: Did any research and so that’s why there’s still that funding issue with the CDC because he got defunded back in those days and they’re not allowed to do you know advocacy research when it comes to Second Amendment studies. They can do legitimate research those are funded but if they’re doing biased advocacy research it’s not funded and it didn’t affect.
Paul: What a shame to think that there are folks out there that are literally sitting around and thinking about well what study can we conduct to get this result.
John: Oh and they chop years out and they select very….they’ll take very narrow windows and they know if they start the study in 2000 instead of 1990 they’ll get a completely different result so there do their study for 2000 rather than from 1990. And so they massage….they use selection bias to get the results that they want.
Paul: It sounds like sports stats to me you know if so and so if the best receivers on Monday night while wearing red shoes then this is really a great game for him. You know you can make up a stat for anything you want if you just massage things the way that they need to be massaged.
John: Well that’s all they do biased research that’s how these guys get away with this stuff. The one where they tell you that you’re more likely to be killed with a gun in your home than if you didn’t have one is that type of research.
Paul: Right right.
John: Well what they did is they took all the shootings in a home in the inner-city and then they extrapolated back from that to make their argument. But that’s not a representation of the population.
Paul: Right.
John: Inner-city shootings are gang bangers and you know of course you’re going to be very likely to be shot if you live in a gang bangers home.
Paul: Right absolutely. We know the old trick of lumping in suicides with gun accidents and all those kinds of things and it’s unfortunate that that kind of stuff gets manipulated. So it sounds like DRGO has a lot going on and I know that your website is DRGO .us and when folks head there they’re not just going to find out information that’s specific for physicians I think you’ve got some other resources there that would be really helpful for the average person. Can you go through a couple of those for us John?
John: Sure one of the common things that people ask us is what do you do when your doctor asks you if you have guns in your home. So you’re at your pediatrician’s office and there’s actually an article that Dr. Tim Wheeler wrote that explains exactly what you need to do. There is something that we call a boundary violation which is when somebody is using their position as a physician to do something like push a political agenda. And that’s violating the physician patient trust relationship. Most physicians are not educated in gun handling and gun safety like you and I are for instance.
Paul: Right.
John: You know I’m an NRA instructor I’ve actually went out and got education and being a training junkie I’ve taken lots and lots of courses I have hundreds of hours of gun training. In medical school you have zero gun training right we never had a course in that. Trust me I went to a good medical school and residency. I did a military residency we didn’t talk about gun safety we went out to the range one time and to qualify with a 45 that’s about as close as we ever got; nobody really ever talked to us about gun safety.
So you know if you want to talk about gun safety it’s nonexistent in the medical community in education. So these people are essentially practicing outside of their scope of practice. That would be like me giving you advice on how to fix your engine of your car. I have no business telling you how to fix your engine of your car okay it’s the same thing, way outside.
Paul: It’s really an interesting point and it almost is to the extreme that the doctor or the physicians or the organizations that represent physicians are taking advantage of created guru status. People look up to physicians as very educated and intelligent people and often times they look to them in the areas where they’re simply ignorant.
And I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way I use the word ignorant a lot, but if you don’t know something you’re ignorant. And I think that’s part of what’s being played on when the anti gun argument is made by these organizations that represent physicians. Is they are appealing to people’s belief in the knowledge of the M.D.
John: And I would ask people to ask their physicians this question; so does your malpractice carrier know that you’re practicing outside of your scope of practice? And so if I’m harmed by your advice and I sue you are you going to be covered? Good question. So you know there are ways of turning the tables on these people. You know they’ve been handed a bill of goods by their societies
Paul: Sure.
John: And a lot of them it falls in their political wheel house you know so they’re more than welcome to go along with it. But what they don’t realize that the advice they give does have potential negative repercussions. They don’t realize that you know how many people a day are saved by the firearm that they possess in their home.
Paul: Right Right.
John: From a break-in or you know carjacking or whatever you know. These things they don’t hear the statistics on those because they’re hard to document.
Paul: Yeah it’s an interesting conundrum that we get into in that situation there’s no doubt about it and you know I think a lot of doctors are probably facing the situation that they’re part of a much larger organization. Here in Northeast Ohio Cleveland clinic is a huge medical entity and the policy of Cleveland clinic is driving a lot of what it is that Docs do. And Cleveland clinic is driving a lot of what’s going on nationwide in a lot of ways.
John: Right and they have a lot of very good people doing very good work….
Paul: Absolutely.
John: So you know as long as they’re practicing within the scope of the practice you’re going to be just fine with the Cleveland clinic. My former partner trained at the Cleveland clinic so I can tell you that he was very well trained he’s a smart guy he just retired this past year but you know…
Paul: And you’re smart enough to move to Texas….
John: Yeah.
Paul: Much better whether there.
John: Yeah you don’t have to freeze your you know….Anyway….
Paul: I’m with you I’m with you. So let’s transition into an area that I want to know a little bit more about personally. You and I you know we met in person at the training course and you gave me your personal information and we corresponded and then the x-rays started to show up. You know my kids I don’t know what the deal is John they are…I guess they’re just active and they have fun and…..
John: They’re normal …
Paul: Yeah they’re ending up in the E.R.
John: They’re normal kids. My office is full of normal kids every day. And I see forty something kids a day in my office and at least two thirds of them are due to injury.
Paul: So I’m not doing it horribly wrong is what you’re telling me which is….
John: And you’re daughters have very common injuries and that’s nothing horrible fortunately.
Paul: That’s good so let’s talk about common injuries. When you see physical injuries to kids as a pediatric orthopedic surgeon what is it that you see?
John: Well you know we see a lot of kids who get fractures due to falls.
Paul: Okay
John: That’s very common; we see them in toddlers we see them all the way up into the teenagers. We see a lot of kids with playground injuries, kids falling off the monkey bars. I can tell you that you know half the time a kid comes in with a (inaudible 00:42:47) fracture of the humerus; you know a fracture just above the elbow
Paul: Okay.
John: Half of them they fell off the monkey bars and they broke their elbow. We see kids with bicycle crashes. Last week I fixed a medial condyle fracture. A 13-year-old kid crashed his bike and broke the inner half of his elbow joint off of the humerus right. And I had to open that up put it back together put some screws in to hold it together.
Trampoline injuries, God I hate trampolines. I fixed a girl up this morning with a forearm fracture she was jumping on a trampoline and fell and broke both bones in her radius and ulna and I had to put metal rods inside the bones to hold the bones in alignment you know while they heal.
Trampolines are high-energy and they’re actually…the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics classifies this as gymnastic equipment and really should be spotted with safety equipment like that and not really appropriate for recreational use. However lots of people have trampolines and I tell you the thing that gets you in trouble with the trampoline is putting multiple kids on the same trampoline at the same time.
I can guarantee you that the smallest kid is going to get a tibia fracture because what happens is as the trampoline is accelerating up with a bigger kid the small kid’s coming down and that trampoline hits the kid in the foot the knee is hyper extended and the upper tibia is crushed. I see one a week of that unfortunately we don’t get too many growth arrest s from that but you know it happens.
The other thing that we see a lot is like motorized vehicles ATVs and things like that.
Paul: Okay.
John: I took care of a kid this weekend a seven-year-old driving an ATV. Snapped his arm in half and I had to put that back together with pins. It’s a common injury and you know ATVs …I’ve had kids with tibia fractures femur fractures ankles and feet I mean you name it. You rollover on an ATV you’re going to get hurt.
Paul: It sounds like you are kind of saying high energy things are the areas where u need to be most careful, we’re talking monkey bars, so we’re talking falls from heights, even if it’s just a time and a half the child’s height, from 6 feet, and landing on the arm, or the wrist or the leg. We’re talking about the trampoline with the acceleration, we’re talking about the high mass and velocity of an ATV. It sounds like that’s the biggest thing that we need to look out for with our kids.
John: Well those tend to be the ones that end up in the O.R. Now I see countless other kids that end up in the office, with non-displaced fractures, minimal angulated fractures, stuff that doesn’t require surgery, just requires a cast for a month, or six weeks, or whatever it takes.
And of course, kids do sports all the time, they’re always getting hurt playing sports, we get kids with broken fingers, broken wrists and stuff playing like basketball and…
Paul: Collar bones I’m sure is very common.
John: Collar bones yeah that ‘s one of the most common fractures we see, and fortunately most of those don’t require surgical treatment, there’s the rear one that requires a plate and screws or a rod or something like that. But those are ones in adolescence and that are very displaced.
I took care of a kid about two months ago that crashed his bike and had what we called a type 4, acromioclavicular separation, AC Joint, you know shoulder separation, except his collar bone when back into his clavicles.
Paul: It’s not supposed to go there.
John: It was a posterior dislocation, so I had to fix that, and he came to see me with like a month out, so that was little more of a complicated deal than we usually have to deal with. But he’s doing great and you know as long as we get the kids in a reasonable period of time we can usually fix most things, not everything, there are kids that do have complications, even good surgeons have complications, and so prevention is probably a good thing.
Paul: So what is the biggest thing for prevention, I mean what would you suggest for parents.
John: Well, you know good supervision is probably important, also reasonable safety equipment. You know wearing helmets when you’re riding a bike, and things like that. You can’t fix brains when they get squashed, I can’t fix any of that stuff. But I can fix broken bones, kids are going fall, kids are going to break things, you want them to be active and healthy and to not sit on the couch and get fat.
So we see a lot of kids who do multiple sports during one season, they will be playing basket ball and running track, in the winter they will playing baseball, and doing something else. In the spring, or playing soccer and then play football and run track. These kids get multiple overuse injuries. They get problems with their knees and then you got the other kid who plays baseball year round and he’s throwing year round,
Paul: Constantly right.
John: And those are the kids that get little leaguer’s elbow and they get little leaguer’s shoulder and they have knee problems and back problems. So there has to be some moderation with what we do. Now granted we have kids, who are trying to reach that level, whatever it is gymnast, the ones who are Olympic level, those kids I tell you they go out there and push their bodies and push their bodies and now I see that they get hurt and need some time off.
But they’re still doing stuff even though I tell them they’re not suppose to, they still are out there doing it. And some of that’s the parents, some of it it’s the kids and some of it it’s a little bit of both, and so we really have to worry about causing permanent damage by doing too much.
I remember a few years ago I had a kid come in to see me, he was a baseball player and his elbow was totally trashed, he was fifteen years old and he couldn’t even straightened his elbow out. I said son, your elbow is done and there is nothing I can do for you, you’re not going to be able to throw. You can do whatever you want but your elbow is trashed I can’t fix that, it is too broken I can’t fix it. You don’t want your kid to end up being that kid that’s really the thing that I worry about.
Paul: it seem like when it come to injuries, obviously common sense and prevention makes sense as you mentioned, helmets, making sure that you are not allowing your kids to do reckless things, treating athletic equipment, gymnast equipment as gymnast equipment and when it comes to sports and things like that just choosing moderation.
John: Right, for instance, there’s another thing that I see, we see these weekend tournaments. So you have kids playing baseball or soccer over two to three days they’re playing five to seven games and then you wonder why you’ve got a sore elbow, or you’re knee hurts you or you got a stress fracture, all this stuff is preventable you know. So you got to have moderation, we adults have to take over sometimes and say hey, wait a second, this is not maybe in the best interest of my child to be doing this stuff.
Paul: Sometimes the adults have to let go of the dreams that they never fulfilled as a child and stop pushing their kids.
John: Exactly, living through their kids, believe me it’s a very common thing.
Paul: Crazy stuff I tell you. I come from a swimming background, and so when you talk about overuse injuries, swimming has been a sport that is known for over training two a day, year round, just craziness when you’re fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old. And I pay the toll for it to day. It’s not a contact sport it’s just and over use sport.
John: Exactly and people with shoulder stability and things like from swimming and that becomes a long term problem.
Paul: Absolutely well let’s talk about something a little bit more fun and upbeat. I know that you and Bob Maine from the Handgun World Show recently attended a Tom Givens course how was that?
John: Oh that was a very good course. It was down in Baton Rouge Louisiana and it was not this past weekend but the weekend before. It was a two day class, we shot on the SLU police range a recognized place it had a nice classroom the range itself was fantastic. Tom has a 40 year history of being law-enforcement and being in a place like Memphis Tennessee which is where he’s from you know that’s kind of like Chicago of the south.
There is a lot of gang violence and he was talking about 3100 gunshot wounds treated in their E.R. a year. But amazingly I think he’s had it was like 71 people died out to that 3100. So if you get into the E.R. and the Memphis area you’re most likely going to survive gunshot wound. However that has another problem.
The thugs now think that they’re bulletproof because they get shot and they survive and they get shot again and they survive again. And so when you pull a gun out and you point it at the thug in places like Memphis they’re going to laugh at you. If they look at you and they see that you’re not really serious they don’t care they’ve been shot before you know they’re going to do to you what they want to do unless you stop them.
And so Tom talks about first of all, all the normal mechanics of shooting but he talks about time. And time is the most precious commodity that we have. First of all we have to recognize the problem and not do the oh my God why is this happening to me stuff. You have to recognize a threat you have to address it and you have to do what you need to do.
And so he teaches you how to do that in a fairly efficient way. He stresses using your sites and getting the hits. Misses don’t help you that’s just a waste of time and you’ve got to get your shots in the vital zones and you know high center chest like most of us teach. And you’ve got to get multiple shots in a short period of time and so I mean it’s really you know very well thought out.
He uses some really good examples we analyze the FBI shooting in Miami and you realized that there were a lot of bullets flying everywhere but not very many bullets actually hit the bad guys. You know they were not aimed shots and some of the shots were done from fairly close range some of them from across the street. It wasn’t until at the end when the one FBI guy walked up to the car and put bullets in heads of the guys seated in the cars that the thing finally stopped after how many you know rounds fired and how many people were killed it was pretty bad.
And then he also showed us another example of a police officer who made a traffic stop and the guy gets out of the car and starts walking towards the police officer with his hands in his pockets and the police officer politely says sir please take your hands out of your pockets. Well that pissed off this guy who was like a business owner he was not you’re crazy you know what ever. But this guy it flipped a switch on this guy he went back in and loaded his rifle okay put the rounds in the magazine. In the meantime the police officer is giving him instructions and not doing anything else he’s just standing behind his door and then when the gun fire starts the police officer shoots three magazines full of ammunition and doesn’t hit the guy once.
Paul: Yeah.
John: And of course at the end he’s dead okay this really you know it really lays down the point you’ve got to make you’re hits. And I think that’s very important and then during the class he actually puts you under some time stress and he even does a little competition you know amongst students to add to that stress to do some stress inoculation which I think is important.
And I can tell you those adjunct instructors who came with us were actually very good as well and one of the things that I learned from this class was when I was making my presentation I was putting my hand pretty much over my diaphragm; My non-shooting hand when you go to step one to get your gun out of your holster if you bring your hand up higher on your chest say up under your sternal notch you know right at the base of your throat, when your hands come together the gun is already just about in your line of sight so you don’t have to ride the elevator up to get it where it needs to go actually your gun is moving out in your line of sight and you can get to it…..
Paul: Sooner
John: And I thought that you know that’s the kind of efficiencies, those are the kind of things I’m looking for in a class. I know how to get the gun out of the holster but how to make it just that little bit more efficient. How to do what you need to do and get your shots on target quicker.
Paul: And this class do you remember the name of the class I’m not exactly sure which one you took.
John: Yeah it’s the two day pistol combatives.
Paul: And so this is what Tom Givens would call his entry-level course.
John: Right yeah this is his first level course.
Paul: And I think that’s interesting you earlier in the show talked about yourself as being a self proclaimed training junkie and yet you’re taking a fundamental course why, why would you do that?
John: Because advanced skills are the fundamentals done well that’s all it is you have to learn. It’s the guy who’s the most efficient with the least amount of wasted time and effort and energy. And it’s the time factor if you can get your shots on the bad guy before he can get his gun on you you win.
And you know Tom talks about the number of students that he’s had in gun fights; he’s had 65 students in gun fights only three have lost. You know what was common with all three of those guys?
Paul: They forfeited.
John: That’s right they didn’t have their gun, they forfeited. Everybody else who had a gun won and so that tells me you need to be prepared you need to practice and you need to have your skills. So that’s why I get out there and try to keep my skills going.
Paul: Yeah that’s one of the things that I’ve adopted into my teaching over the past couple of years in talking with folks just in entry-level concealed carry classes, people come and they say well I want to carry a gun so I feel safer and that’s one of the things that I want to dispel in people is that carrying a gun doesn’t make you feel safer having a permit doesn’t make you any safer having the training having the gun with you and having the willingness to use it those are the things that are going to actually make you safer
John: Mistakes happen 90% between your ears.
Paul: Right.
John: And you have to recognize the threat you know when somebody shows up behind you, shows up next to you and they’re pointing a gun at you. You didn’t see him because he walked across the street with the gun sitting next to his leg. It was out there in plain view if you were looking. But you know you’re in your electronics.
Paul: Right that situational awareness that people talk about and so rarely understand. So I have a question here this is a learning point for me defensive shooting you just put it as 90% between your ears; surgery you know doing orthopedic surgery is it 90% between your ears?
John: Absolutely.
Paul: Obviously if I crush your hands underneath a backhoe you’re not going to be a very good surgeon anymore.
John: Right but I can tell somebody else how to do it somebody who has reasonable hands but yes no in fact I do a surgery in my mind many times with different before I even walk into the operating room.
Paul: Interesting so you’re using visualization as a tool.
John: Especially if it’s something that I haven’t done very much off and I’m really trying to sort out exactly how things are going to go. You have to visualize you have to you know review the anatomy you have to do all those things because there are some surgeries that we do frequently.
I fix broken forearms every week I fix broken elbows every week you know that roadmap is in my brain but there are some places I don’t go, the back of the knee that’s not somewhere where I go very often. Sometimes I have to go to the back of the knee. Okay I get out my anatomy book and I review the anatomy and then I figure out what I’m going to do I make sure I have the equipment for plan A B and C. Because if plan A doesn’t work what do you do now?
You can’t just have one plan when you walk into the operating room and say well it didn’t work sorry that doesn’t work you’ve got to fix it one way or the other. You have to have the stuff that you need it’s the same thing you know with defensive stuff you know your initial plan may not work you might’ve to move to a different place and attack things from a different direction it’s the same kind of a thing
Paul: Awesome, well I tell you what I think we could probably keep on going and going here John. Certainly there’s a lot to talk about and a lot of enjoyment but I want to be respectful of your time what do you have that’s coming up in the near future as far as firearms?
John: Well I’m going to be taking a carving car course with Suarez International instructor John Payne in the middle of May but I’m going to go to the NRA meeting in Louisville too so I’m planning on going there for as much socializing and also do a little DGRO stuff too if I can.
Paul: Excellent I’ve already booked rooms and ready to go so I will plan on seeing you there that’s great. I didn’t know you were going to make it up there.
John: And I’m sharing a hotel with Rob Morris too so we’re planning on getting together.
Paul: Great.
John: So hopefully he’ll pick me up from the airport. Rob if you’re listening please pick me up from the airport.
Paul: Well give me a holler if you need a ride from the airport I can probably help you out there
John: Mostly going to do MAG 80 this summer I think too.
Paul: Very good
John: I’m planning on going out and do that. I did MAG 40 in 2014 and you know meeting mass and just being under the instruction of the master I think you can’t get enough of that especially if you’re a junkie like me you know that’s like pure heroin I guess.
Paul: Yeah I enjoy the time that I spend with Masaad Ayoob when he’s here and of course he’ll be here in June this year so I’ll be looking forward to hanging out again.
John: He and Gail are just the salt of the earth people. They are what you see. He’s an absolutely generous guy and you know I can’t say enough good things about Mass he’s really I consider him a mentor and a friend.
Paul: Yeah I agree wholeheartedly. Well if folks are interested in DRGO they can of course find that at DRGO.US and I’ll have that link in the show notes. If folks wanted to reach out to you what’s the best way that they could do that.
John: You can get me through DRGO or actually Dr J.Edeen I think I can’t even remember what it is just go to DRGO and they’ll leave me a message but it’s but it’s DRGO.US.
Paul: Excellent
John: The other thing is we have a Facebook page we pretty much put something out every day so if you want to subscribe to the Facebook page you’ll see some pretty good interesting stuff that comes out and we have a lot of different people contribute to that. I think it’s a good source for information and DRGO is not just for doctors DRGO is for healthcare professionals who want to educate their colleagues on the populace as well about firearms and firearm safety what we just talked about.
Paul: Sure all the things that we just encompassed really fit under the realm of DRGO and so folks that are interested again you can head to the DRGO Facebook page you can head to Drgo.us and I will have all of that linked up in the show.
Dr. Edeen I want to say thank you so much for spending the time with us today I really am glad that you got to be the inaugural kickoff podcast for the safety solutions Academy interview series and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you out in the future.
John: Oh yeah and one more thing I’m doing this summer I’m going to Ohio to go to class with this tall guy.
Paul: It’s going to be a blast.
John: Yeah we’re going to have a good time it’s going to be fun.
Paul: I have got a fun fun fun week because we’ve got MAG 40 the week right before the course that you’re going to be in town for. So I’ve got three weeks of training I’ve got a critical defensive handgun class the second weekend in June, then MAG 40, then another critical defensive handgun class with you and your folks at the end of June so it’s going to be a great month looking forward to it
John: Hopefully you won’t be too tired.
Paul: No are you kidding me I get to sleep for the rest of the time I don’t do anything.
John: That’s right you get recharged actually when you do stuff like that but I don’t.
Paul: That is the truth my friend. Hey take care of yourself and I will talk to you again soon and again thank you so much for being on.
John: And thank you for having me.
Paul: Well folks I hope that you enjoyed the conversation that I had with Dr. John Edeen today I sure did and I’m looking forward to not only chatting with Dr. Edeen again but also with lots of other guests on the Safety Solutions Academy podcast.
And I don’t know if I accomplished it during this interview or not but my goal is to try and approach the guests that I have on the show from a little bit of a different angle than you may have heard from them before. A lot of the guests that you hear from here on the show you may never have heard of before and that’s okay some folks will be from outside of the firearms industry, some people will be very well known people in the firearms industry.
But my hope is that whoever it is that we’re talking to were going to be able to really get to the inside the nuts and bolts of something that they are passionate about or maybe something that you’re passionate about as well. So I hope that this is an interesting long interview format for you.
Now if it’s not interesting then skip the Monday shows you know that’s when we’re going to be doing the interviews. The idea is that each week I’ll have a three show schedule. On Mondays I will release a long format interview on Wednesday kind of a medium format a solo show where I’ll talk about something that’s important in defensive training, the self-defense world, the firearms world that will just be me by myself. And on Friday the Friday 15 where I’ll take that fast-paced look. Podcasts really cut off at about 15 minutes; cramming a bunch of information in quick.
So I hope that I’m putting out a format that works for you and maybe all three formats are great for you if not you pick the podcast that you are most interested in download those and listen to those that’s the goal. Of course I’d love to have your feedback not just on this show with Dr. Edeen but on all of the shows that I put out.
If there’s something that you particularly like or particularly don’t like something that you’d like to hear me cover, something you’d like to have changed about the show or just some general feedback. Just a slap on the back or kudos or hey keep it up buddy you can send those to Paul at Safety Solutions Academy dot com. I read all of my emails except for the ones that end up in the spam folder so hopefully that’s not you.
I’d love to get feedback on the show and just have as much contact with the audience as possible, so folks thanks again for tuning in. Thanks for all the support over the past few weeks as we’ve been re- launching the podcast. Get over to iTunes and get yourself subscribed and leave us a review and rating that would be very much appreciated. But most importantly get on out there, get yourself some training and when you do make sure you keep it simple. Please stay safe and as always have a great day.
Hey folks I wanted to chime in with some thoughts that came to me long after both recording editing and finally posting the show, the interviews with Dr John Edeen that you just finished listening to. And I think that although I’ve gotten my legs to some degree with getting the podcast going I’m feeling confident I’m feeling good as I look back there are all kinds of things that I wish I would have gone deeper with John on. And as I get back into the habit of interviewing folks back into the feeling of how that goes hopefully the ability for myself to think on my feet and develop those follow-up questions in the moment will improve.
That and second of all one of the things that I’d like to do with guests that I have on the show is to acknowledge them for what it is that they’ve done and I failed to do that with Dr Edeen. You know of course I said thank you. And thank you is a good thing and saying thank you for coming on the show is a good thing but I think that Dr. Edeen has done a tremendous amount more than that. What I’d like to acknowledge Dr Edeen for is quite specific.
If you were to go to Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership their website Drgo.us and click on media and then you’ll see that Dr. Edeen’s name pops up in a drop down menu and follow that to his page you will see that he has accumulated an incredible mass of podcasts that he’s been on. A tremendous number of audio files are right there for you to take a look at.
In addition to that Dr. Edeen had alluded to the fact that he had challenges from a professional standpoint when he was talking with his colleagues about safety and concealed carry and the fact that hospitals really needed to rethink their position challenges to the point where he ended up in meetings with hospital administrators.
So what I want to acknowledge Dr. Edeen for is the fact that he took so much time and effort to put himself out there for something that he believed in and something that’s important to all of us probably most people that are listening to this podcast. There are a lot of us that stand with our hands raised in the air and holler, yell and scream and type on the Internet and do all kinds of things but there are many fewer people that actually take action.
So the fact that Dr Edeen has taken the time to invest as much as he has in furthering the cause at the very risk of his own career that is something that he should be acknowledged for. So John I want to say thank you for that and hopefully those of you that haven’t yet listened to the show will ketch this and I will put this also into a little addendum podcast that I’m going to throw up on Tuesday April 5th so that folks can hear that that have already listen to the podcast and won’t necessarily be going back. And thanks folks I hope that you enjoyed the show and we’ll ketch you later on.
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