Chris Gerrib writes

In the process of writing yesterday’s entry, I found the USMC Rules for Gunfighting. It’s both true and amusing.

Thank God I never had to apply these to ‘real life’.

Watch their hands. Hands kill.

Except that one, once. Kinda-sorta.

I was reasonably sure the guy wasn’t armed and he was what he looked like he was, which was a yokel from town delivering a new ditch witch to contractors aboard base.

But, god-damn. When a uniformed Marine roars up in a government vehicle that vaguely resembles a police car, parks it so the motor block is between you and he, unsnaps his holster and yells ‘show me your hands’ you do not stand there with your paws in the pockets of your overalls going ‘hunh?’

I did relish the look on his face when I un-holstered my M9 and chambered a round [1]. Hands were extracted and poked up in the air with gratifying speed.

For my enjoyment, even better was my next direction: to pick up the phone, mounted on a pole about two feet from his head, that had been ringing for five minutes.

If I’d been an ass I would have asked him to read the sign mounted above the phone:

VISITORS: ANSWER PHONE IF RINGING OR PICK UP PHONE TO CONTACT THE SENTRIES.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] Readers might be wondering if drawing a pistol was a tad extreme. To this I will answer that this was not the main gate at Camp Lejeune but a rather more secure facility – we weren’t there to mess around.

An armchair grunt would also take issue with my not drawing the weapon as soon as I exited the vehicle.  To this I can only say that it wasn’t until I exited that vehicle that I observed he had his hands covered at which point the situation went from ‘drive out there and tell the asshole to answer the phone’ to ‘potential use of deadly force’.