I fancy that I’m a cautious sort of fellow, that is to say I am wary for, and take pains to preserve my personal safety. I can say this now, after a ten-year departing bout from the military of being anything but timid and, well… pusillanimous. Thank you ring game ‘Minister’s Cat’ for gifting me with that choice word to replace the word ‘sissy’.

The subject arises in light of the recent and mysterious account of Sophia Wilansky, who was gravely wounded by what her supporters are describing as a police riot-control concussion grenade, one that quite alledgedly blew a substantial length of humerus from her left arm. The style of concussion grenade with even a remotely similar potential, well it never really existed at all; pure hogwash and poppycock, if I may indulge in a few words of color, as they prefer to be called these days.

Let’s harness some essential facts to support or dispel that story, with a little insight from Ice-G (yours truly).

The Good:

FACT: Ice-G has a STUPID amount of experience with concussion grenades of all makes and models, so much so that he (Ice-G) should probably not even be with us today. Suffice it to say that this cat squandered away eight of his lives on bangers. Flash-Bangs that is, swimmin’ pools, movie stars…

The backstory to the concussion-type device, one in whose genre we can include the venerable flash-bang, is to the effect: they were used by police and the like, as well as select Special Operations Forces charged with Close Quarters Battle. (CQB).

At the very kernel of the operating system that governs the use of flash-bangs, is the notion that you can throw a flash-bang into a room ahead of you to stun/confuse/blind the enemy, to give you a leg up on an assailant that may well just be sitting in the room with his weapon trained on the door, waiting for you to stumble in.

Flash-bangs are recognized by SOF sure, because they are less-than-lethal devices, which means an Operator can go into the room WITH the flash-bang, not after it. Are you tracking? I will throw my flash-bang into a room, and follow it in there, slinging Pb as I go.

FACT: old-school SWAT-T (MK-141) flash-bangs can blow your hand completely off of your body, should you of sound and cop-esthetic mind choose not to throw it away immediately upon pulling the pin and letting the spoon fly.