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Manyt self defense minded individuals out there are prepared to send lead downrange in defense of their lives and loved ones But preparing for the consequences of being on the receiving end of some high velocity lead is often overlooked. Blue Force Gear has come up with a new product to help police officers, shooters, and hunters prepare for the worst case scenario with their Micro TRN personal trauma kit.

The kit comes with everything you see here: two chest seals, a chest decompression needle, QuickClot impregnated gauze, a combat dressing, some tape, a nasopharyngeal airway (with lube, thank the maker), some gloves and some tape. Adorning the front of the kit is a cross shaped cutout where the end user can slide either a red, black, or day/night high visibility backing (or none, if preferred) for quick identification (backing included). The idea is hat the kit has everything you need to stabilize someone after suffering a traumatic event until a higher level of care arrives.

Notably missing from the kit: a tourniquet. According to BFG the reason is that most LEOs and military folks have multiple TK’s on their person at all times, so adding another one doesn’t make sense. There will, however, be a TK-equipped civilian version coming out soon for those who want a compact, convenient one-stop blowout kit.

Blue Force Gear designed the kit to be as small as possible so that law enforcement and military folks can carry it on their person or strap it to the stock of their rifle for easy access. But that’s not the only market. One of BFG’s finest told us a story where he was on a hunting trip with a buddy when his friend became gravely injured, and having a kit like this one would have been ideal to help him in his time of need.

Retail pricing will be $68 for the shell only and $200 fully loaded, available soon.

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30 COMMENTS

  1. That’s a bit steep. You can get similar ones for about $130 ish from YouTube guys like Skinny Medic.

  4. For that crazy price they can’t even double or triple stitch, no bartack reinforcement? Looks like some POS pouch from chicomland.

  5. Great. Don’t forget to get the training you need to make good use of the contents.

    And after that, look at putting together your own kit. I like blue force gear but that’s scorch-my-eyebrows pricy.

  6. Can be pieced together cheaper from Amazon including tourniquet.
    Advisable for anyone to have a couple of tourniquets and seals. Holes and gashes happen even where there are no guns and unless you live in a hospital you live far enough away from help to bleed out.

    Get training and practice so the last thing a loved one sees before moving into a dimension of interpretive dance isn’t you fumbling and crying like an inept dumbass.

  8. itsteactical already makes such a thing with a SOF-T tourniquet for $109.

    Also, this needs shears.

    Realistically you can get everything major in this kit plus a CAT for $103 or so off Amazon….

    HyFin Chest seals: $17.75
    Needle: $3.99
    4″ Israeli Bandage: $6.95
    8″ Israeli Bandage: $8.45
    Combat Gauze: $30
    CAT: $30
    Nasopharyngeal Airway: $5.92

    Then of course there’s the fact that you actually need to know how to use the nasopharyngeal Airway and the needle… Which the average person who buys this won’t.

  9. $200 for what!?! Make your own folks this is too expensive. The commenters above have already done the work to show you this. WOW what a rip

  10. My LGS sells a more basic trauma kit for less than 1/4 the price and its like pulling teeth to get people to buy one. Pressure dressing, gauze, and a tourniquet and no one feels its important as carrying a gun.

    • I’ve argued the medical thing with people and given up. They insist they won’t render aid to someone they shot and that their gun is a magic talisman that will prevent them from getting shot.

      When I point out car accidents often produce injuries where a TQ, pressure bandage, QuikClot or chest seals are useful they ignore it.

      You can’t even get these people to carry a fire extinguisher in their car. All they need is a .380 mouse gun and they’re ready for anything. It’s retarded but I figure 40% of people are dumb enough that they think this way. Hell, many of them are so overweight they can’t get out of their own way, so I just ignore their “tactical input”.

  12. Oh good! More stuff no one will ever use even if they have a need for it. Please don’t ever decompress someone unless you are an actual medical provider. Although I find the of TQ refreshing.

    • While I agree that you should have some training on the use of a needle or the naso airway, decompression needles aren’t hard to use and in a situation where you actually need that needle you can’t fuck the person up worse than they already are.

      They might die even if you decompress them. They will certainly die if you don’t. Unless you’re a fucking retard you can’t kill them with a decompression needle. But… You can get yourself sued and in some states charged for practicing medicine without a license.

      • Actually you can easily kill someone with a needle who has already experienced a traumatic event. All it takes is pushing it in one intercostal space lower and there’s the aorta. I agree, Inserting the needle is easy. Knowing where to, and more so, when to use it is more difficult to teach and actually have a layperson remember. Paramedics, dr’s, some RN’s would be folks who can reasonably do this outside of their normal jobs. And certainly military medics probably have spent more time training and actually using needle thoracostomy techniques. And certainly using a semi invasive procedure like this on someone could get you in hot water. There are some protections for laypeople and medical professionals alike but not so much for inserting a needle and definitely not for making incisions. Most Dr’s may feel comfortable relying on their licenses but, as a paramedic, would not legally be able to do this off duty.

        • “All it takes is pushing it in one intercostal space lower and there’s the aorta.”

          Ummm… why are you attempting to decompress them on the left side of their body when you can do it on the right side and that’s what’s recommended?

        • Look Strych9, I don’t like bashing people but your foolishness is astounding. You illustrate very nicely why barely anyone should be able to decompress a tension pneumo. You have two lungs. If the left one is under tension, decompress the left 2nd intercostal space mid-clavicular area, or 5th intercostal space left mid-axillary. If the right side is under tension, use the same procedure on the right side. Though I would never use up the 5th intercostal space unless absolutely necessary as thats the best location for a chest tube, which is the definitive method of fixing a tension pneumo or hemothorax and not the quick fix like needle decos. Wherever you get your info from, you should seriously consider not listening to, unless you are insinuating that people only get shot in the right side of the chest, in which case we have a whole other problem to talk about.

        • I don’t consider what you’re saying to be bashing. I’ll tell you what I was taught and you can tell me if it was wrong or overly conservative or whatever.

          What I was taught is this:

          Except in extreme circumstances always pick the left side, (you’ve got three choices for insertion point) based on body type and injury location) because it keeps you away from a lot of major arteries that you don’t want to poke. Except in rare circumstances this shouldn’t matter because while you have two lungs you have one chest cavity. Normally this statement would be affected by the parietal pleura and the visceral pleura (yes, I had to look up the names) which tend to be “stuck” to each other by negative pressure and that this would prevent a decompression needle on the left side of the body from affecting a pneumothorax on the right side. However, in the situation of a tension pneumothorax this isn’t the case because the two membranes are no longer being “stuck together” by negative pressure but rather pushed apart by positive pressure which is what’s crushing the lungs and preventing the person from breathing. So, in theory a decompression needle in the left side of the body should evacuate air from most of the chest cavity. Now, you’ve got an open pneumothorax to deal with but the immediate threat of suffocation is removed. <–This is why I ask why you'd do this on the right side.

          Further, the only time you'd do this on the right side of the body is in the case of a serious crushing injury to the left side of the body preventing you from choosing a spot on the left side of the body. In such a case I was told to move to the secondary or tertiary choices along the side of the body on the right side because I'm not a surgeon and I'm not doing this in a hospital. Those choices (I had to look up the exact language here in terms of the lines) forth or fifth intercostal space at the mid axillary line or the same choices for intercostal space at the anterior axillary line.

          In terms of a GSW I would think it rare that you would find all your spots on the left side of the body to be a no-go but then my actual experience with this is limited to practice dummies. As I said to JWT I would consider to this to be an absolute last ditch thing to do in the field where the person is going to die if you don't and I don't carry a needle to do it. If chest seals/a jerry rigged butterfly don't get it done you're screwed if I'm the one working on you because I'm out of options.

      • ” can’t fuck the person up worse than they already are.”
        No, that is not the case at all. This can absolutely quickly kill your patient. I can not stress enough how wrong that statement is.
        You can absolutely do much worse, and kill someone with a poor needle chest decompression attempt. It is easy to get it badly wrong.
        I have witnessed this myself. Fully half of all attempts at decompression by trained providers fail in a field setting. Some catastrophically. Putting the needle under a rib can sever the subclavian artery or one of the 4 branches of it that lie under the rib. That is easy to do on a woman or a man with large pectoral muscles or a lot of fat.

        Do not attempt a needle chest decompression unless you have been extensively trained on it.
        It should also be noted that, in a hot environment, that blood with likely clog the catheter within 15 minutes, often requiring an additional decompression. I’ve seen it require 3 separate placements for a long evacuation.

        Again, strych9 is trying to help, but this is very bad information.

        Do not attempt a needle chest decompression unless you have been extensively trained on it. Do not attempt this unless you have been hands-on trained by a qualified provider, have seen it done on a real human, and have practiced the placement and technique on multiple body types of both men and women.

        • You’re misunderstanding my post. I wasn’t clear enough.

          I said “…in a situation where you actually need that needle you can’t fuck the person up worse than they already are.”

          I should and will clarify that statement. My emphasis is on the words “actually need”. Real emphasis on the “need”.

          Yes, there is significant risk to this procedure. You are, after all, poking another hole in them and, if successful, creating another type of pneumothorax. However my point is that “the situation” is this person is going to die if you don’t do this. You can stand there and watch them die or you can attempt a needle decompression in a few differently places on the right side of the chest depending on the person you’re looking at.

          That’s what I mean by “…you can’t fuck the person up worse than they already are”. They’re flat out dying in front of you.

          I’m looking at this as an absolute last ditch field treatment where the person in question is dead if you don’t do this. In that regard I look at it kind of like CPR (although, to be fair, if you’re doing CPR that person technically is dead). I am not looking at this as something you do when an ambulance/helicopter is a few minutes away. This is only for when there is no other option.

          Obviously if your experience with this is limited to reading about it or watching a video on the internet then you shouldn’t attempt this at all. Then again, if the choice is watch someone die or try this based on theory, well YMMV. That’s a call each person will have to make in the terrible event they are faced with the choice I lay out above.

          Personally, I don’t carry a needle in any of my kits due to the legal reasons I mentioned.

        • strych9, all good points. If they are going to die right then, give it a shot. Considering that you would have to have some medical training to recognize the real need for an immediate decompression in the first place, (such as the onset of tracheal deviation) you probably have the training to accomplish it.

      • Dane

        I was going to ask your opinion as a paramedic on what I was taught about this by an ER doc but… it simply won’t let me. Let’s see if I can ninja edit this…

        My original reply to you as is follows (heavily edited, this program doesn’t like medical terms used repeatedly):

        I don’t consider what you’re saying to be bashing. I’ll tell you what I was taught and you can tell me if it was wrong or overly conservative or whatever.

        What I was taught is this:
        Except in extreme circumstances always pick the left side, because it keeps you away from a lot of major arteries that you don’t want to poke. Except in rare circumstances this shouldn’t matter because while you have two lungs you have one chest cavity. Normally this statement would be affected by the two membranes in the chest cavity which tend to be “stuck” to each other by negative pressure and that this would prevent a decompression needle on the left side of the body from affecting a [medical term]on the right side. However, in the situation of a sucking chest wound this isn’t the case because the two membranes are no longer being “stuck together” by negative pressure but rather pushed apart by positive pressure which is what’s crushing the lungs and preventing the person from breathing. So, in theory a decompression needle in the left side of the body should evacuate air from most of the chest cavity. Now, you’ve got another problem to deal with to deal with but the immediate threat of suffocation is removed. <–This is why I ask why you'd do this on the right side.

        • Sorry if that’s hard to follow. My actual full post to you kept getting flagged by the spam filter for some reason.

  14. My dad was an old time Army medic (1st Infantry Division) who traveled across France and Germany at Uncle Sam’s expense. He convinced me to carry two battle dressings because he saw lots of wounds that were through and through. Dad said that its hard to plug two holes with one dressing. I can see the potential for a pass through wound in a hunting accident where the range may be short and the heavy .308 or .30-06 bullets may not expand. For many years I had two surplus battle dressings in my pack and recently picked up a couple of Israeli dressings.

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