The San Francisco Bay Area was the setting once again this year during the 2009 Urban Shield exercises and Safariland was there! Over 27 teams including Boston PD, the French Nationals “RAID” team and the FBI participated in the events which aim to assess overall tactical, fire and EMS skills in a series of real-life scenarios such as Maritime Interdiction, Tubular Extraction, Hostage Rescue and Active Shooter. Read More »

Whether you call it Weaver™ style, cross slot, Picatinny, 1913 mil-std or scope rail, often there’s some confusion about these scope mounting systems. Are they the same? Are they similar? Will my Picatinny rings fit a Weaver style base? That’s easy…in the order asked above, no, yes and definitely maybe. Read More »

Various Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) aerosols are often touted as having the highest SHU levels on the market. But what is SHU and how is it measured? SHU stands for Scoville Heat Units and is a standard used to measure the perceived heat of a substance. For example, a bell pepper has an SHU rating of 0, a jalapeño pepper has a rating of 2,500 to 8,000, and a habañero has a rating of 100,000 to 350,000 SHU. Typical law enforcement grade pepper sprays report an SHU level between 5-5.3 million. But... Read More »

Body armor is changing for the better, thanks to new performance standards set by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The NIJ is the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice and is dedicated to researching crime-control and justice issues. The new NIJ Standard-0101.06, as it’s officially called, specifies revised minimum-performance requirements that body armor must meet to satisfy the needs of criminal-justice agencies. It also establishes the methods... Read More »