Friday, August 12, 2011

When Seconds Count


Akron.com provides a step-by-step account of the movements of the killer. Basically, as we've been reading all week, he went from bouse to house, through backyards, even chasing one victim into a neighbor's house in order to execute him, an 11-year-old.

Hance was killed by a Copley police officer, Mier said, about 10 minutes after the first 9-1-1 call was received.
What that means is the murderous rampage lasted at least 11 minutes, presuming the first call took place some seconds after the first shot. Where were all the armed neighbors?  Where were all the local CCW guys?

How many times have we heard that flippant remark, "when seconds count, the police are minutes away."  This infers that in places like Ohio where many homes have guns and the percentage of concealed carry permits is high, we don't have to wait for the police to put a stop to things like this.

Yet, as we saw in Arizona a few months ago, this is just not the case.  As with the Loughner shooting, it's a safe bet that gunowners were on hand but they turned out to be powerless to stop the onslaught of violence.

Why, I don't know, probably several reasons, but I have one theory.  The vast majority of gun owners, even concealed carry guys, are not trained for this kind of intervention.  They may think they are, but when the SHTF, as they like to say on The Truth Abough Guns, they're not up to the task.  It takes quick decisive action to intervene, and courage, knowing that getting involved, you go from being a neutral spectator to a potential target.

Most people are frozen with fear during those critical seconds or minutes. Their owning guns does nothing more than make them feel safe, and of course, increase the chances of gun mishaps of many kinds.

What's your opinion?  It seems to me this story illustrates that altough the exemplary action of the police was not as swift as we'd like it to have been, it was pretty good.  And once again we count ourselves lucky that none of the local gun owners made it worse.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment. 

10 comments:

  1. The concealed carry crowd has a theory about self defense which doesn't appear to hold up in practice seems to be what you're claiming here - factually, and accurately.

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  2. "The concealed carry crowd has a theory about self defense which doesn't appear to hold up in practice seems to be what you're claiming here - factually, and accurately."

    I agree with you for the most part, there is a lot of fact and accuracy in Mikeb's analysis, however there is some omission too.

    "Why, I don't know, probably several reasons, but I have one theory. The vast majority of gun owners, even concealed carry guys, are not trained for this kind of intervention. They may think they are, but when the SHTF, as they like to say on The Truth Abough Guns, they're not up to the task."

    Indeed. Concealed Carry training is usually just a safety class. Most are advised to seek real training and a few do, but not nearly enough in my opinion. I am a proponent of more and better training but I would stop short of requiring it in order to carry--it should be a personal commitment.

    "It takes quick decisive action to intervene, and courage, knowing that getting involved, you go from being a neutral spectator to a potential target."

    Besides the courage to act and the proper mindset required to face a lethal situation, you are also legally obligated to know the situation that you would be inserting yourself into. In order to act with deadly force in the defense of a third party, that third party has to have the legal standing to use deadly force as well. Had you been a member of that neighborhood, you would need to know who the aggressor was before you chose to intervene.

    In the famous Arizona case, had there been an armed citizen there when Loughner began his terror, there is of course a better chance of stopping him. Had the CCW holder that showed up minutes later charged in and shot the man holding the gun, then he would have been guilty of a murder if he would have been prosecuted since Loughner had been disarmed.

    "Most people are frozen with fear during those critical seconds or minutes."

    Not entirely true. Statistically as many will flee as will be frozen in fear or confusion. Presented with a lethal threat, the average human will instantly Fight, Flee or Freeze. I believe studies have shown it is about 1/3 each though those are older studies and I would not at all be surprised that in the U.S. these days, those that will fight are a much smaller proportion.

    "Their owning guns does nothing more than make them feel safe, and of course, increase the chances of gun mishaps of many kinds."

    I disagree. While some will undoubtedly have a false sense of security simply because they are armed, some will undoubtedly be better able to defend themselves because they are armed. Gun mishaps, while one is too many, are still statistically insignificant and there is no reason to believe that just because people have a CCW, they would be at greater risk of a mishap--with a CCW license, most will have had at least basic firearm safety which has gone a very long way to reduce mishaps over those with no formal safety training.

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  3. And once again we count ourselves lucky that none of the local gun owners made it worse.

    Please tell me, oh wise one, how it could have been made worse?

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  4. Oh,lets see, 'let me count the ways'; the cop or other innocent bystanders could have been killed by being caught in a civilian / bad guy crossfire shooting; or, two over-eager under trained civilians could have accidentally shot each other. A shot by an over eager gun nut could have gone through a wall of a house killing someone...... or the killer could have used unsecured weapons /ammo found in the houses to resupply himself to prolong his killig spree...

    How is that for some examples of what could have gone wrong with the intervention of someone other than the police?

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  5. If only allathem vics had been packin', the only dead person would be the perp!

    FatWhiteMan:

    "Besides the courage to act and the proper mindset required to face a lethal situation, you are also legally obligated to know the situation that you would be inserting yourself into. In order to act with deadly force in the defense of a third party, that third party has to have the legal standing to use deadly force as well. Had you been a member of that neighborhood, you would need to know who the aggressor was before you chose to intervene."

    Which means that for most intents and purposes, ccw holders are not empowered to act in the way that the gunnutz say they will.

    Training people who have to respond, often on a daily basis, to real/perceived threats by criminals or enemy combatants (in the case of soldiers) is vastly more difficult than teaching the basic 4 rules of firearms saftey. And, as is amply demonstrated by the numerous news stories about people blowing their own dicks and other body parts to hell, even that level of training is beyond many LAGO's.

    There was a recent post here about Firing Range Conversions. I think that some people are instantly seduced by the feeling of being empowered by holding a gun. I think a lot of those same folks might be a bit less enthused if they got to take a tour of the crime scenes, while the corpses were still strewn about the landscape as they were in the Ohio massacere.

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  6. Add to the conversation that this is an exceedingly long time period, and still no intervention. Yet most shootings take place in only a few seconds, without enough time for most gun owners to take action to stop it or even react before someone is killed, and the criminals typically have the jump on you anyway. If you are armed, you initiate a flight-or-fight survival response in the criminal, inducing them to take lethal action when all they wanted to do was intimidate.

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  7. "Add to the conversation that this is an exceedingly long time period, and still no intervention. Yet most shootings take place in only a few seconds, without enough time for most gun owners to take action to stop it or even react before someone is killed, and the criminals typically have the jump on you anyway. If you are armed, you initiate a flight-or-fight survival response in the criminal, inducing them to take lethal action when all they wanted to do was intimidate."

    Most all gunfights end before the police arrive. Even mass shooters will kill until they are stopped by the arrival of police or an armed civilian. 90% of the time, they will take their own life rather than face combat against an armed adversary.

    Mass shootings aside though, just plain vanilla violent crimes are thwarted everyday by armed victims. Also, the intimidation factor that you mentioned as ended many times with dead victims that did give up and do as they were told. There was an incident in gun-law heaven New York that we discussed here not to long ago where the criminal went in to a pharmacy and executed everyone in the store. In a similar story just two weeks prior in Michigan, an armed criminal attempted to herd the pharmacy staff into a back room where they too could be murdered but an armed Pharmacist prevented that from happening. If he had waited to see what the armed dirt-bag's intentions were, they could be as dead as that poor 18 year old pharmacy worker in New York that was leaving early that day to attend her high school graduation.

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  8. In sum, guns do more harm than good. That's my conclusion.The legitimate DGUs are so far outnumbered by the incidents of gun violence that I can't imagine why gun-rights folks even mention them.

    Baldr made a good point. This rampage took many minutes whereas usually they're over in seconds. The chances of an intervention are practically nil. Yet we've got tens of thousands of guys going around with guns concealed thinking they're doing something good.

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  9. More people with guns drawn, shooting, would have seriously confused the issue for the police when they arrived.

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  10. When the Binghamton massacere took place in April, 2009, a number of gunloonz lamented that the vics were unarmed.

    The police on arriving took up stations around the building and did not enter for some minutes (over 30?). When they did they took a number of "suspicious looking" BWNW* individuals into custody.

    Had those BWNW indivduals been armed I'm fairly certain they would have been dead co-conspirators.


    * Breathing While Not White.

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