Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Why having a gun won't help in an active shooter incident

From Tom Diaz who says:

This video uses examples to illustrate why in most cases, "good guys with guns" are not going to save lives...they are going to take them. Yes, there are always a few contrary examples, but by and large, most ordinary people are going to freeze, react so badly they get shot themselves without affecting the outcome, or shoot the wrong person.

This video is not aimed at changing the mind of people who won't face facts. That's hopeless. It's intended to educate activists and to confirm the instincts of most ordinary Americans that more guns is a bad idea.

18 comments:

  1. Does this mean that the worst thing you could do when facing an active shooter is to call the police? Won't every police officer responding to the call have a gun?

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  2. "Yes, there are always a few contrary examples, but by and large, most ordinary people are going to freeze, react so badly they get shot themselves without affecting the outcome, or shoot the wrong person."

    So I'm assuming that your contention is that law enforcement active shooter tactics are for the most part not going to be effective? Some schools and even the federal government are starting on a small level to advocate fighting back against an active shooter even if unarmed. And the suggestion isn't to go out looking for them, but if hiding is no longer an option.
    For example, we now know that Adam Lanza had to break into the school to gain entry because the door was locked. If someone had been armed in the office. (for example, in the high school here, the resource officer has an office in the admin area.) it wouldn't have been a matter of someone bursting through an open door.
    Once the lockdown is in effect, if the classroom doors are locked, there would be more time to react to a forced entry. And there wouldn't be anyone between an armed person defending students, and someone trying to break in.

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  3. So, Laci, explain to us why you carried a gun in the past. Or if armed citizens are so ineffective, why do you care about people carrying guns? But apparently an attacker can hold it together to use a gun to bad ends. I realize that you control freaks idolize bad guys. You see them as doing things that you wish you could do. It gives you the vapors to think that good citizens cannot be controlled and won't fly into a panic at the coming of a bad guy--namely, your wannabe personality.

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    1. Gun grabbers portray average armed citizens as bumbling idiots who become hysterical and all thumbs, incapable of doing anything meaningful or effective. And then they go on to portray spree killers as calm, cool, collective cyborgs rivaling the skills and prowess of elite special forces military personnel.

      That simply illustrates the mental state of gun grabbers: they are delusional and irrational. The FACT that many of the citizens that I know who are armed in public train often with advanced combat techniques is not a part of their cloistered experience, and therefore, in their minds, it cannot exist.

      -- TruthBeTold

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    2. 33,000 gunshot deaths and thousands more dangerous and crippling gun incidents prove gun loons cannot safely handle their guns.

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    3. Two-thirds of those deaths are suicides, so the question of safe handling is moot with them. What is needed there is better access to good mental health services. Of the remainder, a lot are criminal-on-criminal violence, which could be addressed by longer terms for violent offenders and better rehabilitation of criminals upon release. Ending the War on Drugs would reduce more violence. Making sure that domestic partners have a way to get out of abusive relationships would help. When we've done all of those things, get back to me and let's see what our violent crime rate is then.

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    4. Anonymous,

      You do realize that about 22,000 of those 33,000 deaths are suicides, right? Clearly we cannot blame those on "gun loons [who] cannot safely handle their guns."

      Of the remaining 11,000 or so deaths, around 90% of those are criminals who shoot and kill other criminals during criminal activity. Clearly we cannot blame those on "gun loons [who] cannot safely handle their guns."

      And then we had about 1,100 deaths that were some mix of "new" criminals and violent repeat offenders who murdered someone. Clearly we cannot blame those on "gun loons [who] cannot safely handle their guns."

      As it turns out, there were about 600 unintentional deaths from firearms last year among something like 100,000,000 people who own firearms. When you can show me any other situation with a safety record that fantastic, we can talk.

      -- TruthBeTold

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    5. When your side will vote for those kind of programs, get back to me.
      Every item you mentioned has been voted down by you political side, and your NRA dues were used to help defeat those kind of measures.

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    6. Anonymous, you're mistaken about my political side. I support gun rights, but in a number of important ways, I support postions held by Democrats.

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    7. You support the NRA, you work against the very things you mentioned, which makes your statement bullshit from a hypocrite.

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    8. Anonymous, are you incapable of making a point without being foul-mouthed? At present, there is no one party that represents all of my values. In any election, I have to evaluate all the candidates--not just the two major party representatives--and make a decision on which one agrees the most with my positions.

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    9. When it comes to you; I've had plenty of your foul mouth. Be a jack ass, get treated like a jack ass; and you are the biggest jack ass on this site.
      Did I say party? I think I said the NRA. You give your money to the NRA. You puppet the NRA's board member on racism, and pay him to spew it. You hypocrisy speaks for itself. Nothing better than a criminals own words, to prove he is a criminal.

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    10. Anonymous, I didn't figure you could carry on a rational and civil discussion for any length of time.

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    11. Not when you just lie and make shit up. But that is your proven reputation. I expect nothing else, and you never let me down.

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    12. TbT says, "Gun grabbers portray average armed citizens as bumbling idiots who become hysterical and all thumbs, incapable of doing anything meaningful or effective. And then they go on to portray spree killers as calm, cool, collective cyborgs rivaling the skills and prowess of elite special forces military personnel."

      The first part is wrong because we don't say ALL gun owners are "bumbling idiots who become hysterical and all thumbs, incapable of doing anything meaningful or effective." But, we do recognize that too many of you are just that. You're the ones who deny the obvious.

      The second part is completely wrong. Your side often describes the spree killers as "calm, cool, collective cyborgs rivaling the skills and prowess of elite special forces military personnel." How many times have we heard that Lanza would have been just as effective if he'd had to change mags 15 times instead of 5? That's the big argument against magazine capacity limitations, that the killers are so skilled that it would make no difference.

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  4. This is a classic example of a strawman argument. Gun grabbers claim that a citizen's right to own and possess a firearm depends on how effective the armed citizen would be when facing a spree killer. It doesn't matter how effective an armed citizen would or would not be when facing a spree killer. It is every citizen's unalienable right to be armed if they choose, for whatever reason they choose, regardless of how effective they may or may not be at stopping a spree killer.

    A single person holding a sign as a protest in front of the White House is guaranteed to be ineffective. Does that mean we can criminalize that act of free speech? And motorists passing by may examine the sign and crash because they took their eyes off of the road. Does that mean we can criminalize that act of free speech?

    -- TruthBeTold

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    1. As usual you mis-characterize what "gun grabbers" claim. Most of us have no problem with qualified and responsible people owning and using guns. Iif you were the least bit honest, you'd admit that too many of the so-called lawful gun owners today are not qualified and responsible. This could easily be corrected, with little or no inconvenience to you.

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  5. Yep, it's the old "a right that [subjectively] won't work automatically becomes null and void" argument. Applied to the first amendment it goes, "you have no right to petition your grievance because we're not going to listen to it."

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