Colorado is a “right to carry” State.
*** Had but one - ONE - citizen in the the theater been lawfully armed, this tragedy could have been avoided.***
I doubt that. He had on body armor head to toe. An armed citizen shooting back might have shook him up so he might have missed a few. Now, if the citizen had a .30 Tokarev or a FN 5.7 mm he might have gotten through some of the armor.
Good article.
Cinemark needs to be sued into the ground. Only way they’re going to get the message about their act of reckless endangerment.
It might have helped, but consider the guy had ballastic armor over most of his body. It would have required a face/head shot to take him down - very difficult for a hand gun in a dark/smokey theatre with chaos ensuing around you. Still, getting hit by return fire could have thrown the guy into a panic of his own and caused him to retreat earlier than he did.
“Take notice that these crimes do not happen in Right-to-Carry states, such as Texas...”
Yes they do. A simple web search would tell you otherwise.
The proper point to make is that violent crime is indeed lower and there is a better chance that a gunman’s shooting spree will be cut short in a right to carry state, but saying they don’t happen is just plain wrong.
Except for that, nice rant.
Ironically, when unarmed citizens are rendered helpless because of restrictive gun laws as in the Aurora outrage, the gun control lobby seizes upon it as evidence that the citizenry needs even more restrictive gun laws. In the mean time, criminals, oblivious to gun laws, continue to arm themselves to prey upon defenseless victims.
AMEN.
How did he get an AR in there?.....all that garb he had on? I think overal length has to be 26”.
Posted on another site:
Why did the shooter choose a place where the people had no means to defend themselves?
I’m a Police Officer in North Dakota. I carry off-duty every day. Do I believe in gun control? To an extent, yes. Do I believe that people should still be allowed to purchase and carry concealed firearms? Yes. Do I believe that it would have changed the outcome of this at all? No.
In a dark theater, I doubt even I would be able to pinpoint who the shooter was, what with all the panicked people running around me, trying to get out. If I did return fire, with people everywhere, I’m just as likely to hit a civilian as I am the shooter. I would have drawn my firearm, but I wouldn’t have tried to shoot back, save for a contact shot if he came close enough for me to do so. I would have run for the exit with everyone else, and tried to push as many people out as I could.
Now, lets add tear gas, which our shooter also used, to this mess. I’ve been tear gassed before. It sucks. You go blind, and you start choking almost immediately. I could barely say my name or date of birth, and that was after 10 seconds of exposure. It took 20 minutes for me to recover. While choking on that shit, I guarantee I wouldn’t have been able to locate any one person in particular in a crowd.
Ruy Dias de Bivar mentioned that if you shot him in the “head, neck, legs, crotch, arms...” it would have stopped him. Picture this:
It’s in a dark theater. The only light present is that from the projector. It’s a midnight showing of a major movie, so the theater is packed with people. Now, they’re all running around, trying to escape someone shooting. The room is full of gas that’s causing you to choke, and your eyes to burn. He has a rifle. You have a pistol. You have to hit him in small, highly mobile areas such as the head, neck, or arms (possibly groin, depending on the type of body armor he had). What are your chances of hitting him in one of those highly specific areas, and not hit a single civilian?
Not odds I’d like to take.
You are either incredibly stupid or so-brainwashed that you can't think rationally. Do you really think that "one" person sitting on the opposite side of a crowded theater, 25 to 30 yards away, with a .380, 9 mm,.40, or even the over-idolized .45 could have taken out a shooter wearing body amour in a surprise attack in near darkness, without killing or wounding innocent people? One lawfully armed person would not have stopped this unless he or she was in close proximaty to the shooter and had the training or natural skillsets to assess, analyze, and respond effectively under battle conditions. Indeed, I'm willing to bet there were concealed carry people in the theater who either panicked and ran or didn't have the skills or oppurtunity to safely take this guy down.
This is not an argument against CCW, but rather, I am attacking the all or nothing stupidity that seems to dominate these discussions. Rather than arguing absolutes (i.e., if "ONE" person had been lawfully armed), the better approach is for almost everyone to be lawfully armed and trained to react in a crisis situation (think Israel). If a person doesn't want to be armed and trained, then he or she should pay a tax, similar to the Obamacare tax for failing to buy health insurance.
My point is that you don't help our cause by being the drama queen. Not every life or death crisis can be stopped by "one" person with a CCW permit.
I would not feel comfortable firing at the assailant in a smoke-filled room.
Thes echain thetaers are all too intent to fleece you out of every cent of your money.
We have a very new multiplex where I live, they have a very nice front multiple ticket purchase booth out front, but they rarely use it.
They funnel the crowds instead to the refreshment stand to buy their tickets and then are asked several times if they want to purchase anything else.
I refuse to buy anything but the movie ticket and I tell them up front I simply do not have sufficient funds to purchase their theater priced candy, drinks or popcorn.
And the actual theaters are minimal manned if even that since films have mostly gone bye bye and its almost all digital
Welcome to the new era of theaters, you must buy what we sell, and we don’t care if you get shot.
I am slightly surprised some internet keyboard junkie hasn’t suggest placing snipers up in the control rooms with NVGs to take out anyone possibly doing the same thing.
And I bet in Israel they actually do have people there with just that in mind. Security in the theater.
But it all comes down to the people. Its the society, its the flawed dangerous leadership of a flawed ideology that created theses splinter groups and mostly for supporting them..
They support anything that helps their agenda whether they knew ahead of time it was going to happen.
And now Obama wants to hold hands with the victims, he has NEVER held hands with victims, these people he plans on visiting will be used as a political tools.
Look, pal, the Swiss who we like to endlessly repeat are armed to the teeth, and have to practice their arm handling skills yearly (a constitutional requirement there, like, oh, Obamacare’s health insurance requirement here) don’t go and don’t have to go to movie theaters and supermarkets carrying AK-47s as many here suggest we all do.
Maybe that was before "right to carry" became popular...
I can watch the same movie on my 70” TV in my living room courtesy of Dish Network shortly after its grand opening in big cities, and sooner than it will appear on my local theater's screen. I don't have to drive 300 miles to Aurora, CO.
If I am worried about being shot, I can surround myself with my entire collection of two shotguns, a rifle, two revolvers, and one semi-automatic pistol.