Posted on 07/20/2012 8:46:30 AM PDT by drbuzzard
“Headquartered in Plano, TX, Cinemark Holdings, Inc. is a leader in the motion picture exhibition industry with 459 theatres and 5,181 screens in the U.S. and Latin America as of March 31, 2012,” their website reports. Cinemark owns the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, scene of last night’s mass shooting. Cinemark doesn’t allow anyone other than law enforcement officers to carry legal firearms in their theaters.
(more at the site)
The cops were there in minutes ... when seconds count.
The fact remains—allowing trained citizens to carry guns will decrease gun violence.
Israel allows citizens to carry weapons for a very simple reason: because they know what works.
Policies like this thankfully prevent such from happening...
In disarming its customers, Cinemark assumed responsibility for their safety and protection. Cinemark is liable. Of course the argument will be that Cinemark didn’t force its patrons to go there, armed or otherwise, but people need to hold their feet to the fire. The world is too dangerous for businesses to have these backwards polices that prevent citizens from being able to defend themselves. Anti firearms laws have always been useless when it comes to stopping crime, but in a more genteel age, before the cultural revolution, businesses could get away with that kind of silliness. In this age of pop culture, violence and leftist lunacy, people need to be armed.
Tell you what ... you stay unarmed and be a target. I’ll stay armed and not be. That’s my common sense.
???
It’s way too early to guess what this creep would have done.
However, you don’t get a much “softer” target than a dark theatre full of people engrossed in a movie, especially when you first choke them with gas and are yourself dressed in black with body armor on.
Firing randomly, as he did, is easy. First finding your weapon, then finding the dark perp and aiming in the chaos is a tall order and one that would have put more people in danger in the crossfire..
Best thing to do in this situation was to hit the floor between the seats and call 911.
Sorry—that was a reference to all the movies that show couples getting it on........
True and i’m not at all trying to make a case against the right to carry guns. Just that it wouldn’t be an easy situation in a presumably dark theater, gun or no gun, to defend yourself or to stop the killer from killing others. Now if it had taken place in the brightly lit lobby of the movie theater, that would be different. Anyway, my only intention to speculate what would have happened if someone in the theater was actually carrying a gun last night. In my opinion, in this specific case, it probably wouldn’t have helped unless Jack Bauer was there.
Ok, I suppose you can assume CCW holders are scatterbrained morons willing to take a shot even if they don’t really have a target. However I know what I would do, and how much I practice. If I don’t have a target, I don’t shoot.
My main concern really in thinking about the situation would be that I did take a shot, and wasted it on the body armor because I didn’t know it was there and then he’d unload on me. Then it would come down to me being a fool bringing a pistol to a rifle fight.
Now I do fully admit the dirtbag was a crafty one, but at least a CCW present might have improved the situation. Not like it could have been a whole lot worse.
If the gas in the theater was truly tear gas, you would be in zero condition to do anything about it. A well armed, gas-mask equipped, body-armor wearing assailant against even a theater full of CCW permit holders suffering from tear gas is going to be able to kill with almost total impunity.
Or maybe you could.
Sure. All those poor folk needed was crossfire in the dark.
Wish I knew how to post that face palm photo.
Let's look at a few facts:
It is never completely dark in a theater; there are dimmed overhead and/or floor lights, plus the movie itself adds light most of the time.
Unless someone had just entered the theater, their eyes would have adjusted to the dark and they would be able to see at least as well as the shooter (and likely better, given that he was wearing a gas mask).
The shots fired produce a muzzle flash; I would have no problem shooting at/very near to a muzzle flash, presuming that no one was in the way.
I have a Crimson Trace Laser Grip on my carry gun, which allows for VERY precise shot placement; ANY person (at least in Texas, and I presume elsewhere) who passes the CHL course has it drilled into their head that you only point a weapon (let alone fire it) at a target that you want to be destroyed (aside from the sheer common sense of the thing). An aimed shot at a relatively close distance by a trained CHL holder whose weapon has a properly sighted-in CTLG has virtually no chance of hitting an innocent by-stander (at least directly, no one can tell what will happen if the bullet passes through the perp's body).
In short, a responsible shooter could have EASILY downed this guy, and it would have been worth it to have had someone do it if it saved only one life. On top of that, I rather doubt that the evil perp would've bothered to show up armed if he knew that there might be 5 or 10 people present who could shoot back. But, this nation (as personified by you) has continually refused to understand that victim-disarmament zones ATTRACT sickos like this shooter, and that places with armed people generally don't experience this kind of incident (how many psycho shooters attack a police station, a gun show or the NRA convention?).
depends on state law.
either way cinemark is finished.
Yeah, this is certainly true. The dirtbag really did plan this one well.
Though I will still say that the sign banning firearms served no useful purpose, nor would it ever.
BS ... I know EXACTLY where my weapon is and I can see his muzzle flash. If he comes close and I have a shot I will take it. The target would not be so soft if 5-6 CCW holders
had their weapons with them. Thinking that the prep wouldn’t think twice about attacking an group of probably armed people instead of a group of probably NOT armed people is just plain stupid.
I lived in Texas for a decade but had to return to NC due to family responsibilities before the CHL laws were enacted, and I still consider myself more Texan (Texan By Choice!) than Tarheel since my native North Carolina has devolved seriously into the socialist orbit.
I have been gratified by the progress that Texas has made in the area of gun rights, but that said, how do you reconcile or justify the moral and ethical hypocrisy of Texas' "double-standard" CHL system? Why should judges, lawyers, et al. be entitled to a "better" CHL which offers more protection than the rest of their fellow citizens?
Ahem... indeed...
“Best thing to do in this situation was to hit the floor between the seats and call 911.”
Yeah, because waiting to get shot in the back of the head is so much fun...
I’ve been in tear gas. Not fun, but not impossible to get a shot off at close range. Hit in the leg, the gunman would have had limited mobility and more might have been able to escape. And at close range - 5-10 feet, particularly if he has turned to shoot someone - a head shot is very possible. At 5 feet, easy.
Don't be an idiot...
We also have the good sense to know that guns aren’t the answer to all problems, and that they wouldn’t have stopped what happened in Colorado last night but would probably have resulted in more casualties. . . .
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Well, you may be right, if many of the people there had a gun there would probably been at least one more casualty.
It is much more difficult for a person to shoot randomly when he is being shot at.
There is a problem in that the guy was wearing black in a dark theater and there was tear gas. I don’t care how tough a guy you are you won’t last long in tear gas you will be blinded very quickly and lose control, the only think that would have helped would have been to tear the mask off the perp. If a couple of shooters could have gotten his attention and one brave soul torn off the mask it would have been over.
Gotta hand it to the perp, he came up with an effective plan. I just don’t think there is any way you can stop all people from doing bad things if they are willing to throw away their own lives. Suicide bombers and shooters are going to take their toll, we just can’t stop them all.
Why do you think the Israeli government allow West Bank and Gaza Strip residents to carry guns?
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