Posted on 04/10/2009 12:43:14 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
America is facing an epidemic of gun violence.
Thirteen people were killed last week in Binghamton, N.Y., when a gunman, identified by authorities as 41-year-old Jiverly Wong, executed a mass shooting at the American Civic Association. The aftermath of that bloodshed has raised many questions, including whether armed, everyday citizens could take down such a gunman and save lives. Could you protect yourself if you only had a gun?
There are 250 million guns in the United States, enough for almost every man, woman and child to arm themselves. The FBI performed 12 million gun-related background checks in 2008, according to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. And with more than 50 deaths resulting from mass shootings in the past month alone, the argument for ordinary citizens arming themselves in schools, workplaces and anywhere else continues to grow.
But if teachers at Colorado's Columbine High School or the students and faculty of Virginia Tech University had concealed or open-carry permits, range training and loaded handguns mixed with their school supplies, could they have taken down men armed to the teeth, ready to die and acting under the element of surprise?
Watch "If I Only Had a Gun" tonight on a special edition of "20/20" at 10 p.m. ET
Some, like the group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, which claims to have more than 38,000 members, think it would at least give people a better chance to survive.
Matt Guzman, leader of the advocacy group's Texas chapter, said that an armed student or citizen might even be more effective in taking down a gunman than law enforcement.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Wouldn’t necessarily get you out of a shooting, but it will enormously increase your odds of being on the winning side!
Seat belts won’t guarantee that you will survive a car crash.
Helmets won’t guarantee that you survive a motorcycle crash.
Low cholesterol won’t guarantee that you live to age 90.
Smoke detectors won’t guarantee that you will walk out of a fire.
But, they sure do help!
Same thing for carrying a gun.
Gun owners should know what they are doing while carrying.
How many BS articles is ABC spewing today trying to promote their Clintonista era rerun tonight ?
If they ban my Hicaps and EBR’s today I just wait till that law is repealed tomorrow......aka 2010 !
Maybe they need to read the webster definition of “criminal” again. They did follow laws yesterday and they won’t tomorrow. Kind of like Presstitutes and Polidiots !
Doom on em all !.......
> Barf? I read that story, and it was one of the few good things I’ve seen regarding guns from ABC.
I agree — I thought it was a very good article.
> Wouldn’t necessarily get you out of a shooting, but it will enormously increase your odds of being on the winning side!
You think? What stops you from being misidentified as “The Shooter” and gunned down by somebody else who is also carrying a gun?
I think it’s a huge assumption that hasn’t really been put to the test.
***Could you protect yourself if you only had a gun? ***
There is nothing worse than knowing you are near death with no way to fight back.
If you survive you will always have the survivor’s guilt of knowing you could have “taken” him if you had not obeyed the law and left your gun at home.
Guns are not violent, people are violent!
Be Ever Vigilant!
That doesn't mean you shouldn't have one, dumbass liberals.
A gun may not get you out of a shooting, but you have a lot better chance of being alive after the shooting.
>>The article very accurately describes adrenaline dump (tunnel vision, loss of fine motor skills) and raises an excellent question about whether carrying a handgun would help the average person thru a shooting crisis.<<
This is why a person’s choice of handgun needs to be based on how much dedication they will put into it. If you buy a gun with the intention of “load and forget”, you need a revolver. It’s better than nothing, because if your motor skills are too degraded to shoot a revolver, you sure won’t be able to dial a cell phone, use pepper spray, or a knife, or any other weapon.
(I’m not implying that a revolver is only “better than nothing”. I mean that a revolver plus no practice or training is better than nothing. I love revolvers! I carry one for defense and I have a safe full of semi-autos at home. I stopped a knife-wielding mugger with a revolver.)
And a student has a much quicker ability to locate the threat than a LEO coming in cold.
Remember "This is a Glock 40. I am the only one here professional enough to... BANG."?
"The Shooter" is a stranger that walks around and shoots everywhere. He is likely to have two handguns, or a rifle or a shotgun. He is not hiding.
"You" are someone who is hiding behind some furniture and shooting a handgun at the shooter.
If the difference between the two is not obvious, don't shoot. This rule always applies: "Be sure of your target and what is in front of and beyond your target."
If the incident happens in an office or any place where people know each other (like maybe a smaller church) then chances of misidentification are even smaller.
But if despite all of that your 3rd person makes a judgement mistake and tries to shoot you ... well, chances of that are still lower than chances of a determined madman to eventually find you and kill you. There is no guaranteed way to walk out of such situation; you can only talk about probabilities. If none of the victims are armed then their probability of survival is about zero. Anything that improves that is a plus.
The amount of training required by government is cursory at best.
Whether states require this minimal training, or not, it is incumbent upon the individual gun owner to learn and practice on his/her own, and then to maintain this throughout their lifetime.
We don't need, or WANT, government to tell what we have to do to exercise our 2nd Amendment rights, and to exercise individual responsibility.
I would also say that MANY of us, particularly those of us that have been shooting since we were young, and/or that were in the military for any length of time, are likely BETTER trained than the average police officer that has done neither of those two things.
In short, FU government bureaucrats, and your silly-ass tax collection schemes (requiring law-abiding citizens to PAY to exercise their 2nd Amendment RIGHTS).
And having smoke alarms wouldn’t necessarily save you from a house fire.
> (I’m not implying that a revolver is only “better than nothing”. I mean that a revolver plus no practice or training is better than nothing. I love revolvers! I carry one for defense and I have a safe full of semi-autos at home. I stopped a knife-wielding mugger with a revolver.)
Before I emigrated to New Zealand, I owned a few guns. I preferred revolvers to semiautomatics because I was much more accurate with them, usually. I could work the hammer with my left thumb and the trigger with my right forefinger and never flinch. I felt less in control with a semiautomatic, even tho’ shooting them was “easier”. And I was way less accurate and I did flinch.
I believe it is a really big assumption that having a room full of armed people would stop an armed perpetrator from racking up a large bodycount. I’m not saying it would or it wouldn’t — but I am saying it is an untested assumption. I do not know whether your odds are better if armed or unarmed. It is an untested assumption that your odds are better armed.
But what if you are armed and get mistaken for the Perpetrator, the Shooter? Suddenly you have a dozen-or-so bullets to dodge from the other armed citizens — REAL FAST. Your chances of survival just dropped a fair bit. As they say in the Army, “friendly fire isn’t.”
And what about all the bullets that are likely to be flying around, while everyone is trying to hit the Shooter? It would be nice if they all found their target accurately, and stopped in the Shooter’s body. But we all know that doesn’t happen in real life. And in an enclosed room, what is the likelihood of there being lead flying all over the place?
I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be safer finding cover somewhere and getting down real low — snake-height or lower — and leaving the firefight to those who want it.
I don’t know: it’s all an untested assumption. That is why the ABC’s show would be interesting to watch. Like I said, I wish we could receive it here in NZ. I’d be interested to hear from anyone who does watch it, see how it all turns out.
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