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 ...
If the government applied the same logic to firearms as it does to all those other cases where doing XXXX will give you a small percentage increase in survival chances, they would require everyone to carry instead of trying to disarm them.
If the odds are that a civilian gun carrier will freeze up the odds would really be low that there would be two civilians bearing guns in a given situation. For the "one good guy shoots another" scenario to occur two of them would have to buck the "freeze-up factor."
The real question is what are your chances for survival and resistance if you're unarmed vs. armed.
“Or even reduce the body count by much. I don’t know whether it would or it wouldn’t: it’s an untested assumption.”
There was a mall shooting in Tacoma, Washington a few years ago. An armed citizen heard shots and walked towards the sound. He came upon the shooter and, IMHO mistakenly told him to drop the gun. (He should have just stayed quite and put a few rounds into the bad guy’s back). The citizen was shot (and is now paralyzed) but his agressive action caused the shooter to stop shooting (6 people wounded) and he fled into a store and was later arrested.
The mall shooting in Utah was stopped by an off duty cop (there with his family having dinner). Granted, the cop has the training that is lacking in so many that carry.
There was the Virginia Law school shooting where a couple of the kids went back to their cars for weapons and stopped the shooter.
ABC’s really kicking this dead dog pretty hard, aren’t they?
That is the bottom line that can't be changed by anything a human being can do. It can't be changed by laws. It can't be changed by being armed or being highly trained. It can't be changed by a police state government. It can't be changed by metal detectors or lead-lined safe rooms.
The possible outcomes are nearly endless and there simply are no guarantees no matter what preventative measures are taken.
> You can’t have it both ways, DieHard. The civilian gun owner can’t both “freeze up from adrenaline rush” and “shoot another good guy.”
Why not? Adrenaline rush stuffs up your fine motor skills — your gross motor skills often work just fine. Why can’t you adrenaline dump, aim poorly and shoot another good guy?
> The real question is what are your chances for survival and resistance if you’re unarmed vs. armed.
I agree. I sure wish I could tune into ABC and see what they have to say: we don’t receive it here in NZ. I won’t necessarily agree with their finding, but it is fascinating that they are examining the subject. I particularly like their simulation scenario: I was a member of a team that used to train executives in Crisis Management using scenario-based experiential learning techniques, so their methodology is particularly interesting to me.
Shooter kills 10 unarmed people
vs
Shooter kills 10 people shooting back at him
I explained that. I was not stating an absolute I was responding to the discussion of 'odds' which is what you and everyone else (from the originating article on down) were talking about. Being a speculation on potential future events, odds are the only relevant thing to discuss.
My point was that your "good guy shoots good guy" scenario pushes the odds up astronomically. Unless the odds of freezing up were never very high to begin with. Your reply misses that point.
> The real question is what are your chances for survival and resistance if you’re unarmed vs. armed.
I agree.
I knew you would if I bludgeoned the point enough. ;^)
Seriously though, I'm sorry you can't view the show. I take your point that they may provide some real and interesting information to ponder. My experience with anything coming from ABC and 20/20 makes me very cynical about the odds that they won't bury anything positive with an overriding anti-gun message.
So: Given a choice of standing at a shooting with your thumb up your butt or shooting back, which would you choose?
No Brainer.
Never show your pistol unless you are going to shoot. It isnt a warning. It is a final resort
But we all know that doesn’t happen in real life.
There you go again trying to have it two ways. Is it an untested assumption or do we all know? FWIW I think history has tested the assumption that unarmed people have a better chance than armed people. Tested it again and again and again.
The Zero chance thing is an assumption in itself. A big one. It might be alot smarter to avoid the firefight and try to escape.
All based on odds and assumptions. If you're sitting in the right place at the right time and have sufficient warning of and understanding of the situation. Assuming your adrenaline dump doesn't cause you to misjudge the situation and hide in the wrong place, freeze up and not hide at all or run headlong into the shooter in your panic. The odds of reacting like a human being don't change because you are unarmed.
Panicked or not being unarmed only reduces your choices of response.
What the anti-gun people never ask themselves is how many murder victims might be alive had they been armed. They focus on all the innocents who were slaughtered by armed nuts but never total the victims who died because they had no weapon. The numbers of people murdered because they had no weapon far outnumbers the people killed in mass shootings. Of course often times it was women who were murdered. On average it’s a lot easier to kill a woman than a man even without a firearm. The moral of the story: more armed women, less dead women.
FACT #1 - Interviews and studies have shown that criminals are more frightened of armed “victims” than police.
FACT #2 - When concealed carry laws are enacted, violent crime rates drop.
FACT #3 - When “hints” pointing out who is unarmed vs who might be armed are available, criminals WILL choose those who they know to be unarmed as their preferred victims. This is the reason that FL passed a law requiring car rental agencies to remove the company stickers from their cars, which effectively targeted visitors to FL as being unarmed.
FACT #4 - Mass shootings and murders are far more common at places known to be “gun free zones.” When’s the last time there was a mass shooting at a rifle range or other place populated by gun owners.
FACT #5 - The vast majority of people who are eligible and capable of getting a CCW permit simply won’t do so. This means that statistically, anyone with a CCW permit will be “protecting” far more people than him or herself. This will limit the number of “good guys” with guns on the scene.
You make an awful lot of assumptions yourself while accusing those who believe in an armed populace of the same. Every month there’s a section in the NRA publication “The American Rifleman” which pulls news items from all over the country where civilians defend themselves from criminals using firearms. There are a number of cases where potential “mass shootings” have been stopped early on by an armed civilian, like the situation in Pearl, MS.
I know that I could have stopped a murder once, had I been armed, and I don’t think that I would have needed to actually kill or even shoot any of the men who beat that woman to death. I think there’s a good chance that my simply holding them at gunpoint would have been enough. And your assumption that someone who’s armed would just “freeze up” and be unable to defend him or herself is simply not born out by the sheer number of cases where people DO successfully defend themselves.
The vast majority of firearms usage in self protection never result in the discharge of the weapon.
And your assumption that “there will be a firefight between the good guys” has as much credence and validity as the “blood flowing in the streets” arguent against concealed carry laws that were screamed in the print media and airwaves before the laws were passed. Firearms are used successfully for protection far more often than in crimes, without firefights breaking out between the “good guys.”
Mark
I suggest that you contact Dr. Suzanna Hupp, who survived a mass shooting at Lubys in Killeen, TX, though she watched both of her parents murdered. She followed TX laws, which allowed her to carry a handgun in her car, but not on her person. So she was unarmed and unable to do anything to protect herself or her parents.
"Playing possum" doesn't work too well when the goblin is walking around the bodies, "making sure" by shooting them in the head, even if they weren't moving.
Mark
The law against carrying was developed to stop dueling, I think. In the old south—I mean before World War II—men took personal insults to heart. Which is why Southern men are more polite than Northerners ;-)
Absolutely. Keep it concealed until you want to shoot.
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