All of what you say makes perfect sense, and it is logical. And I’d even agree with the correctness of the theory.
But it all still relies on alot of assumption: for example, it assumes that everybody who is packing heat is operating in a rational fashion and has the mental presence to think things thru (”do I know that person?” or “who’s behind the shooter?” or “Is Mary-Anne the shooter? Has she flipped out?”).
Actually that last one is a biggie: you’ve assumed that the shooter is someone unknown to everybody else. That wouldn’t have been true in the Virginia Tech case. Who’s to say the shooter isn’t your best mate that you’ve worked with for 20 years?
Please don’t misinterpret me: I believe in your right to keep and bear arms, and I sure wish I had that right here, where I live in NZ.
I do think it is an assumption, tho’, that having everybody armed all the time would necessarily do much to avoid incidents like what happened in New York last week. Or even reduce the body count by much. I don’t know whether it would or it wouldn’t: it’s an untested assumption.
And you know what they say about Assumptions being the Mother of All Stuff-Ups...
I used to think that the guy in the trailer park wasnt responsible enough to carry a gun.
I was wrong. WE ALL have the right to protect ourselves.
Abuse others rights at your peril.
“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.
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