Diane Sawyer rigs mass shooting experiment on 20/20

Do you think it's a good idea to be armed during a mass shooting? Diane Sawyer and the producers of ABC's 20/20 aren't so sure. In fact, on Friday, April 10, 2009, Sawyer spent a full hour trying desperately to prove how dangerous guns are and how ordinary people can't possibly defend themselves with firearms. The show's snarky title: "If I Only Had A Gun."

Slanted information filled the report, seemingly pulled from the press releases of the Brady Campaign, with not a single dissenting opinion. The most egregious slight of hand was a rigged experiment that struggled to show why having a gun would do you no good in a Virginia Tech style mass shooting.

The scenario played out in a classroom filled with ABC employees and police posing as students. At the far end sat the "victim," a young, wide-eyed man whose experience consisted primarily of shooting pop cans with an Airsoft gun in his back yard.

Everyone in the room wore a large, protective helmet, bulky gloves, and a white shirt to show "hits" from paint-filled rounds. The victim carried a Glock in a belt holster. To add "realism" to the scene, the show producers instructed all the other students to scream, run, and panic.

The experiment started as the students sat listening to a lecture about protective gear. The victim had been told the experiment would be later in the day, but the armed "shooter" entered the room suddenly and calmly proceeded to shoot the lecturer then turned and immediately aimed at the victim. As the other students ran and screamed on cue, the young man fumbled with the Glock, getting it caught in his shirt and taking a hit to the head and chest.

The show's conclusion? Having a gun doesn't protect you. Ordinary people aren't trained to handle stress. You might shoot innocent people. The bad guy might take your gun from you.

So having a gun is pointless, right? Well, hold on. Let's take a closer look at that experiment.

The victim wore a helmet and bulky gloves. Obviously there was a safety issue, so the helmet is understandable. But why the gloves? They appeared too large. They certainly made drawing and firing a handgun far more difficult than it should be. I've run through scenarios similar to this and never wore gloves. Hits sting, but they don't hurt.

The victim carried an unfamiliar gun and holster. Is that the gun he would have actually carried? Is that the holster he would have used? The video showed the holster placed in an awkward position and at a difficult angle, not likely the way the young man would have carried the gun in real life.

The victim had to draw from concealment under a long shirt. Is this the shirt he would really wear? Did he receive any instruction on drawing from a holster, with gloves, from that oddly placed holster, from beneath that long shirt? We'll never know, but the video didn't show any training beyond a little ordinary target practice at short range . The shooter knew there was an armed student in the classroom. This is a big error in the experiment. What mass shooter would enter a room where he knew there was someone with a gun to shoot back?

The shooter shot the lecturer first, then turned directly to the young man and began firing. How convenient it was for the shooter to know who was armed and where he was sitting so he could quickly take out the one and only threat in the room.

The shooter knew he could be fired at, but showed no surprise at the sight of a gun. The experiment was repeated with other "victims" under the same circumstances and not once did the shooter react in surprise. In real life, a shooter won't expect any resistance and is likely to react when shot at. The shooter was a professional firearm instructor and a good shot under stress. Not exactly realistic, since real mass murderers are usually just insane people with guns.

In other words, this experiment was rigged. The armed student was set up to fail.

Let's be clear. A real violent encounter will be confusing and terrifying. It's likely you'll make mistakes. Every competent firearm instructor will tell you this. But Sawyer acted as if stress reactions such as narrowed vision and loss of fine motor control were frightening revelations and proof that guns are useless in a violent encounter.

Worse, this experiment says little about carrying a concealed weapon other than Diane Sawyer and her crew mistakenly think it's a bad idea. In real life, the shooter won't expect you to be armed. He won't know who or where you are. He'll be surprised when you start shooting back. You won't be hampered by gloves or a helmet or a situation designed to get you killed. There are no guarantees. But carrying a gun CAN level the playing field with an active shooter.

And what did Sawyer suggest you do instead of carry a gun? Carry a cell phone. That's right. A CELL PHONE. Yes, you'll fumble with a gun and get yourself killed in five seconds. But somehow you'll have plenty of time to draw a phone, dial 911 with your fine motor control intact, and calmly chat with a dispatcher while waiting 10 or 20 minutes for authorities to arrive, set up a base of operations, and try to figure out how to save you without getting themselves killed.

Did Sawyer talk to anyone who thought carrying a gun was a good idea? No. Did she consider any statistics about how often ordinary people defend themselves with a gun? No. Did she get a statement from the NRA, a police officer, an instructor, or a citizen with even a hint that a gun might possibly give you an advantage? No. She didn't even bother to talk to John Stossel, a fellow reporter whose office is down the hall at ABC, reports for 20/20, and has debunked anti-gun propaganda on many occasions.

What should we conclude? Was this a deliberate attempt to hide the truth? Or was it yet another display of ignorance on the part of the elite media? Does it matter? It was a poorly executed experiment that delivered a half truth at best, a lie at worst.

Do I think it's a good idea to be armed during a mass shooting? Yes. Because even if I make every mistake in the book under stress, I'd rather have a small chance than no chance. And frankly, if I'm going to get killed, I don't want it to be for lack of shooting back.

And maybe - just maybe - if the media stopped telling people that passivity is a survival strategy and started telling people that aggressive resistance might save you, perhaps we'd see fewer mass shootings. Why? For the same reason mass shootings seldom happen in police stations. The sick, cowardly lunatics who do these shootings want soft targets and a high body count. The fewer soft targets, the fewer mass shootings.

Don't forget that when they tested the young man who was the most skilled and who got the most shots into the body of the shooter, the rigged it even further by placing a "second gunmen" right NEXT to him in the seating area, who shot at him from the side. "You're dead", they told him, even though there would never be a second shooter in such situations. Without that cheating, and even with all the other handicaps (gloves, helmet, long shirt, unfamiliar holster) that young man would still have "killed" the gunman. But that would have negated the propaganda, so of course ABC had to cheat.

Then Miss Dianne had to make the show into a total farce, by showing the brother of a VT massacre victim going to a gun show and buying guns, and then showing how he is working "tirelessly" to defeat the gun show loophole, even though the VT gunman bought his gun in a GUN STORE WITH A BACKGROUND CHECK! Unbelievable propaganda.

Anyone falling for that propaganda probably needs a bit of education in several areas prior to conducting concealed carry.

BTW, I saw that P.O.C. propaganda piece. That is one simple minded commie b***h.

How convenient it was for the shooter to know who was armed and where he was sitting so he could quickly take out the one and only threat in the room.

Consider that in a real situation, the armed person that would be taken out would any law Enforcement Officers – those would be the persons that would be armed and that would be taken out first.

That's why CCW holders are a deterrent – shooters wouldn't know if they were present or not.

Of course, if it were one of those Idiotic 'Gun-free' zones, the shooter would know this from the get go.

while waiting 10 or 20 minutes for authorities to arrive, set up a base of operations, and try to figure out how to save you without getting themselves killed

More like 90 minutes. The cops generally show up, set up a perimeter, and wait until the gunfire stops and things have been quiet for a good long time before they start to think about possibly entering the scene.

In quite a few of these recent mass-shootings, people who perhaps could have been saved instead bled to death while waiting for help from the authorities already on the scene, after the shooter was already down and dead.

Reminds me of the video on the NRA website about CNN rigging their story on assault rifles and showing fully automatic weapons instead of semis.

When Wayne called them on it, they bimbo got all defensive saying they would never do such a thing. Two days later they retracted the story.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out at the NRA website. It’s a classic.

Next up, take away Home Fire Extinguishers like they did in England.

Are you series? What, did they think they were potential weapons? They've disarmed their masters and now they want to take away anything that might allow the ingenuity of their masters to defeat their overstepping outrages? They would actually rather allow peoples' houses to burn down than to allow them the natural right of self defense?

Yes, when I first read that I thought it was a parody out of “The Onion”,

But here's the link:

Extinguishers banned as a fire safety hazard

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=115014&in_page_id=34

Apparently they're afraid independently minded people will fight a fire instead of calling in the government to help and put themselves in danger or something.

Sort of like defending yourself from the criminals.....

Exactly - this is also reminiscent of the old Dateline NBC scam where they were trying to demonstrate that a certain model of pickup truck had fuel tanks that were prone to rupture and explode during an accident, but when they originally staged such an accident, the truck did not cooperate and explode. So the Dateline NBC producers and 'reporter' "helped" it along by strapping a burning incendiary device to the fuel tanks, which had the desired effect. Of course they never mentioned that part during their 'reporting'...

As for the shooter knowing in advance exactly where the armed "victim" would be sitting, of course that is rigged. Did 20/20 also conclude from their phony experiment that armed air marshals aboard commercial aircraft can not possibly be effective against would-be hijackers? If not, why not? The situations would seem to have much in common with hijacking scenarios, except that presumably the hijackers would not know in advance exactly who or where the air marshal(s) would be... (although presumably the air marshal(s) would have more training than just backyard airsoft, but then the CCW holders that I know do as well)...

IMO, Diane Sawyer gets up every morning thinking that all of us ‘unwashed peasants’ are not to be trusted, and that she and only she and her cohorts have a grasp on what is happening every day in the world, and America in particular.

They all are ‘news snobs’, just because they might get some info slightly before we get it after it has passed thru her filters.

I don’t trust a word out of her mouth, and ABC is no longer a network I look at near as often as I used to.

or Diane could have read an actual emperical study:

Multiple Victim Public Shootings

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272929

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.