You make it sound as if he had real armor. Was that ever established? I don’t recall that. All I remember was that he purchased the vest shown in my earlier picture. They showed a copy of the receipt. He also bought a knife and some other harmless stuff.
Any weapon fired at this guy in the theater might have totally changed his behavior, even if he wasn’t hit. He would have at least been confused and maybe dropped down.
A lot of the time, when confronted with a weapon early on in the attack, self preservation takes effect. Even some suicidal suddenly become infused with self-preservation when a weapon is pointed at them, or rounds fired in their direction.
The Oregan mall episode ended when the shooter saw a CCer with his weapon out, and stopped shooting entirely and fled past people, now leaving them unharmed, as he went to hide and off himself.
A retired LAPD friend who worked the nastiest parts of LA, said that in his experience, such a perp who wore a vest (if he'd worn a decent vest) did it because he was inviting confrontation with law enforcement and wanted to survive, and that these types who shoot because they're crazy NEVER expect citizens to defend themselves, so any CC response probably would have flustered the guy to the point that citizens could disable him and stop him.
Mr Rogers, the thing about shooting steel targets is that unlike paper targets or soft tissue targets, you can really get a very good idea of the difference in loads and impact, as in that video you posted, because the impact is dispersed on the steel. I've shot them at various strength loads with .45 smokeless, .45 black powder, .38, and ladies' popgun .32s, and even the dif between black powder and smokeless is pretty noticeable (black powder gives a real whack .. it's a blast, no pun intended!!). I think the guy in your video is a bit off the mark in trying to prove how small the dif was -- it looked pretty big to me, and would feel pretty big to a guy wearing a BP vest certainly, or even body armor.
Have done some more research and see how off Mr. Rogers REALLY is in claiming a couple of hits from a .45 wouldn't certainly stagger or knock down a guy in a BP vest -- bullet proof vests, should some wacko ever actually get one instead of fake ones as seems to be what actually happens, are not made so the wearer can be impervious to gunfire like IronMan, they're made so that if he gets hit, at least the bullet won't penetrate and kill him. Body armor, which like vests apparently comes in a wide variety of classes and qualities, is a little more likely to make him impervious, but again, the impact of higher velocity hits is severe and is spread out over a large area.
ALL I'M SAYING is that when "experts" come on here lamenting that if the wacko is wearing a real bullet proof vest or body armor that CC defense is useless, are either deliberately lying or idiots. :^)