Technical training is only one of the skills needed in an emergency. Otherwise, cops wouldn’t need any more training than civilian gun owners. But of course, they do. And survival instinct is not a substitute for judgment, experience, training, and cool thinking.
It all seems so simple, doesn’t it? Just have the good guy pull out his gun and kill the bad guy. Unfortunately, these situations are far far far more complex than that, not the least of which complexities is the fog of war. A cop comes onto a shooting scene. There are 10 guys shooting. In that moment, how does the cop know which one is the bad guy? Who does he shoot?
Let me get this straight - if someone has a CCP and has functional, loaded gun on him AND if someone else in the room or building he is in is walking around killing people, then the person with a gun should: 1) behave like a helpless victim (all the rage today it seems) and not try to stop the shooter by shooting back or 2) stand there and just get shot like the others, all the while hoping the professionals arrive before too many people get killed.
And the above is to be considered a learned, logical approach and argument? Wow!
Of course, the alternative to going down like a helpless victim without a fight and without trying to save people is 3) fire back at the gunman and try to save some lives, possibly including your own.
It does not require high power analysis to find an answer to this silly idea of leaving it to the arrival of professionals, as people around you get killed.
Need only to ask three simple questions, which are answered by 100% of mass shootings.
Question 1: How many civilians among the dead were ever found to have died while having a gun on them?
Answer 1: None that I can find in any of the mass shootings. And I do not recall that being mentioned in any mass shooting ever, i.e., that armed civilians were killed. In short, all civilians killed were unarmed.
Question 2: What is the only way these mass shooters have ever been stopped, besides running out of ammo?
Answer 2: Mass shooters stop when they realize another person with a gun is in the vicinity and has the capability to shoot back. And in 95%+ of cases, the shooter then kills himself and DOES NOT fight it out. Therefore, being able to fire back a shot or two has proved enough to stop the vast majority of mass shooters in their tracks.
Question 3: Are there examples of armed civilians who effectively stop a shooter intent on killing?
Answer 3: Too many examples to list. Here are a few:
Bottom line - Mass shooters do not want a fight. What they want are victims who decide to rollover and leave it to the professionals. The absence of professionals is the time window they use to do their killing. And, most importantly, they depend on the learned helplessness of people to NOT defend themselves in order to kill as many as possible.
I know several hundred and we all train. It is a requirement.
But, even if untrained, this standby and get shot logic still befuddles me.
Hum…an untrained person with a gun trying to shoot / stop a gunman and who has a chance to succeed in saving lives is worse than standing there and voluntarily being killed?! If thinking like this is not the height of stupidity, I do not know what is.
aw,
The basic training required to get a concealed carry permit probably varies from state to state, and the degree of extra training that anyone pursues to be able to know how to best react in an emergency/crisis situation is likely an individual choice.
I can’t think of any proposed legislation that would prevent women who want to buy guns from buying them. I don’t see any effort to reverse CCW laws in states that have them.
The “common sense” gun control legislation that astonishingly failed to get through Congress after the Sandy Hook massacre would not have interfered one iota with any law-abiding citizen’s ability to buy a gun for protection.
As I recall, what was discussed was universal background checks for all gun sales, no loopholes. And a ban on the sale of assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.
Those laws if enacted do not interfere with self protection. So why the vehement opposition of the NRA crowd as though the proposals involved a ban on all gun sales and confiscation of private property?
A waiting period and background check for all gun sales, some extra paperwork, not having an assault weapon in the house ---- why is this too much to ask when it could potentially save some lives?
Well, isn’t it obvious then? Not only should we all be packing, but we (and our kindergarters) should all be wearing body armor! Silly us, we just aren’t well enough prepared.
Very possibly a hoax, but this is from the FBI for Monday, Oct 5th:
[quote]
Out of an abundance of caution, the FBI Philadelphia Field Office notified local colleges and universities of a social media posting which threatened violence at a Philadelphia-area college or university for Monday, October 5.
No specific college or university was identified in the posting. We encourage students, faculty, and employees at area colleges and universities to follow the guidance of their campus security officials.
The FBI will continue to work with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to investigate threats of violence, and, as always, we ask the public to report suspicious activity to law enforcement.[\quote]
A number of colleges put something out on the pages, but the news story I read used this example: "Drexel University alerted their students and staff of the threat in a post on their Public Safety page.
“Although the FBI has assured us there is no specific threat to a particular college or university, we are taking this very seriously and are taking extra precautions to protect the Drexel community,” a Drexel University official wrote. "
They get enough “training” to be informed of firearm laws and to reduce the chances of them accidentally shooting themselves or others. That’s about it.
Yes, it does apply to police and other security personnel.
Therefore, not surprisingly, the conditions supporting a successful defense with a gun actually favors someone with a CCP, not the police.
As one learns in CCP training classes, over 90% of gunfire exchange occurs within 15 feet. And outside of that range, most people miss - yes, this includes police as well, as they too often miss beyond 15 feet. More importantly, within 15 feet the police success hit rate is no better than the standard CCP holder.
And in contrast to the absolutely false “All hail to the professional” meme on this thread, beyond 15 feet, standard police has a lower successful hit rate than the standard CCP holder. This is because, statistically, accuracy beyond 15 feet diminishes very rapidly and requires much more training than the standard police receives to improve upon. However, the standard CCP holder tends to go to the range to practice more than the police and thus is often sharper in aim at longer distances.
If you doubt what I am saying, knock yourself out by reading some of the International Police and Science Management Journal. Alternatively, you could take a complete CCP training classes, and you will learn similar.
And the shooting (mass and otherwise) data bears this out. Of the shootings that were stopped by CCP-holding civilians, the civilians were in very close proximity to the shooter, which is extremely difficult for police to achieve upon arriving on the scene. Police, by training, are defensive and they stand back, for their own safety.
However, a person with a CCP is often already close to the shooter (or not recognized as a threat by the shooter) and the shooter is unawares, thus, the higher success rate of stopping the shooter by a CCP holder simply because the shooter is not expecting it.
Alas, a CCP holder must be present for the above to be the case. But when they are present, CCP holders have proved extremely successful in stopping shooters because those who drew their weapon have successfully stopped shooters. In fact, I do not know one example of a failed attempt by a CCP holder to stop a random shooter. One may exist, but never head of it. But a failure or two is irrelevant given the many successful stoppages CCP holders have.
Therefore, all this fear of CCP holders is made up nonsense, as it is impossible to count the number of lives CCP holders have saved. But, it is a lot of lives given the thousands of rounds of ammo the combined dead shooters had on them, which they were successfully stopped from using by a CPP holder.
Bottom line - only the truly ignorant about CCP holders and guns think that police and security guards are somehow more accurate and better at responding when faced with danger. A CCP holder within 7 to 15 feet has no significant difference in accuracy and successful hit rate as standard police or security guard and have saved lots more lives than police who notably arrive after the carnage has been done.
Kind of hard to claim you saved many lives when, by definition, you arrive only after the major damage is done. In contrast, many CCP holders can definitely claim they have saved countless lives because they actually stopped thousands of rounds of ammo from being used to kill long before police show up.
Seriously, the absolute ignorance about CCP holders on CC is stunning, especially by people who say they are intellectual and smart.
One of the most amusing things about awc’s bogus defensive gun study is that it reports that guns were used defensively in more than 100% of burglaries where the victims were awake and had a gun. Yep, more than 100% of the time, the gun owner scared off the burglar. How does that work, again?
I live very close to the one in Dearborn Heights. “Responsible gun owner” shot a 19 year old who was KNOCKING on his door asking for help after an accident. The debates about it around here were sickening. She was convicted in the court of (some) public opinion for daring to ask for help as a young black person.
Another hypothetical, since the vet didn’t come under attack. We can’t know what he would have done, or might have done, because it didn’t happen and he didn’t do it. And he said he and others who were armed “felt lucky” that they chose not to get involved. He claimed it was because the swat teams wouldn’t know if he was friend or foe, but how did he know if the swat teams were already there or not, as opposed to whether if he or others had taken swift action to get to the scene (how big was this campus? How far were they?) that they might have been able to be helpful and save lives. Could they have run in that direction and THEN seen if police/swat were already in place. They didnt choose to do that.