3 high profile mass shootings this week in North America that I know of (Alabama, Ontario, Colorado)… I’m not looking forward to the misguided gun control push. and during an election year too. It might make people feel like something is being done, but it won’t stop one person from snapping and lashing out at society with his gun, knife, car, lighter fluid, computer hacks, etc… what might be the root cause of that, I wonder?
Huh? I didn’t say anything about ordinary citizens. I just said a person wanting to go on a shooting rampage is smart to choose a place like a movie theater (dark, encloses victims) or a school (enclosed victims, virtually guaranteed to be unarmed.)
Um, but yes–you are correct (in your extremely obvious point) that flight response is very powerful. Not everyone responds the same way to life or death stressors, though. The literature is full of a huge range of reactions from both professional soldiers and civilians. My particular career in the Army probably involved a lot more studying and reading of various research and etc than most, so one thing I often find is combat veterans tend to not be very good impartial conveyors of information. Your personal experience is no guide to everyone’s personal experience, and is the definition of anecdote. I’ve been under fire as well, but I would not extrapolate my experience to everyone.
In training for major wars (and I’ve read about the doctrines used in training from the ACW up through the modern era) it’s notable that there are many bad behaviors military training attempts to correct. Some people naturally “freeze”, some naturally flee, some fight, some fight but don’t have the nerve to actually shoot to kill etc. Military training in America at least back to the ACW at least tried to structure people such that a large portion of the soldiers overcame all these natural “faults”, to varying degrees of success.
Some civilians with no training will respond aggressively to being shot at, so that is a real risk I think you’d have to consider if you were going on a “spree killing.”
In general of course even trained soldiers will respond very differently to coming under fire in a civilian scenario versus in a warzone. It’s not really surprising to me it was a police officer (DOD Civilian Cop) at Ft. Hood that ended up taking out Hasan, MPs/Civ Police/etc are more prepared for trouble on base than most. While some at Ft. Hood responded by trying to stop Hasan (throwing chairs at him and etc), a lot of them fell victim to the same fear-born paralysis that overcomes civilians in similar situations.
It’s not their choice if they can’t get hold of one. The only way to get hold of a pistol or automatic rifle here in the UK is if you have the type of underworld connections that James Holmes, Seung-Hui Cho and Harris and Klebold didn’t have.
It doesn’t appear to be obvious to most, IME.
I’ve always wondered what I’d do as a teacher if some a-hole came in with guns firing at my students. Or even in a gang fight. I’d like to think I’d take a bullet for any one of my students or think on my feet, but I don’t know. Still, me in a classroom v. me in a movie theatre? The classroom version of Farmer Jane would probably fare better, because I’m already a little bit in mama bear mode.
When I was mugged (purse-snatching by a methhead, thankfully, no weapons) a couple of years ago, my son was with me. At first, my instinct was to scream as loud as I could and hold on to my stuff and then I remembered Oprah in my head telling me to just let it go. I was so ANGRY at the moment but I did. What’s a purse, a cell phone, a credit card, etc. compared to your life? Thank god my keys were already in my pocket, allowing me to get to through my gate in 10 seconds with my son (who was still screaming, of course). And thank god the lunatic was running the other way.
Had I weapon, it would’ve been in my purse (maybe my coat pocket as it was November). That’s another thing. How many concealed carriers are women? And wtf are we going to do with our guns? Holster them to our skirts?
In a classroom or on a dark night, I think people would be a little less shocked. There’s an element of surprise, but it’s still, “Well, I’ve thought about what I’d do in this situation because it happens enough in this neighborhood.” In a movie theatre I jump when there are gunshots from the movie. If I had a weapon and had been at that theatre two nights ago, yes, even in Aurora where I teach and spend most of my waking hours, I would’ve ducked under seats and the only way I would’ve gotten aim at the killer is if he’d been right next to me and I still would’ve nipped him in the leg. Like I’m going to attack a crazed gunman with a puny handgun?
I think civilians are much better prepped to deal with injuries and first aid than domestic terrorism.
I believe they rebut your characterization of “silly.”
You can argue that it happens much less frequently, of course, as you do by calling them the exception. But they are hardly “silly.”
Every now and then I hear about somebody tackling a bad guy that’s shooting. iirc that’s how the Texas, Lubys shooting ended. The bad guy shot several people before he was brought down.
The Batman shooting had the extra twist of Tear Gas. That pretty much made it impossible to see the bad guy. Jumping him when you’re choking on tear gas really wasn’t an option. That’s why cops love Tear Gas so much. It takes all the fight out of anyone.
A senior citizen stopped a potentially ugly robbery at an Internet Cafe just last week. Two guys burst in and were going to rob the 30 customers. Something like that can easily turn into shooting. Thankfully this guy stopped it.
http://www.ocala.com/article/20120716/ARTICLES/120719790?p=1&tc=pg
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8740954
I see. So you took exception to one word that you parsed out of the paragraph. If you reread the sentence from which you took the offending word, you’ll possibly (but not necessarily, I’m now thinking) see that it was an idea I was calling silly, not any particular person or persons. But it’s a free country, so read whatever you wish into it.
Back in 1991 IIRC, two armed men took control of a Shoney’s in Anniston, AL.
They herded 20 customers and employees into the back. One man, Thomas Glenn Terry managed to separate and hide from the others.
He wounded one and killed one robber with his legally carried .45 handgun.
Sources I spoke with back then, related that the customers heard the robbers plan to kill all witnesses.
Terry saved the lives of about 20 people that night. You didn’t hear about that, did you?
Just 4 months ago** in Aurora, CO**, an off-duty cop shot and killed a man who opened fire at a church, killing the pastor’s mother. Certainly sounds like it could have been worse, had the cop not heard and responded quickly.
Anyone remember hearing about that?
I spent 5 years on a fugitive squad and have been shot at more times than I can remember. When I hear shots, I run towards them, not away. It’s about half training and half just me.
I know I’m prepared for trouble more than most people are, but I’m tired of these crazy assholes getting away with their killing before someone takes them down.
If you’ve got a CCW permit, carry your gun, put laser grips on it, extra mag or two, and carry a good flashlight and be ready to pop some mother fucker who starts this kind of shit.:mad:
The average Israelie citizen has had some military training and a much higher percentage of the population are military reservists.
No, George shot himself is the shitter. However, in an interview with a survivor of that “rampage”, a woman who normally carried said that had she had her piece, she had ample opportunity to stop and blow him away while he was firing at other patrons with his back to her. I got that from the book about the incident.
I would argue that if the random Asspipe who is going to try something like this knows that half the audience to see The Batman is going to draw down and fire on him, he may think twice, or if he still trys it (because he is clearly crazy as a shit-house rat) and only say, 5% of them actually do fire back, he isn’t going to be nearly as successful as he could have been.
I see no reason to suspect that Random Crazy Asshole Guy has any greater experience, poise or composure in a shooting situation than a person who either open carrys or has a permit to CCW. After all, these people actually seem to like guns and probably use/practice with them now and then. For all we know, he would have dropped his guns and turned an run if shots were returned. Nobody had a piece, so I guess we’ll never know.
I’ll shut up now.
Aw, heck! I thought this was the Pit Thread and got all carried away again. Sorry for the language and crazy.
Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? If a civilian pops him in the head just as he gets started, it isn’t a rampage then is it?
When we were in El Salvador, our doctrine called for “Small War” strategy. It does not seem like a small war when you are there. When someone is rooting through your bedroom, it does seem much like a rampage.
I’d add a theatre is an excellent choice for a mad rampage; people won’t expect it (well, they wouldn’t), they’re more interested in not spilling too much popcorn and watching the movie than looking for danger, it’s difficult to escape over other people/bodies/seats and they’re generally more complacent in that environment. While at Uni I worked part-time in a cinema and we’d have kids fighting, sniffing gas, drinking and smoking etc. It wasn’t difficult to make them stop, once you had them in your sights. It’s a much darker environment than they’re used to and a quick message, using specific language and tone of voice, was usually all that was needed to make them change their behaviour. No where else did I consider talking like that to a bunch of misbehaving teens.
The thing that always bugged me was the lack of security in the exits; kids could let their friends in and this would be the first in a series of bad behaviours. If anything that can be improved with one-way turnstiles.
Well the firearms used in the most recent rampage were obtained legally, so I gotta ask how much of a winning argument that is.
Again, considering that the Batman massacre was carried out with legal guns, there is probably a better than even chance it would not have happened with tighter gun control laws.
There was a incident, years ago when a nut came into a freaken GUN SHOW and capped off a round, and was brought down by a hail of fire. Stupid robbery attempt? Suicide? 
But yes, doorhinge & **ducati ** are correct in that it is under-reported by the media. But I mean, you have to give at least this to the media here- "20 people not shot & killed’ is not much of a headline as Paul in Qatar pointed out.
OTOH, most of the rest of you are correct in that most dudes freeze or panic the first time they are under fire. I did. :eek:
And my Dad said that rookies died first in combat, veterans didnt freeze or panic, knew how to take cover, etc.
Admittedly, there’s some inherent difficulty in tracking incidents that did not happen or did not become much worse due to armed intervention. How can we know that someone who shot one person and then was stopped would otherwise have gone on to rampage through the area, shooting others? So many cases seem to indicate a shooter’s behavior is unpredictable; sometimes they’re mad at one person and rampage, sometimes they’re m ad at everybody and stop after one victim. It’s a crapshoot (pardon the pun).
That said, the Hinckley shooting of Reagan shows us that the best-trained, best-armed, most focused and alert people on earth couldn’t stop one amateur idiot from emptying his weapon at a high-value target. So at best, these incidents can be limited and mitigated by armed response, not entirely prevented.