# Why arming all your citizens is a stupid idea. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 16, 2018, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905 "2018-02-16T00:43:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/41 "2018-02-16T14:20:42Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > I don’t think this is that simple. Taking peoples guns away isn’t going to make them so depressed they kill themselves. Uh…you really thought the gist of my post was a discussion that taking peoples guns away would make them depressed and therefore more likely to kill themselves? I mean, I can kind of see why some posters were confused by my Switzerland comment…it doesn’t seem anyone got what I was talking about…but your comment seems epically off the wall wrt what my point was. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/42 "2018-02-16T14:29:09Z")
> [@XT](#): > > How does your theory stack up wrt Switzerland? Just curious. I don’t know how well OP’s theory stacks up against Switzerland, but I will note that Switzerland literally has a well-regulated militia, and the USA literally does not. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/43 "2018-02-16T14:29:20Z")
> [@up\_the\_junction](#): > > Third world healthcare, third world debt, third world gun control, third world leadership … not a great picture. In case you were wondering what a drive by threadshit was, this is a perfect example. Feel free to start your own “America is the suxor” thread, but do not pollute this thread with this bullshit or any further hijacks. [/moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Bic\_D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Bic\_D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bic_D)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/44 "2018-02-16T16:11:05Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > I know this line isn’t the gist of your entire post, but a single “good guy with a gun” is not likely to be a big asset. I’m basing this on conversations with our school resource officer, who was a skilled sniper. It’s very, very difficult to shoot and hit one particular individual in a crisis situation, especially when there are a lot of distractions, such as innocent people running, yelling, etc. This is true even for calm, skilled cops. He said it’s not at all like it is in the movies. > > I think a single, skilled, calm CCW owner would be dangerous most crises, though I do agree with your post as a whole. In the past, while dealing with an active shooter, the strategy was to respond - initial patrol units respond, and secure both inner and outer perimeters; and wait - sometimes a lengthy wait; for more equipped, response-type units from tactical. Not good. Standardized training was implemented across the Country so even if an outside agency was assisting, they too would have the same knowledge/training. Protocol then changed from waiting for tactical to respond to, the first responding unit(s) on scene make an assessment, they cause an immediate intervention to freeze; stabilize; and keep the incident from moving throughout a larger structure such as a mall or school. It may only be a single law enforcement officer making entry to neutralize the threat…but I’ll take that. With that said, if I still had a child in school and there was an active shooter on grounds. If law enforcement is still minutes out…I would want a calm, skilled CCW holder to do everything in his/her power to neutralize the threat. 1 CCW holder doing ANYTHING is better than an active shooter walking the halls shooting at free will with absolutely no resistance. ---
**Author:** ![StrTrkr777](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@StrTrkr777](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StrTrkr777)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/45 "2018-02-16T17:00:15Z")
No one is suggesting arming all people. Here is the difference, a liberal that does not want to own a gun, does not want anyone to own a gun. A conservative that does not want to own a gun, does not buy a gun. No one is seriously suggesting that all teachers be armed. No one really wants a teacher to have to use a gun. But if the evil shooters knew that there were more than 2 armed people on a huge campus of 3,000 and that he was highly likely to get shot before inflicting much damage, then he possibly would not have gone about this task. It was stated that this last POS, had several magazines. Did he empty them all? Or did he shot a bunch of people and then walk off hoping to not get shot. I was going to say hoping to not get caught, but he went into the school where he had been a student, he was going to get caught. I think these evil bastards want to get caught and get ‘famous’. We all still know the evil ones that committed the Columbine attrocities, and I think all the wankers since are just wanting to get ‘famous’. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/46 "2018-02-16T18:05:56Z")
I don’t know what the solution is. I’ve wrestled with this for the last couple of days, trying to sort through what my feelings are, and what a rational response is. Y’all know that I’ve argued on this board many, many times in favor of the second amendment, and the right to purchase guns, and concealed carry. I have a concealed carry license. I still feel that responsible gun ownership is a good thing. But we’ve reached a point now where I can’t deny what’s going on in the world around me, in no small part because I have girls in school who have to go through “active shooter” drills and it hurts my heart. I’m torn between knowing that an AR-15 doesn’t kill on its own, but recognizing that depressed kids shouldn’t have them, because shooting up a school is way too easy. I’m torn between feeling that it’s not right to just ban a thing and confiscate property from people who legally own it, but also, they’re way too easy to buy, and modify, and use. The problem is availability. The problem is also mental health. The problem is culture. The problem is anger. And a big part of the problem, it seems clear to me, is that **a school is an attractive target** for a person looking to take his pain out on society and cause mass mayhem. They go to schools, places where everyone is expecting safety but are in fact very, very vulnerable. That, I think, is where the issue should first be addressed. But all the solutions to that problem seem flawed. Take away all the guns? Good luck. Arming teachers? Doubtful. Armed guards? Possibly, but expensive, and it’s unlikely they’ll be in the right place at the right time. I don’t know. It’s seeming more and more to me that the only way out of this is to turn schools into windowless prisons, locked down from 8 to 3. And even then, it wouldn’t stop an insider, teacher/office staff/coach/whatever, from going on a rampage, and would make it more difficult for law enforcement to get inside. So there’s my new position in this. A sad, angry dad who likes guns but admits they’re not the answer. I have to admit now that more restrictions on ownership may be necessary to stop this horrible trend. But also, somehow, things have to change so that a school is no longer a viable target for a mass shooter. ---
**Author:** ![Bic\_D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Bic\_D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bic_D)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/47 "2018-02-16T18:32:23Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > I don’t know what the solution is. > > I’ve wrestled with this for the last couple of days, trying to sort through what my feelings are, and what a rational response is. Y’all know that I’ve argued on this board many, many times in favor of the second amendment, and the right to purchase guns, and concealed carry. I have a concealed carry license. I still feel that responsible gun ownership is a good thing. > > But we’ve reached a point now where I can’t deny what’s going on in the world around me, in no small part because I have girls in school who have to go through “active shooter” drills and it hurts my heart. I’m torn between knowing that an AR-15 doesn’t kill on its own, but recognizing that depressed kids shouldn’t have them, because shooting up a school is way too easy. I’m torn between feeling that it’s not right to just ban a thing and confiscate property from people who legally own it, but also, they’re way too easy to buy, and modify, and use. > > The problem is availability. The problem is also mental health. The problem is culture. The problem is anger. And a big part of the problem, it seems clear to me, is that **a school is an attractive target** for a person looking to take his pain out on society and cause mass mayhem. They go to schools, places where everyone is expecting safety but are in fact very, very vulnerable. > > That, I think, is where the issue should first be addressed. But all the solutions to that problem seem flawed. Take away all the guns? Good luck. Arming teachers? Doubtful. Armed guards? Possibly, but expensive, and it’s unlikely they’ll be in the right place at the right time. > > I don’t know. It’s seeming more and more to me that the only way out of this is to turn schools into windowless prisons, locked down from 8 to 3. And even then, it wouldn’t stop an insider, teacher/office staff/coach/whatever, from going on a rampage, and would make it more difficult for law enforcement to get inside. > > So there’s my new position in this. A sad, angry dad who likes guns but admits they’re not the answer. I have to admit now that more restrictions on ownership may be necessary to stop this horrible trend. But also, somehow, things have to change so that a school is no longer a viable target for a mass shooter. Schools will always be viable target because they are a soft target, they are a target that will attract national attention similar to that of churches (a few months back). If you did build a windowless school that was on lock down from 8 to 3, someone would simply wait outside until 3:15. If you ever could take away all guns, someone would throw pipe bombs. The latest shooter did something that a large % of mass murderers do not do and that is…he allowed himself to be arrested without committing suicide. Hopefully they can learn something useful from this ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/48 "2018-02-16T18:38:25Z")
> [@Bic\_D](#): > > 1 CCW holder doing ANYTHING is better than an active shooter walking the halls shooting at free will with absolutely no resistance. Maybe. There is an issue, though. The number of deaths per year by mass shooters is actually still quite small. Not sure what the count is up to at the moment, especially since I don’t know if the recent ‘record breaking’ shootings are going to continue or not. Anyways, if you stop thinking of individual people and start seeing a bigger picture, each time someone has a CCW, there is a tiny probability of an extra shooting happening. They get mad, kill another person. They get mad, kill themselves. A police officers sees the CCW and shoots then. An accident happens. What…certain motivated thinkers…fail to do is they don’t see that while these probabilities can be very tiny, if you multiply that by millions of people and millions of encounters, it can easily add up to more extra deaths than the 30 or 50 people who die from a mass shooter every year. This is a similar argument applied against having a loaded shotgun on the shelf in your bedroom closet. Again, handled properly, it is highly unlikely the gun will ever go off on it’s own. In a healthly family with ‘sane’ adults, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will grab the gun and kill themselves or a family member. But unlikely doesn’t mean zero. All of us are actually collections of glitchy cells and we don’t have as much control as we think. These probabilities add up, such the chance a gun kept in a home is used against the home’s residents is much greater than the chance it gets used against an intruder. You can’t use “common sense” and “everyday knowledge” to figure this relationship out, I might notice. Each of us only lives a few decades and has a very small set of individual experiences. So we might live our whole lives and never see that shotgun do any more than collect dust, and hear about neighbor who successfully fended off a home intruder. But not the neighbor who killed themselves, since that got hushed up or didn’t happen near us. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/49 "2018-02-16T18:51:52Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > The trouble with your perceiving this as a problem is that it actually works. For instance, a terrorist tried to shoot up a school in Israel and was stopped by armed teachers. Then there was that attempted church shooting in the US. Again, someone with a gun responded. > > Again, your favourite search engine is your friend. Yeah…search engines are our friend and guess what? Anecdotes aside guns do not make us more safe. (Bolding mine) > [@](#): > > Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad. > > These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion. > > **The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.** > > \ > > Worldwide, Mr. Lankford found, **a country’s rate of gun ownership correlated with the odds it would experience a mass shooting.** This relationship held even when he excluded the United States, indicating that it could not be explained by some other factor particular to his home country. And it held when he controlled for homicide rates, suggesting that mass shootings were better explained by a society’s access to guns than by its baseline level of violence. > > \ > > **More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis** : among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates. And gun control legislation tends to reduce gun murders, according to a recent analysis of 130 studies from 10 countries. > > **This suggests that the guns themselves cause the violence.** > > \ > > Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. \*\*A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process. > > They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns.\*\* > > \ > > **“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,”** Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. **“Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”** > > SOURCE: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html) ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/50 "2018-02-16T18:52:50Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > So there’s my new position in this. A sad, angry dad who likes guns but admits they’re not the answer. I have to admit now that more restrictions on ownership may be necessary to stop this horrible trend. But also, somehow, things have to change so that a school is no longer a viable target for a mass shooter. Your expression feelings on the topic very closely matches my own. As much as I loathe to apply gross, overarching restrictions on the population at large to deal with a tiny minority of angry, death-glory-seaking nutbags, I don’t think a culture in which we have to run students through ‘active shooter’ drills on a monthly basis or post armed guards all around schools in anticipation of a mass shooter is one we should embrace. And while I think sensible, competence-based requirements on firearms ownership are not the massive burden or violation of rights that the NRA and other advocates make them out to be, I also don’t think they’re entirely adequate to prevent this kind of planned attack even if they keep underage attackers from purchasing firearms directly. Nor is the solution to make vague implorations about ‘mental health’ or repeat the facile appeal that “An armed society is a polite society.” On the other hand, attempts at confiscation or draconian restrictions on ammunition purchases are not likely to be acceptable to many firearms owners or politicians. The underlying problem is really one of a culture that has embraced violence and militarism as something to celebrate far out of proportion with any need or sense of responsibility, and this goes deep into many aspects of our everyday experience from entertainment to law enforcement, but making a massive cultural shift is not going to happen any time soon. > [@Bic\_D](#): > > The latest shooter did something that a large % of mass murderers do not do and that is…he allowed himself to be arrested without committing suicide. Hopefully they can learn something useful from this I don’t know what there really is to learn. The details behind the motive are ‘interesting’ in a legal and perhaps psychological sense (although they are unlikely to be all that novel), but it isn’t as if understanding this particular shooter is going to give predictive insight as to where the next one comes from. The impulse to engage in this kind of destructive, unhinged violence against a large number of victims unrelated to any personal affront to the shooter is not really something that can be logically mapped, adn these shooters seem to have some combination of pathological narcissism combined with an internalized anger that just flips into external violence en masse. There are certainly plenty of people with internal anger from depression, abuse, and feeling marginalized, but the vast majority deal with it by pouring it into artistic expression, self-destructive behavior, or finding some other non-violent outlet, while a few decide to put their anger on display to the world in one brief outburst of pointless killing. I don’t know that we’re ever going to really understand this beyond labeling the associated behaviors or make any predictive model of it that could be applied to potential shooters. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/51 "2018-02-16T18:56:14Z")
> [@StrTrkr777](#): > > But if the evil shooters knew that there were more than 2 armed people on a huge campus of 3,000 and that he was highly likely to get shot before inflicting much damage, then he possibly would not have gone about this task. This sounds like wishful thinking, at best. The mentally ill are not known for making rational decisions. Also, this latest shooting is an outlier in that the shooter didn’t kill himself like most others. It is hard to imagine a suicidal shooter being deterred by the thought of a good guy with a gun. ---
**Author:** ![Bic\_D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Bic\_D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bic_D)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/52 "2018-02-16T19:23:18Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > I don’t know what there really is to learn. The details behind the motive are ‘interesting’ in a legal and perhaps psychological sense (although they are unlikely to be all that novel), but it isn’t as if understanding this particular shooter is going to give predictive insight as to where the next one comes from. > Stranger This kid is of the same generation of kids who are eating Tide Pods so you may be right however, he chose to stay alive for a reason and ANY knowledge they can glean from him is better than no knowledge at all. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/53 "2018-02-16T19:31:06Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Those seem like odd numbers to compare (uses to deaths rather than uses to uses and deaths to deaths). How do defensive gun uses compare to offensive gun uses? How do defensive gun deaths compare to offensive gun deaths? Because uses to deaths is actually a valid comparison. In many ways they are identical. Most ordinary criminals are at least somewhat rational. They have an instinct for self-preservation. If a mugger sees that his would-be victim is armed, the putative victim\* usually does not have to actually fire\* in self-defense. _Letting the mugger know_ that he is armed–whether pulling the gun out of its holster, or merely showing the gun in its holster–is generally sufficient. Simply showing the gun, even without physically touching it, counts as a defense gun use, and sometimes **prevents** a death. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/54 "2018-02-16T19:34:25Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > Because uses to deaths is actually a valid comparison. In many ways they are identical. > > Most ordinary criminals are at least somewhat rational. They have an instinct for self-preservation. If a mugger sees that his would-be victim is armed, the putative victim\* usually does not have to actually fire\* in self-defense. _Letting the mugger know_ that he is armed–whether pulling the gun out of its holster, or merely showing the gun in its holster–is generally sufficient. > > Simply showing the gun, even without physically touching it, counts as a defense gun use, and sometimes **prevents** a death. It doesn’t work out that way. From my link in post #49: > [@](#): > > Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process. > > They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns. > > SOURCE: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html) ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/55 "2018-02-16T19:41:40Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > Simply showing the gun, even without physically touching it, counts as a defense gun use, and sometimes **prevents** a death. Keep in mind that you can’t count each defensive gun use as a life saved. Like Whack-a-mole points out, if you’re in the back alleys of Paris and a mugger steps out holding a baseball bat, the outcome of you being dead is not the only outcome. You could give up your valuables and go get help and public assistance if you need it. You could get beaten but not severely injured. You could get beaten but not killed. Or you could get killed. Apparently the probability of you getting killed is actually 54 times higher here in the USA. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/56 "2018-02-16T20:48:37Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > Because uses to deaths is actually a valid comparison. In many ways they are identical. > > Most ordinary criminals are at least somewhat rational. They have an instinct for self-preservation. If a mugger sees that his would-be victim is armed, the putative victim\* usually does not have to actually fire\* in self-defense. _Letting the mugger know_ that he is armed–whether pulling the gun out of its holster, or merely showing the gun in its holster–is generally sufficient. > > Simply showing the gun, even without physically touching it, counts as a defense gun use, and sometimes **prevents** a death. Still doesn’t make sense to me. Most criminal usages of guns don’t result in deaths either, right? They’re stick up muggings, or armed robberies, or similar, right? So it would seem to make more sense to compare uses to uses, and if we’re interested in deaths, then we’d compare deaths to deaths. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/57 "2018-02-16T21:04:37Z")
The idea that arming teachers would stop these shootings is such a crock of shit. It takes years of tactical training to get to the point where anyone would have a chance in hell of getting a shot on an active shooter amid the chaos and noise of a mass shooting incident, and even then, there’s _no_ way of knowing how you’d react under the effects of adrenaline. The only people who do know are people who have actually fired a weapon in anger, whether police or military, and even in _that_ context, the competence in responding to a school shooting would vary wildly. A concealed handgun can be useful for self-defense against robbery or battery. SELF-defense. Anyone thinking (hoping?) about some kind of hero scenario where they’d be able to save a crowd of people from a spree shooter firing rapidly with an AR-15 is just indulging in a fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/58 "2018-02-16T22:18:07Z")
> [@Jacquernagy](#): > > … It takes years of tactical training to get to the point where anyone would have a chance in hell of getting a shot on an active shooter amid the chaos and noise of a mass shooting incident, and even then, there’s _no_ way of knowing how you’d react under the effects of adrenaline. … I think you and I have rather drastic differences in how we define “a chance in hell”. If you took someone who regularly CCWs and dropped them into one of the classrooms whats-his-face shot up at Virginia Tech, I’d give them decent odds of wounding / killing the spree shooter. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/59 "2018-02-16T22:19:07Z")
> [@Jacquernagy](#): > > … Anyone thinking (hoping?) about some kind of hero scenario where they’d be able to save a crowd of people from a spree shooter firing rapidly with an AR-15 is just indulging in a fantasy. I’m curious, have you personally ever fired an AR-15 rapidly? ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/60 "2018-02-16T22:39:52Z")
I’ve fired a lot of semi-automatic rifles as “rapidly” as one can fire. Yeah, I know it’s not the same as full-auto. It’s still fast enough to cause a hell of a commotion that the average citizen who is not a police officer with SWAT training or a former infantryman who has deployed, would be unable to handle. It’s not really a question of the rifle anyway. The guy who shot up Virginia Tech had two pistols. Someone who bursts into a crowded place and suddenly starts popping off rounds is going to shake up anyone to the point where they would be thrown off guard and unlikely to offer meaningful resistance. The noise alone would do it. People aren’t going to have hearing protection in, and the sound of an unsuppressed firearm inside the interior of a room would release a geyser of adrenaline. The odds of a teacher with a concealed handgun, even one who has had the kind of tactical training available to civilians, being able to keep it together under those circumstances, seem exceptionally remote to me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905.md?page=4)