A firearm question for you LeftiesFollow

There is no "quibble". It's just a worthless term. I know you need it because you can't use actual objective facts and so need to present fantasy-land stats as facts about how many ninjas a dinosaur could have killed but what you can't do is present an actual provable statistic about civilians stopping an actual mass shooting. It's really no more complicated than that.


Nor can we make the assumption that he suddenly would have turned into a skilled marksman. What we have is the actual fact that he fired sixty rounds, many of them into the ceiling, and killed two people and seriously injured one other.


I quoted his account. Which one are you reading?


I walked into a restaurant today and it snowed. all hail Jophiel, Hungry Snow God. "Intervened" implies a level of causation you've completely failed to prove.


Said the guy trying to make Mali into the reason the shooter stopped despite the lack of any evidence...

Is that really what "going down to pull" means? I was wondering about that. I thought it might have meant he was about to crouch down and aim. Moving his finger down towards that trigger never entered my mind, but I will admit that makes more sense.

It wasn't a question. It was a statement. And no, numskull, the families of the 10 children who wouldn't have died if we managed to reduce the number who died from 20 to 10. You can't really be that dense.



I'm suggesting that if an armed gunman killed a few faculty members and then went into a classroom with 20 kids and started shooting, and after killing 5 kids and showing no signs of stopping a member of the faculty burst into the room with a gun and shot him ending the shooting, the families of the other 15 kids who didn't die would consider him a hero for saving the lives of their children. And of course people would point to how much worse it would have been if that member of the faculty hadn't been armed and hadn't intervened. And that would not reduce the grief felt by the families of the 5 who died one bit. But it would still be a better outcome than otherwise.


The point being that in this case, there was no armed faculty member who burst in and saved any of the children. And that's a tragedy.



Except that the term as used by the FBI and the Mother Jones study mentioned earlier means specifically 4 victim fatalities. So one can "prevent a mass shooting" without actually preventing the shooting. As long as you prevent 4 or more deaths from occurring.



Except that my entire argument is about reducing the kill count. You're free to insist that something else is more important, but don't demand that I must prove a point that I'm not making.



Huh? Armed guards cost money. Allowing people already employed at the school to bring weapons with them costs nothing. You completely failed to respond to the actual point I made.



Yes. Want to know why? Because there are numerous accounts of them doing exactly this and being successful. Why would you assume they wouldn't?



Huh? Either you miswrote that or you misunderstood what I wrote.

I believe that a person is less likely to commit a shooting in front of an armed guard than elsewhere. Period. The issue of a random person that may or may not have a gun is irrelevant since by definition in order for their to be a shooting with any fatalities there must be other people around for the shooter to shoot. Thus, while the shooter can (and in most cases will) avoid starting his shooting spree right where an armed guard can easily react and stop him, he can't avoid the chance that one of the people in the area he starts shooting might be carrying a concealed weapon and thus be easily able to react and stop him.

Well, unless we pass legislation designating some areas as gun free zones in which it's illegal for anyone who isn't an on duty police or security guard to carry a weapon (concealed or otherwise). In that case, the shooter knows that as long as he avoids an armed guard, no one else will be armed. That's why such legislation is a really bad idea. We're making it easier for the shooter to kill more people in those gun free areas. Ironically we do this in areas with the highest concentration of children. Isn't that incredibly dumb?



Great. I never said we could not also have armed guards.



Huh? No. In both cases, the shooter will most likely start shooting in an area where a guard is not (guard cannot be everywhere, remember?). So in the absence of a civilian carrying a concealed weapon, the shooter can continue to shoot uninterrupted until a guard or police arrive on the scene. In the presence of a civilian carrying a concealed weapon, the shooter may be interrupted earlier than that. So if we want the shooting to end as quickly as possible and minimize the number of fatalities, then we want civilians to be in the area carrying concealed weapons. The more of them the better.

Obviously, it's not guaranteed, but if we have a gun free zone, then there's zero chance of ending the shooting before the police or guard can arrive, whereas if we don't have a gun free zone, there is some chance greater than zero of ending the shooting before the police or guard can arrive. It's about odds and statistics. The more civilians with concealed weapons the greater the odds of someone in the crowd having a firearm and being able to end the shooting before the police/guard arrive. The fewer there are the lower the chance. Again, in a gun free zone, we've dropped those odds to zero.


As I've said repeatedly, my argument isn't about trying to ensure that no one ever tries to commit a mass shooting. I don't think it's possible to do that. My objective is to minimize the number of fatalities when/if those kinds of shootings occur.

I very much doubt it. From the quote:

It reads as "As I was going down to pull [out my weapon], I saw someone..." In other words, as he was drawing his weapon, he noticed other people and decided not to try and fire.

A Google search for "Go down to pull" or "Going down to pull" returns no firearms related hits except that quote over and over. Adding "Go down to pull" +trigger returns nothing relevant at all. Maybe it's a term Gbaji's long rifle friends use all the time or something. This is a guy who romanticized "Don't retreat, reload!" into pressing F5 on your keyboard because that fit his political narrative better.

Edited, Jan 25th 2013 9:45pm by Jophiel

Except the little detail where the first death occurred during the first volley in the food court. Also all reports mention that the second fatality and the survivor were attributed to stray bullets.

But you know, besides those pesky details you might have had something. Totally intended to clear out and then start aiming at those people. You discount it because it's the more likely conclusion and vastly weakens your argument, such as it is.

Edited, Jan 25th 2013 11:03pm by lolgaxe

Much like Whose Line Is It Anyway, I'm sure we're about to be told how the details are made up and the facts don't matter.

I've got a hypothetical too. A shooter kills 5 kids and then his gun jams. An armed faculty member intervenes, but the shooter gets the drop on him and takes his gun. He now kills 15 more kids. Now the situation is even worse and 20 kids are dead instead of 5 and the teacher would be villified.

The point being that in this case, there was no armed faculty member who burst in and saved any of the children. And that's a tragedy.

What's also a tragedy is that the school didn't have remote controlled 30/30 turrets in every room ceiling. Or land mines. Or that one the teachers wasn't a Kalahari Bushmen with a blowgun and poisoned darts. Also that none of the children syringes full of poison.

There is no case of an armed civilian bursting in anywhere and saving someone from a shooter. Why is that? Oh right, people who carry guns around in casual situations are terrified giant cowards, I forgot. The stench of their own urine would probably distract from them from getting a good shot off when confronted.

Oh, he doesn't even deserve that one. There's no reason for the "down" modifier there except to signify "reaching down" for a gun.

Actually, if you knew anything about firearms training, you never put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to shoot. Now, me personally I would never phrase it the way he did, but not everbody speaks the same way.

I read an account of it over the weekend that states he ducked behind a pillar after hearing three shots, which made me wonder what he was doing the other fifty plus shots.