Gun Control

[Firefly]

Originally Posted by Baneblade

I'm curious why this is.

I don't know. But Baltimore SWAT isn't a bunch of yokels. These are guys who police one of the most violent cities in the United States. You'd think they would be more competent in their abilities.

I *want* to believe it's because they typically go against soft targets that aren't prepared (the element of surprise is a critical factor in combat situations, which is why the ambush is such a deadly and preferred tactic). I want to believe it's because they're just not used to facing a coordinated group of armed people who are on equal footing in terms of cohesiveness, arms, and training.

I sincerely hope it's NOT because they flat-out suck at their job.

Originally Posted by Baneblade

On topic, if I had been armed in a theatre (I shouldn't be in the first place), I wouldn't have even drawn my weapon without assessing the situation. Civilians fuck things up.

This is exactly my point. The majority of gun rights advocates are using this as a talking point to show how one or two or even a hundred gun owners would have made this guy swiss cheese before he even opened fire.

There are, in my mind, two ways that more guns would have played out. These are scenarios that none of the gun-hawks (of which I am one) have bothered to factor in, in their effort to show how this scenario could have been prevented:

1) Theatre shooter walks in, pops CS or smoke, starts shooting. Gun owners pull their own and start shooting back. Random gun owner gets the idea, in the heat of combat, that he's being attacked by more than one shooter. He starts shooting at other shooters.

2) One single sheepdog with a sidearm sees the "the silhouette of a person materialize near the screen, point a gun at the crowd" and shoots the fucker dead before he gets a single round off. Everyone else in the theatre panics, another gun owner shoots the guy dead. People panic.

Let's also not forget that screaming panicked people running around shoving each other do NOT do as gun range-trained civilians want and hit the deck. Not a single one of you has factored in the random chaos of panicked people. How many of you would sit there calmly with your Smith & Wesson or your Glock as a guy tears into the crowd, waiting for that one single shining moment where your golden bullet can be used A.) without fear of striking an innocent and unarmed person, and B.) would penetrate the unarmoured critical area required to incapacitate a person wearing what amounts to SWAT armour?

Not even I would attempt such a thing. Maybe that makes me less of a Rambo motherfucker than some of you. Maybe it also makes me more likely to survive an encounter-other-than-war.

Originally Posted by DjEclipse

@Firefly, James Holmes made himself an early target for an armed citizen. Ignore it all you want. It is what it is.

Every person in that theatre thought it was part of the movie until four rounds had been fired. Ignore the fact that this wasn't optimum conditions at your local pistol range all you want. When the day comes and you're on the line being measured, I pray to G-d I'm not sitting near you because you're just as likely to kill innocent people as you are hitting a moving, shooting target in a dark, smoke-filled theatre with screaming panicked people between you and your attacker.

Because that is what it was.