I am going to take a rash of crap for this one, but I am going to fire away at it anyhow. There has been a ton of postings on various blogs, television and Facebook Meme’s that extol the virtues of gun ownership, particularly the concealed carry ability and how if there had been people in the audience at the premiere of Dark Knight this Friday morning in Aurora, Colorado, that the shooter would never have been able to do what he did. I am actually of the opposite mindset and I firmly believe that had there been people who were willing to draw down on the shooter, we would have had more folks hurt or killed and the ballistics would have matched up to the “do-gooders” weapons and not the original shooters.
You may ask if I am for the Second Amendment and if I have something against gun ownership. I will answer yes, and no. The no however comes with a couple of caveats which I will not get very in depth with here. That is a topic for another blog at a more appropriate time. My concern for this blog is the mindless people who think simply having a gun on your person is both a deterrent and gives you the ability to stop a madman when he begins his rampage. Please keep in mind this happened in Aurora, CO, not Fayetteville/FT Bragg, NC or FT Lewis, WA, or Camp Pendelton, CA or Camp Lejeune, NC; places where the majority of the citizens have had real training and have faced the rigors of combat. In all these other locations you can find in any venue, multiple people who have moved through the fog of war to close with and engage the enemy. These people know what to look at and for when the “shit hits the fan”, they know how to engage. Soldiers (used universally here) can move through the smoke and as much as we may hate it, we have exposure to gas environments through training. Chances are in one of these locations, it would have been multiple people taking down the shooter without killing him (outright anyway) because they are smart enough and well trained enough to know that you, DO NOT SHOOT AT WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE!!! It is beaten into the lowest ranking individual.
So all you ass-hats that think you would have just whipped out your pistol when the smoke started rolling and the shooter started wreaking havoc, you are both full of crap and inexperienced. Chances are had you brought a weapon to bear you would never even know until long after the fact that you were responsible for the wounding or death of someone else. I say this not to make light of what happened or to deny anyone their Constitutional right to bear arms, I say this as a professional who knows that it all sounds great when you are planning it, but it never happens the way you plan it. All of your concealed carry folks out there (my people that I know are trained well, you know this does not refer to you) you need to do a little more than plink at paper targets to get to the point where you can knowingly draw your weapon and take someone down. It definitely takes more than plinking at paper targets to do so under extreme stress, especially that in which you cannot see and someone is actually shooting at you.
My thoughts and sympathies lie with the victims and their families of this tragedy. Whatever the shooters reasons may be, it is too bad he did not challenge the police when they arrested him, it would be much better had he done so, it would have been a swift justice. Fortunately, most police officers in this country maintain their proficiency with their weapons to defend themselves and others around them, they do not train to the point in which callous disregard for the laws they enforce will allow them to simply kill the perpetrator, no matter how justified the public in general may feel about it. Had they simply just blown him away, there may have been additional casualties from law enforcement because they would not have been told of the bombs he had set up at his apartment. So despite my personal thoughts stated earlier that killing the shooter would have been a swift justice, good job to the police officers for showing the restraint needed in such a situation.
Simply owning the gun and saying you have the will to use it is not enough. When things are going to hell it takes more than basic proficiencies in order to function in the void.
No Kool-aid Zone 