The admin for the LGBT For Gun Rights Facebook page is mad as hell: “This is why we have stated a resounding F*CK. YOU. to every person who has messaged/ posted that we are ‘out of our minds’ or ‘there are already too many guns!'” While I appreciate the sentiment, it’s also true that the above chart cherry-picks mass and potential mass shooting incidents to make its point. More important to me: the natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. Firearms freedom does not depend on arguments related to social utility. Although if it did, gun rights would still “win.” Assuming that facts and logic were the name of the game. Which, sadly, they are not. [h/t DrVino]
This list is a little off. Pulse had an armed officer. Albeit he was outside the club and only briefly exchanged gunfire AFTER the assailant began his rampage. The off duty cop retreated to save his own A$$ and the killing continued unabated.
I was going to point this out, too. While it doesn’t support the point this graphic tries to make, the failure of Pulse’s armed security does point out a stark difference between merely having an armed official in the vicinity and arming the actual targets of the attack.
In almost every one of the armed response incidents listed above, the armed responder was also one of the intended victims. You don’t just say “Oh, well,” and retreat when it’s YOUR life and livelihood on the line.
I was wondering about that… Seemed like there would have been a big hullabaloo about a cop getting killed in this situation, but he ran, huh? I wonder how that’s going over with the rest of the thin blue line guys. Or his part time employer? If there’s anyone that should have run toward the gunfire, it would be him… Oh, well.
Matt Bracken made this point very well; this cop was a sheepdog, it was his job to use the one defensive firearm at the scene to protect the innocents. There should have been a dead Jihadi or a dead sheepdog, nothing in between.
So what happened to this cop huh. Seems like armed security at a gun free zone is pretty much useless. You are on your own.
Ok so two un-reported narratives to the Orlando incident; 1) the peaceful LGBT (or peaceful muslim?) community sometimes eats their own; and 2) sometimes cops bail under fire.
He had to have pulled back and just allowed the shooter to keep killing. The media would have been all over his “heroism” if he was injured or killed.
Maybe he just realized that once the police were about to arrive, he was in more danger from their haphazard rapid fire than from the active shooter?
my summation of what happened is based on what the witnesses reported. The gunman had a shoot out with the officer after he started killing people. One witness even described him as moving from body to body and shooting them again before the gunfight with the officer. No officer’s are listed as deceased or injured. And the media would have been all over his bravery. I am assuming he was outside the club. Most officers doing off duty detail work like this, do not typically enter the location and are there only if the establishment needs a little authoritarian help to eject the drunk and disorderly. That shoot out was caught on another video (sort of) and it only lasted a few seconds and there wasn’t any additional shoot outs until the police were ready to breach the building 3 hours later.
The government will NOT protect you and why we need advanced rifles.
Rodney King Riots – LA’s Finest were the First To Flee. Citizens were told they were on their own.
Hurricane Katrina – NOLA’s Finest were videoed looting along with the miscreant, while homes were burned.
Columbine – The first person the shooters encountered was a Deputy Sheriff who hid in his car rather than confront them.
Granted the gun grabbing spin has shied me away from coverage of the event, but I was not aware of this. It raises additional questions regarding my employer’s workplace policy – no guns and the cop at the front desk will protect us.
My understanding is that he retreat and got the back door open saving a good number of lives.
Ah, that was the same guy? If so, he gets a lot more leeway from me; he may have failed in his primary mission, which was to stop the murderer, but at least he did stay focused on saving lives.
Not his primary mission. LEO’s do not get paid to take a bullet. That being said, this guy was just like the pu$$y clerk in ‘Saving Private Ryan.”
I am gonna stand up for this officer by saying this. He didnt have to engange the shooter. He did make an attempt to stop it. Unlike the sandy hook first responding officer. Even still, he didnt continue pressing the shooter but backed off. It would be interesting to get the scanner recordings because he may have been ordered to back off.
Nope, wrong guy. The man who got the door opened allowing 60-70 people to escape was an unarmed Marine enjoying a night out.
Uniformed armed personnel are at an immediate and staggering disadvantage in a scenario like this. The reasons are obvious. Sometimes, these personnel are unwilling to become a speedbump to the murderous attacker.
Carry. Everywhere.
Sorry, but screw disadvantage. It’s the job he signed up for, and he had no problem taking a paycheck for it.
Maybe. I reserve right to alter view when more evidence of what happened comes to light. Point I’m responding to is essentially a hypothetical.
I would just like to know what really happened with this armed individual. Did he get shots off? Was he forced to retreat? I can’t seem to find any facts about this part of the story. Makes me wonder why no details?
Although cherry picked it certainly makes a point that perhaps we should have an alternative plan in case those we rely on to keep us safe decide to take their sweet time.
At Pearl and Appalachian Law school, no defender was armed. People present at the scene did have handguns in their cars, but they had to go to the parking lot and fetch them. Imagine how much faster the responses would have been if they were actually armed at the beginning of the hostilities.
As previously posted, some bartenders/owners “used” to keep a firearm of some sort readily available for night deposits and high amounts of cash. Many still do. In Florida, it is legal to have and even carry a firearm as an owner and/or manager of a private business on private property.
Let’s see if anything changes. Would have been nice to see some bullets sent Omar’s way.
Many decades ago I worked at a gas station in WVA. It was nearly impossible to get a permit then but the law made an exemption for an employee carrying cash to a bank. Nobody had ATM’s then and most of these types of business’s did mostly cash.
I could carry a gun on the premise’s and in my car if I was making a bank run. I still didn’t get a permit but the cops never hassled me so long as I had that deposit bag with me.
This is a function of the statist taking over public education and how well people are trained by the media of all types. It’s no accident that simple reason and logic has been replaced with emotion driven arguments and propaganda.
“Guns are made only to kill people”. Emotion. Logic tells us this is false, most every round fired by a gun is targeted at a sheet of paper at the range, or a deer, or what have you. By round count killing people is the last thing guns are made to do. Even in a real life actual defensive situation the goal is to harm no one – the goal is to protect life and that includes all innocent people in the area and even the attacker.
Reason.
But you cannot win the battle against a power mad statist intent only on growing state power and the imposition of the states will upon all of the people. They are not engaging in reasoned arguments, they aren’t engaging in any argument. They play dirty pool, they are devious and they are well organized and funded.
This is the purpose of the constitution, to thwart the state in this battle to enslave the citizen.
All we need do is adhere to it. If the people in that club had been exercising their right to defense of self and been armed – just a few of them even at a minimum, the body count would have been smaller, maybe even just one, the attacker.
In short, the state wants their power, and if you need to be dead to make that happen that is no problem for them at all. It’s not even a second thought.
a most excellent response
“This is a function of the statist taking over public education”
Thank you.
Homeschool, people. Homeschool.
Don’t let them poison your children, and don’t give that lame-ass excuse “But they are good in MY school district.” They are ALL corrupt. Recognize that and take control back from them.
All statistics are massaged to drive a message. This is a powerful message regardless of whether or not it reflects all events. And engaging the LBGT to turn them…to gun rights allies that is, would be a smart move. Let them lead the other threatened demographics to see the folly of waiting for the police…for minutes…or hours.
There is no question waiting for the police is a failed strategy, but this list will convince no one. Where is the Las Vegas incident where the armed responder got himself shot and accomplished nothing? And while this is a US list, there is the Kenyan Mall incident where armed citizen response was a major fail.
These terror incidents are tragic, but compared to the total of lives lost to violent crime, they are a drop in the bucket. We need holistic solutions to violent and untimely death, not knee-jerk reactions. These terror incidents are the new normal until we crush ISIS/ISIL like we crushed Bader Meinhoff, the Red Army Factions and their like many years ago. We need a proactive, offensive strategy, not band-aid defensive strategies.
I may be wrong, but i don’t think there were any civilians conceal carrying in the Kenya attack. The attackers were dressed as civilians though. If I am incorrect, i stand corrected.
Armed citizen response was a major fail at the Kenyan Mall? What news reports are you looking at? You are so so wrong. For hours the ONLY response was an armed citizen response by a handful of men armed only with handguns who pinned the attackers in the grocery store and rescued scores of people, while the police and the army milled around outside wondering what to do, and arguing about who should be the ones in charge.
Yes, what you said Mark.
JohnF, I am sorry to say this, but you are very wrong about what happened at the Kenyan mall terrorist attack.
Rumor has it, some of the Orlando 49 were blue on blue violence. Funny how people are more worried that armed civilians might do that.
To be honest, I think those rumors are false. Eye witnesses have stated that he was confronted in the bathroom when the police penetrated the exterior wall and demanded he drop his weapon. he did not, he shot back (striking one officer in his kevlar helmet) and was killed by the police returning fire.
The early rumors I heard were that some of the casualties may have been shot by the SWAT team. Since everyone was using .223, I assume we will never know.
SWAT waited for 3 hours before entering. The killing was probably pretty much done by then. SWAT’s big guilt is not going in immediately. How many wounded could have lived had they went in withing minutes of arriving?
The police response is boggling. Active killer situations must be met with immediate violent response, even if it’s just a single officer.
3 hours is not comprehensible in the current climate.
Sian, I agree 100%.
This is a big question mark at this time. Yuge.
Facts schmacts.
G-G-G-GUNS!!!!!!! Ahhhhh!!!!!
How about all the recent attacks directly ON cops. That’s a failure to communicate at least equal threat to the bad guys.
ALL the recent attacks on cops?
Methinks you’ve been watching too much TV.
Have there EVER been as many “assassination” style killings on cops across America as there have been in the last ~ 14 months?
Methinks you don’t monitor a few different news sources, sift, and discern.
Example one of an article that will never be discussed or published on cnn, nbc, abc, cbs, fox, huffpost, ny times, etc.
The state Senator from IL dismissed the argument from gun rights supporters that if more people had been armed in the club, the gunman could have been stopped.
“The notion that the answer to this tragedy would be to make sure that more people in a nightclub are similarly armed to the killer, defies common sense,” he said. WITH A STRAIGHT FACE LYING OUT HIS MOUTH.
The day cannot come soon enough when he’s chucked into the dustbin of history.
There was an exchange on Game of Thrones that I thought was relevant to all the preachy pacifist types.
Septon Ray: “Violence is a disease. You don’t cure it by spreading it to more people.”
Sandor Clegane: “You don’t cure it by dying, either.”
None of us (none that I know, at least) are going around welcoming violence, but we understand that it is the only appropriate response during these mass shootings. Words of peace and prayer do not stop the assailants. Only action does. It would sure be nice if we were always permitted to carry our tools that could help us end the violence.
That list omitted the Clackamas Town Center attack. According to the summary in Wikipedia, “[the attacker] fired a total of seventeen shots, killing two people and seriously wounding a third person.” Wikipedia article also mentions that the attacker promptly went into a stairwell and committed suicide upon seeing a concealed carrier draw on him.
There are others left off the list, but it stands as a good graphic.
Another example is the Aurora, CO High School shooting. If I recall correctly, only one dead. Defender was SRO, but still “good guy with a gun.”
Preaching to the choir. Hell John McCain blamed Bury Soetoro for the shooting ’cause he left Iraq and “created” ISIS…nothing about 2A to actually protect your azzes.
You forgot to put four or so hours under “pulse nightclub” above for police response time.
Imo as training needs to be changed. Every able bodied adult should run to the shooter and overwhelm or attempt to do so. I hope I’m never in this situation but armed or not, I prey I go towards not away. We are all gonna die someday, I might as well go out getting shot in the front than the back. U just might stop the attack, and if not you will buy some time for those that choose to run.
This! Fight, Run, Hide. That order. If you’re close, fight back. If you don’t fight, the assailant will have control of the situation until police arrive in 10mins to 3 hours. If you’re not in the immediate area, get even further away. Hiding should only be suggested for the frail. If the assailant isn’t stopped by immediate action, they will summarily execute all of the people that chose to hide.
We’ve seen these terrorist/lone wolf attacks enough, you’d think we would have learned something by now. Making targets softer is not working. The police are always too few and too far away. End gun/knife/taser free zones and let us defend ourselves!
Like that funny commercial it seems that off duty cop, while armed, was a security monitor, not a security guard. To be him not going down swinging was shameful. He saved his own life when he was paid to protect, and let dozens get killed. For me that deraliction of duty and is tantamount to being criminally neglagent.
In Maryland, even with a Ccw, they will charge you with 1st degree assault for holding an atttacker at bay while calling the police. Society had gone crazy. If you pull your weapon kill your target or have your target file counter charges against you.
It will be a cold day in hell before I would help anyone in the shithole they call Maryland.
Since practically no one can get a CCW in Maryland the point is probably moot, but I get your point.
Lately the debate has become a another round of the rehash of why the 2nd amendment protects militias and not individuals. Its fairly frustrating as the basis for this feels incredibly tortured.
But, Peter, don’t they know only racist rednecks join the totally not even supposed to be legal militias?
Top three on the bottom half of that list don’t actually involved armed intervention preventing loss of life… the perps were prevented from leaving, but after they stopped killing people.
But but gun control FEELS.
The problem with the uniform is it screams “SHOOT me!” So an officer doing a job like this should either not wear a uniform, or wear right under it clothes that will blend into the crowd. Shed the outer uniform, and be less of a target and more free to operate.
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