Regarding guns on campus, the Larimer County Sheriff, Jim Alderden writes:
. . .One of the real tragedies of the situation at Virginia Tech is that misguided administrators created a gun free zone where someone like this crazed individual could prey on other students, staff and faculty who were powerless to defend themselves. Their philosophy of keeping guns out of the hands of sane and law abiding citizens on campus potentially contributed to the tragic results. Locally, we are fortunate that at Colorado State University, the administrators have shown more common sense and recognize that a firearm in the hands of a law abiding citizens who frequent the campus is not a risk but could be a deterrent to violent criminal activity. While there are a number of students, staff and faculty at CSU who have Concealed Weapons Permits, admittedly, the chance of one of them being at right place at the right time to intervene is small, but compare this to the situation at Virginia Tech where there was no chance.
That last sentence echoes what I said after the incident:
Had VA Tech not been a “Gun Free Zone,” there is still no guarantee that there would have been an armed, law abiding student or professor at hand or able to prevent or to cut-short the murderous rampage but at least there would have been the chance of it. Instead — in the “Gun Free Zone” — the tragic victims had no chance at all.
Needless to say (needlessly,) not all law enforcement agrees with Sheriff Alderden. From a 9News TV (CO) article:
The University of Colorado at Boulder forbids concealed firearms on campus. CU Police Department Commander Brad Wiesley says switching that policy could decrease safety on campus.
“There’s no standard way to identify the good guys versus the bad guys in the middle of an active shooting situation. It tremendously complicates the response for officers responding,” said Wiesley.
Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to “complicate” anything by offering resistance. Officer Wiesley prefers the easy way to identify the good from the bad: The good guys are the ones laying dead on the floor because none of them were armed.
42 Responses to “One Colorado Sheriff Gets It”
on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:59 am # Skip
God forbid I should have to use my fucking brain when responding to a call! Christ!!!! What’s that officer worried about, he isn’t going to get there until it all over anyway.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 8:33 am # Keith
Experience in the English speaking world seems to point to the cops getting there long after the shooting is over. The response time for armed cops getting to Hungerford in England, in 1987, was HOURS
I’ll just repeat that:
Fecking HOURS
on 07 Jun 2007 at 1:04 pm # Matt
Boy, now I know why I’m glad I went to CSU and not CU…bunch of damn leftist hippies, but what else would you expect from Boulder????
on 07 Jun 2007 at 5:22 pm # Daniel
Sorry to feel like a copycat, but …
“There’s no standard way to identify the good guys versus the bad guys in the middle of an active shooting situation. It tremendously complicates the response for officers responding,” said Wiesley.
This complete and utter moron assumes his “men” are going to happen on the scene of a shooting crime in time? Just to be confused?
The whole freaking department needs to be replaced.
Starting with Wiesley. Moron. Idiot. Whats-his-name.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 6:08 pm # Letalis
Uh…there wasn’t any legal concealed carry at Columbine and the cops didn’t rush in to confront Harris and Klebold. Look, the bottom line is that the donut ninjas nearly always wait until the bad guy has shot himself before they even enter a building.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 6:48 pm # pmacb
Letalis,
Columbine was a watershed event in LE. Prior to that day all police departments assumed they would face a rational hostage taker, not two mass murderers with no intention of escape. The Littleton cops didn’t wait for the shooters to kill themselves, they formed the perimeter that they were trained for and waited for SWAT per established protocol. If was only in hindsight that that was a very bad idea.
VaTech will be a similar watershed event in college policing. Whether arming or allowing arming of the students, faculty and/or staff is a good idea is still being debated. Norris Hall took 9 minutes; other school shooting took even less time. Will we get there in time? Probably not. Should we plan and train like we will? Absolutely.
pmacb
18+ years policing a college campus, & neither a ninja nor a donut…
on 07 Jun 2007 at 6:52 pm # rc
“There’s no standard way to identify the good guys versus the bad guys…”
So we should all be a bunch of doey-eyed victims when faced with a rampaging shooter… just to ease concern about the cop’s lack of a ’standard way’.
I’d say the cop is lacking standards of a different sort. Specifically, my survival is more important than simple procedures and easy paperwork. Why be a cop if you aren’t prepared to make life and death decisions? Civilians in a shooting situation have to make those choices whether they want to or not. I don’t think disarming the good guys is going to accomplish anything.
I like this saying: “We’re a pack, not a herd.” Bad guys beware.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:00 pm # stephen
pmacb…police should work with the problem then, not against it. Why not actively encourage CCW classes to include uniform methods of communicating with police in the event that there is a situation with overlying civilian/police responses? The civilian response will almost always be quickest responding to a situation, and this is a good thing. The cops should be a part of this solution and work with the community rather than acting as if active response to these situations is somehow their sovereign territory.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:03 pm # dogwood
There’s no standard way to identify the good guys versus the bad guys in the middle of an active shooting situation.
Hint: Bad guys with guns will shoot at the police. Good guys with guns will not.
Hope this helps.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:38 pm # Houston's Problem
Dear Officer Brad Waytoolate Commander CU Police Department,
Subject: Identity of Spree-murderer vs. CCW citizen.
First clue. When you arrive at the building in helmut, goggles, boots, body armor and ninja mask, there will be no gun fire.
Second clue. The spree-murderer will be easily identified as the body with a lots of spare magazines and a gun in his hand or very close to his body.
Third clue. The CCW citizen will be easily identified as the person surrounded by other students sobbing and offering consolation in a location as far away from the spree-murderer as possible. The CCW citizen will likely be hiding his or her face in their hands and saying “Oh My God” over and over. There will be no visible weapon.
Fourth clue. When you arrive, the other students will look up briefly, point to the body and say, “that’s him, he murdered Jim and Jane before, John, stopped him.” The student’s will be more fearful of you in ninja suits than John the CCW citizen in plain clothes. They know John as a classmate and they don’t know you.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:51 pm # Jet Goodson
I’m sure CU’s gun rule makes it completely gun free. Well, wait…except that one time my sophomore or junior year that a couple of suspected drug dealers were running around the dorms flashing their guns at people.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 8:35 pm # ymal brucker
Strawman argument.
The cops don’t have to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
The people on the scene have already done that. Statistics show that civilian shooters target the goblins far more frequently than do the cops. That’s because the civilians on the scene KNOW who the mopes are. Cops have to guess.
And the cops sometimes guess wrong.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 8:39 pm # Flighterdoc
Houstons Problem:
EXCELLENT summary!
on 07 Jun 2007 at 9:02 pm # Charlie (Colorado)
I remember when the CU police department was worried that they weren’t allowed to carry wad-cutters.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 9:21 pm # Houston's Problem
Flighterdoc
Thanks. I spent my freshman and sophomore years in Norris hall at Virginia Tech as an engineering student. My wife lived in West Ambler Johnson. My nephew was in Randolph hall directly behind Norris Hall on the day of the attack at Virginia Tech.
Everyday Virginia Tech police were out giving parking tickets, An officer should have been in that building within 3 minutes and the murderer should have been dead within 5 minutes.
Once upon a time in America we used to have law men. They didn’t give tickets for smoking or not wearing seat belts. They carried revolvers in .357 magnum and they fired carefully since they only had five or six shots. They didn’t know what a ninja was and they didn’t treat every crime as a SWAT fashion show.
They were also able to tell the difference between a citizen and a criminal.
I have no tolerance for officers who call citizens civilians and can’t tell the difference between a citizen and a criminal so they treat us all like criminals.
In Texas, we have a castle doctrine law that benefits citizens by stating that a citizen may presume that a criminal breaking into their home is there to kill them and thus allows the citizen to use lethal force to defend themselves instead of subjecting themselves to victimhood in an attempt to escape their own home.
I will be writing the legislature to lobby for a law that defines a spree murderer as a person who kills or attempts to kill multiple persons. The law will protect citizens who stop such spree murderers even if the citizen shoots the spree murderer in the back with no warning. Self defense in such cases does not require warning, however I want it codified into law so that ignorant juries who are educated by ignorant TV show writers are not able to convict person’s who stop maniacs from killing others.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 9:48 pm # Darwin
I don’t kniow what the percentage of population that have CCWs in Virginia is, but in Indiana it’s 6.5%. With 26,000 people on the VT campus, that percentage would mean that 1,890 people could be armed. Even if nobody in the classes were armed people outside heard the shooting and could have intervened.
The guy stopped killing other people and shot himself when people with guns (cops) were coming up the stairs. How many fewer would have died if licensed CCW holders were able to be armed on campus?
As for telling the good guys from the bad guys, the good guys are the ones that put their guns away when the cops arrive.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 10:07 pm # Daniel
Somebody should print all this out and mail it to Officer Wiesley.
Think he’d learn something?
on 07 Jun 2007 at 10:19 pm # Eric
It did strike me as odd that all I saw on tv was cop after cop hiding, in full assault gear, behind anything large enough to conceal them.
I don’t blame the cops for being cautious. I do fault them for doing NOTHING. Sorry guys, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. The body armor and guns should have been a clue.
How do you tell the good guys from the bad guys? When you yell at them and tell them to drop their weapon, THE GOOD GUYS WILL OBEY. The smart bad guys WILL OBEY. If they don’t, then shoot them.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 10:45 pm # Robin Goodfellow
Eric has it right. There is a standard way to recognize the good guys from the bad guys in a “shoot-out” situation. When the police show up and identify themselves the good guys drop their weapons and let the police take over, the bad guys either stop and surrender or they shoot at the cops and the cops shoot back. This isn’t exactly rocket science.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 10:54 pm # Dave Hardy
I could see some law enforcement objections against citizens responding to a mass killer. I wouldn’t agree with them, but could understand them. However, “we might shoot the citizen without stopping to see if he is the defender or the killer” is not on that list. I’d expect that LEOs responding would be a bit quick on the trigger … as Elmer Keith says, if you get killed on duty the city will send flowers to your funeral but not support your family … but not so quick that they’d snuff a defender without figuring out which side he was on, especially if informed that defense was taking place.
on 07 Jun 2007 at 11:37 pm # Phillep
Cops are supposed to contain a situation as soon as it looks like it might be going bad, then try to clarify what’s going on so they can chill things out. A citizen with a CCW is supposed to wait for the situation to clarify before acting. Of course the citizen is going to have a better idea of who the bad guys are.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 1:10 am # Yaakov Watkins
In the US there is no civil right to police protection. Meaning, the police don’t ever have to show up. And sometimes they don’t even when they know that there is a problem.
So waiting for the police can be a stupid thing to do.
On a humorous note, I remember a colleague running an inner city discount store caught a shoplifter near the time of police shift change. He called for help and was told that they were too busy to come. He told the police that if they didn’t come soon “there would be one (expletive deleated ) dead (racial slur deleted) in the alley behind my store.” Police showed up in 30 seconds, arrested the offender, and took him away. The funny thing is that while the police tried fruitlessly to reason with the manager to get him to refrain from threatening to kill shoplifters, the shoplifters and other customers were listening.
His losses went down after that.
His store didn’t have an alley.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 1:37 am # Alec Rawls
I have to take issue with those who think that good guys will drop their guns when the police arrive, or even when the police order them to.
An undercover cop was shot by a uniformed officer here in CA a few years ago because he was covering a criminal and did not drop his gun when told. Of course he can’t drop his gun in front of a criminal, and neither could a law abiding citizen!
The uniformed officer should have been able to tell that the undercover cop was a good guy by the fact that he was covering the other guy WITHOUT SHOOTING HIM. If his intent was to murder the guy he was covering, he would have already done it. The uniformed officer’s next step in this circumstance should be to COMMUNICATE. He should keep his gun up, in case anyone turns a gun towards him, and give the guy with the gun a chance to tell him what is going on. Just ordering people to do what they might not be able to do is idiotic.
There is nothing wrong with an officer telling a person to put his gun down, but if the person does not comply, the officer absolutely cannot assume that the person doesn’t have a good reason for not complying. Training has to include a “plan b,” designed to get to the bottom of the situation. The CCW carrier has to be communicative too, but the officer has to give him a chance.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 1:39 am # comatus
Your professional sheepdog will always prefer his flock neutered and de-horned. “We’re the only ones…”
The last rape/murder at my local campus (that would be Toledo) was perpetrated by a member of the university police force. While we should all be in sympathy with the (limited) mission and difficulties of state police, I’m not willing to put up with one more swat of attitude from them.
Far preferable is the outlook of the Akron U. police chief, also a revered rifle coach: “I need to understand the Constitution. It’s my job to enforce it.”
on 08 Jun 2007 at 3:52 am # straightarrow
pmacb, Bullshit! Cops hide. They hid at Columbine, they hid at South Central L.A., they hid at Va. Tech and other places. Then we get the excuses. “They want to go home at the end of their shifts.” Hoo goddamned ray, doesn’t everybody? In fact, I am in favor of it. But, if you don’t want to accept the risks of the job, don’t take the money.
I spent my entire working life in jobs more dangerous, far more dangerous, than law enforcement. You guys weren’t even in the same insurance group. We died at a much higher rate than you. We didn’t travel across the entire country, either, when one of ours died, like your kind do to garner sympathy, and we usually knew them personally. We went to work at our dangerous jobs and did what we had agreed to do.
Do I think that when a cop buys the farm it is somehow appropriate? NO! I do not.
Watershed event my ass. What has changed? They still hide until the shooter retires himself. That’s a watershed? Please!
If I sound angry, I am. I am tired of the damn whining you people have perfected. I have only known two cops in my life who didn’t need thirteen to one, or better, odds to act like men and do their damn jobs. I have a son and a brother who are cops, but they are not the two of which I spoke. Fortunately, neither has been faced with a similar situation, but if they ever are I pray they acquit themselves better than the average run of bully boys we now see in blue.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 5:09 am # Henry Bowman
lasvegassun.comWiesley seems to have taken a page from his brother blue-suited bureaucrat at USC:
“College police chiefs across South Carolina said such a law would make it difficult to pinpoint a criminal. ‘Today, if we respond, we know the person with the weapon is the bad guy,’ said Ernest Ellis, the law enforcement director at the University of South Carolina.”
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2007/may/16/051601574.html
Here’s what I sent Ellis on that day:
Gee, it must be such a challenge to have to use your brain.
The person with the weapon is the bad guy. The person with the doobie is the bad guy. The person in the domestic disturbance who has the penis is the bad guy. The person whose last name ends in a vowel is the bad guy. The person with the black skin is the bad guy. See where those mental shortcuts get you?
Here’s a curious fact: the primary purpose of law isn’t to make things no-brainers for law enforcement… no matter how much some of them may need it.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 8:04 am # CSU grad student
colostate.edu,I am a grad student at CSU, and looked at the CSU gun policy quite specifically on two different occasions in the past.
While I am very happy to see the Larimer county sheriff talking sense on this issue, and am happy to hear that at “Colorado State University, the administrators have shown more common sense and recognize that a firearm in the hands of a law abiding citizens who frequent the campus is not a risk but could be a deterrent to violent criminal activity,” I do not believe CSU policy allows concealed carry permit holders to carry on campus.
I will do some checking around.
…
Okay, I’m back. I’ve googled www.colostate.edu, and I’ve just talked to a police officer at the campus police department. I cannot now find any such policy that prevents concealed weapon permitees from carrying on campus. I’m amazed. Pleased at the common sense exhibited by CSU, but still amazed.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 1:14 pm # 1charlie2
I think the CU police dept phrased it badly. But he’s not completely wrong, either. On another forum, I was asked to help game a response (as an armed citizen) to the VT incident, assuming I was not in the same room as the whacko. One of my comments, which I don’t think I’ve seen echoed here, was
“Then I try to evacuate as many civilians as I can before I get killed by the bad guy or the cops. If I advance into deadly danger without armor, without backup, and without instant communication to the cops, I will almost certainly die.”
That’s a price that, without bravado, I will pay. The truth is that if you are armed in this sort of a situation, the chances of you surviving an encounter with the cops is very small. Note that I am NOT saying you shouldn’t sacrifice your life to save another, simply that you might have to pay that bill.
If you think that target identification in this sort of situation is easy, you’ve never tried it. And if you’ve only done it in training, you really don’t understand how many GALLONS of adrenaline you’ll have in you when it’s for real. As a result, the idea that a cop who knows people have already been killed may see my pistol and fire instantly is not surprising nor shocking to me. I wouldn’t even hold it against him. It’s not the BEST response, but by God it’s a HUMAN one.
It’s not about not WANTING to make decisions, it’s that in this situation, anyone can choose wrongly.
Also, if CCW were legal and a dozen folks were carrying when I tried to evac that wing of the school, there’s a good chance one of THEM would kill me. As before, I wouldn’t get all outraged over it.
In other words, if you want to be armed in this sort of a situation — and I DO — understand the bill that may come due. If someone doesn’t kill the crazy at the outset, the entire situation becomes horrifically dangerous.
That said, I DO support CCW for responsible adults. I’d hardly have one of my own if I didn’t. And I’d rather chance being killed by the cops or an armed civilian than calmly wait to be executed. And I think that these crazies CAN be killed early if enough folks are armed.
In other words, I want you to be able to defend yourselves. But I want you to have no illusions about the cost.
Long ago and far away, during the Iranian hostage crisis, it was acknowledged before the rescue attempt that OD-Delta would kill some of the hostages. Not “lose,” but “kill.” One of the State Dept. pukes was horrified, “Why would you do that ?” The answer was that when it dropped into the pot, at least some of the marines would forcibly disarm their captors, take the firearms, and advance. And Delta would kill anyone standing with a weapon.
Now the cops normally ain’t Delta or 6. But it serves to illustrate the “green-light” signal that holding a weapon sends after folks have been murdered. If you come upon a bad guy robbing a store, you would probably try to disarm him. Coming upon him after seeing a dozen corpses is a different story. You KNOW he’s willing to kill people. LOTS of people. Different mindset.
BTW: Remember that chiefs of police often have a different opinion than the rank and file.
Disclaimer: I ain’t a cop. I used to train them, I have a lot of them as friends (and some family), but I R not actually one.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 2:22 pm # Keith
All of the “identifying the bad guy” assumes that the cops will get there while the shooting is still going on…
I think Houston’s Problem, hits the snail on the head with a scenario of a group of weeping survivors and a sobbing CCW holder.
If there are CCW holders around, the whole thing is:
1) only a quarter as likely to happen in the first place (see John Lott for the analysis)
2) likely to be over in a minute or two, again, John Lott gave the examples of where CCW holders had (I think it was another college in Virginia) retreived their weapons from their cars and dis-armed the bad guy.
If there are no CCW holders around, we have pleanty of examples of the outcome: lots of innocent citizens MURDERED.
At Columbine, the school’s armed guard couldn’t even shoot straight.
Elsewhere, what is the likely Police response time?
In Britain it was Fecking HOURS,
Even if it is five minutes, there will still be a heap of corpses. I remain to be convinced that there will still be shooting going on when the cops arrive.
So, I don’t think that the benefits of only having the bad guy armed in anyway come close to matching the costs.
Keith
on 08 Jun 2007 at 3:01 pm # Gunsite Grad
Kieth:
Couldn’t have said it much better. Good.
1charlie2:
I hear you, but I consider police training in lethal force management to be, generally speaking, very 101ish.
They should have better training and I am sure you offered it.
My voluntary, self paid training is such that, if need be, I repeat, IF NEED BE, I will give a ‘goblin’ a time option to not die. This my dear friends, is precisely what good training, practice and mindset has given me. It is a gift I chose to accept and this is what is missing in the vast majority of LEO’s roaming our streets.
I don’t blame theme for quick triggers; they lack that skill level and they know it and it scares the hell out of them. I know, I was there.
To paraphrase the Guru; Asking a cop for advice about lethal threat management is like asking the Dominos delevry boy for a good wine reccomendation.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 3:20 pm # mariner
Last year in Norfolk, VA a plainclothed police officer was shot by a uniformed officer in exactly the same situation Alec Rawls described — he had a suspect on the ground and was covering him. A uniform who didn’t know what was going on came upon the scene and shouted at him (from behind) to drop his weapon. He didn’t and the uniform shot him in the back.
The investigation ruled the shooting a justified tragedy.
In my view we need to demand that police abandon their mindset that anyone with a handgun is a threat to their lives.
Armed citizens are not allowed that assumption, and police shouldn’t be either.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 6:39 pm # Letalis
pmacb:
Columbine watershed? Hardly.
Charles Whitman was watershed. Any mass shooter after that? The donut ninja should have been ready.
Established protocol? They were developed solely, SOLELY, to push forward in court afterward in order to try and avoid being found liable for DOING NOTHING.
You ain’t fooling me.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 9:03 pm # pmacb
Letalis,
Wow, you were in those meetings and training sessions where the protocols were developed? Cool! What did they serve for lunch?
straightarrow,
Glad to see that you survived your dangerous career. If you can’t see that the intent and direction of the police response to these incidents have changed after Columbine, then there is no hope for me to convince you. I’ll just say again that current practice is to respond as quickly as possible to the sound of the guns and to isolate the shooter from any further victims. Isolation includes using deadly force on the shooter if necessary.
If I was served by a department like the one you described, I’d be an angry taxpayer myself.
pmacb
on 09 Jun 2007 at 12:09 am # straightarrow
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on 09 Jun 2007 at 12:10 am # straightarrow
How about, lost two posts with about an hour of work, but that shit saves.
on 09 Jun 2007 at 9:05 am # Mr. Y
I just got out of a training class which enacted a slightly related scenario. This was a live fire, team scenario and my first (not my last). I took several lessons from this. The tunnel vision phenomenon is real, cover is truly your friend and you have to be cognizant of where your teammates are at all times as opposed to the “cowboy” one man to clear a room/house/school whatever. Since the primary objective of us all is to survive, and for all practical purposes that is in the best interest of the collective victims too in an active shooter scenario you’re not going to see cops running down a hallway to jump between muzzle and victim.
On the “too confusing” aspect. I realize that an active shooter situation is confusing, dangerous and stressful, but if the approach is going to be eliminate everyone with a gun, well…I’ll feel bad for the officer families, but not bad enough to die. If you walk up on a guy behind cover, drawn handgun, crouching defensively - that’s NOT an active shooter. That’s a challenge / control situation. Frankly, I’m not impressed with most sworn officers marksmanship skills to begin with, although I’d say a higher percentage of the sworn population are good shots than average joes. Also, if there’s return fire to that cover position, where I’m from we call that: “A CLUE”.
OTOH, there is an element of having to make the law enforcer’s life a bit simpler by not letting ego get in the way.
example: You’re sitting in the class when Jane’s angre ex bursts in proclaiming “BITCH, I’ll f***ing kill you”. Right or wrong, you intervene, notice he’s armed and within closing distance of Jane. You present, he advances, you warn, he attempts to attack her. You shoot, multiple times, attacker falls, you cover him. CPO busts in, seconds later, and orders you to drop the gun -> here’s where common sense comes in folks. You do it. CPO will see the weapon on the floor in the proximity of the BG. Totality of the circumstance is important. If the LE are all so poorly trained as the officers in VA (who shot the UC), then it’s time we abandon professional law enforcement, period.
So, if LE can’t “figure out” who the bad guys are in an active shooter situation, I say this:
Get used to saying “would you like fries with that?”
on 09 Jun 2007 at 9:37 am # Brerarnold
We have a few straw man arguments going on here. For instance, the one about a plainclothes officer getting shot. CCW holders don’t hold criminals at gunpoint. We may use deadly force in the face of deadly force, but that does not include detaining the criminal.
Here’s another one: “If I advance into deadly danger without armor, without backup, and without instant communication to the cops, I will almost certainly die.” There are so many things wrong with that, I hardly know where to begin. First, the CCW holder does not generally look for trouble. That’s the LEO’s job. If it comes to him, he has a tool that can use to deal with it. Second, how often does any CCW holder have backup or body armor? If this argument has any validity, there would be no CCW at all. Third, I know some CCW holders don’t train, and so might be foolish to get involved, as their skill level does not come up to the demands of the situation. Many of us do, though, unlike most criminals or spree murderers. How many times do we read of the number of shots fired vs. the number of hits scored in deadly confrontations? Let the bad guy be the one spraying shots; good training will help ensure that your shots will be on target, adrenaline dump or not. “Instant communication to the cops”? If they are already there, why are you shooting? If they are not, how do you communicate with them?
Finally, on the matter of the “sobbing CCW holder”: this has become ingrained in the culture for some reason. 20 years ago it was unheard of. I am a clinical social worker and I specialize in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Someone who was adequately prepared, mentally as well as skill-wise, is more likely to experience anger at the mook who caused him to have to shoot, rather than sorrow over having done so. Let’s most of us get back to where strong men and women do what needs to be done without a lot of self-doubt and angst, and leave the boo-hooing to the metrosexuals.
on 10 Jun 2007 at 12:41 am # straightarrow
Someone who was adequately prepared, mentally as well as skill-wise, is more likely to experience anger at the mook who caused him to have to shoot, rather than sorrow over having done so. Let’s most of us get back to where strong men and women do what needs to be done without a lot of self-doubt and angst, and leave the boo-hooing to the metrosexuals.
Amen
on 10 Jun 2007 at 2:16 am # Letalis
Actually, yes. I am attorney with a LARGE gov’t agency and I have LEOs for clients. So, I know what the funk I’m posting about.
on 12 Jun 2007 at 9:48 am # Phillep
“…If I advance into deadly danger without armor, without backup, and without instant communication to the cops, I will almost certainly die.”
Hogwash. You need backup, but the bad guy does not?
Cho was walking around inside classrooms, shooting students. He could not do that and keep an eye on the door.
Could he murder the people stopped by the chained door, and watch the hallway behind him?
on 13 Jun 2007 at 5:26 am # Keith
Well said Phillep,
If I can add to that, that the bad guy turning to see who is coming down the hallway and if they are armed, is also putting himself in a position to be rushed by his intended victims.
The people who carry out these crimes are loosers, they are not physically tough, they are probably well below average, and if a determined woman can fight a cougar for an hour or more, a wimpy looser is going to be a whole lot easier for either sex to rush and take down.
I still contend that if ccw s had been allowed on campus, the cops would have arrived to find the bad guy either dead or with a pile of people sitting ontop’ him restraining him. They would not find the shooting still going on.
I realize that I made a mistake in my earlier post by saying that the presence of ccw s on campus would reduce the probability of this sort of crime occurring to 1/4.
I’ve read John Lott’s 2000 paper on multiple public shootings again and that figure was for mass shootings occuring in a state with ccw laws, but even at the reduced probability, the shooting was most likely to occur in a gun free zone (disarmed victim zone)… as it did.
Keith
Keith
on 13 Jun 2007 at 9:07 am # Keith
sorry,
on a national basis the presence of a ccw laws in states reduces probability of a mass public shooting occuring to 1/4 the probability of occuring in a states without ccw laws.
even then, when a mass public shooting does take place in a state with ccw laws, it is almost always in a disarmed victim zone where the benefit of having a ccw law is nullified.
hope this paraphrases John’s work a little more clearly
Keith