Defense Against Mass Shooters

[Brenjen]

Originally posted by Squire
Ya, I have heard it all before.

I also have no problem with a teacher who say has a CCW with a gun in class, so I will elaborate my point:

If you were on a mass killing spree, and even if you were in a school where you knew a teacher might be armed...you are just going to know who to shoot 1st. After that, its all fish in a barrell, and you know it.

 Like fish in a barrel after the one possibly armed person is killed & I know it? Hardly, I know the opposite! Your implying the person armed for self defense would make the victims more susceptible & that's not true. You think no one armed for self defense makes them somehow LESS like fish in a barrel? How so?

 I say the shooter is going to able to concentrate less on shooting the unarmed if there are armed defenders in the area. Am I saying one armed school employee will be able to stop a mass murder? Not in so many words, I'm saying they will have a chance to fight back & it's possible they could stop it. If an armed teacher had pulled out a weapon & stopped the latest fruitcake at 31 instead of 32 it would be worth it. Don't you think?

 Nobody is going to open that fridge door & shake that last person murdered & say wake up #32, it's not really your time. But if an armed defender was there maybe they could have saved #32, I doubt an armed defender could have made it worse. They may have even been able to stop it at 2 after the first shooting in the morning.

[Pooh21]

Originally posted by FrodeMk3
Halo, I would not recommend, nor should anyone else recommend, charging an armed gunman.

All you will do is wind up with blood on your hands.

If you do know that someone has a gun, don't assume he won't use it.

He might have a .22 in one hand-and a shotgun in the other. He might be ready for someone to try a rush.

A shotgun will stop a rush, gruesomely.

If I am gonna die I want the people who find me to see the wounds came from the front, not the back. And if I wind up with blood on my hands after charging a gunman, well that is after all the point of the whole exercise.

[AquaShrimp]

Did you see how many freshmen were killed?  These were kids right out of high school, in their second semester of college.

[BBBB]

Originally posted by soda72
"Whether a person has been arrested depends not on the legality of his arrest but on whether he has been deprived of his liberty to go where he pleases."

 I understand this may be a necessary 'evil' given the situation.  However I can sympathize with the man in this picture, having gone through a similar experience myself.  I was "detained" by the local police department here in Flower Mound after a drive by shooting occurred and someone was killed.  My crime was the make, model and color of my car match the description of the offender, and I had the misfortune of being in the same area.  I did not enjoy having police officers pointing their weapons at me.  I did not enjoy having them scream at me to get out of my car and to keep my hands up.  I did not enjoy hearing the reason I was being "detained" for.  I did not enjoy having my hands handcuffed behind my back.  I espcially did not enjoy having to kneel down on cold pavement while they searched my car.  I suspect the man in that picture did not enjoy being detained either just becuase he was an asian man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Awww you poor thing.. Get over it dude. It happens. They were doing their job. What if you were the bad guy? What if they did not pull you over and go though a felony stop? How many more ppl would have died? Your feelings were far lower on the list of important stuff to care about. The safety of the public around you was far more important. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. In this case is sounds like it was your pride and your holier than thou attitude towards everyone else.
 That guy was cuffed. I see that. What I also see is that he is safe. The officer has his weapon holstered. He is not being overly rough on the guy. You have never been in combat or a shooting before. That much is clear.
  I am going to compare this situation to combat. The reason is that there are lots of ppl running around and tons of shots are being fired.
  In my helicopter it is not uncommon to hear three to four different radio chans at once. All of them with different views on the battle. You have to fly in, mark the good guys, find the bad guys. All the while you are receiving directions from two different guys. Each with their own emergency. The bottom line is when things start going down it happens fast. Info falls though the cracks. So you have to do the best you can do with what little info you have to go on.
  When hell breaks loose commo breaks down. It is a common problem that men and women far smarter than me have been trying to fix. So when things like this go on and people are in danger the police are forced to act a little tougher.
  Lets play "what ifs". The police did not know this guy. All they heard was that it was an Asian male. School hasn't started yet (thank God) so the campus isn't as crowded as normal. The police respondm they see an Asian guym they detain him. Two things happened here, one for sure, the police might have gotten the bad guy. That is the might. But for sure this kid is safe. That is the for sure part. He is with the cops he doesn't have anything to worry about now.
  Now the "what ifs". What if this guy in the picture was the bad guy? Take yourself back to the first few mins of the shooting and tell me how you can tell this guy from the bad guy? I know what your thinking...if I had a better description I could. Problem with that. You are going on the description that was gave to you buy a frazzled student. So it isn't going to be spot on. Instead you are going to get "He was a tall Asian guy.". That is about it. Descriptions are not accurate. If they were, they would be called pictures. Until then the police of to use the TLAR method. That Looks About Right.

-Sp0t

[Squire]

I certainly think there needs to be an increase in the availability of security personnel in these types of incidents, wether that comes from the police, local security personnel, or staff... is the debate I suppose, but I think the larger questions are how to improve over all policies and security measures to minimise deaths.  

I will say that "CCW" is no more of a magic solution than those that say "ban guns", I dont see either as being a fix, and I will leave it at that, I have no desire to have a long gun control debate, im not for it (gun control), and I will leave it at that.

...In any case like I said before, its not just about what can be done to improve the odds in US states without strict gun laws...but to other places as well. My real problem is this idea of "locking down" which I think is the same as saying "if there is a fire, stay put in the building untill the fire fighters arrive", its a nutty idea, the shooting starts on another floor, and your telling the students to stay put? ughh, no. You run like hell. To the exits, right now.

[Suave]

Originally posted by indy007
Rushing an armed assailant...

I just don't see that working. These are school kids, in a "gun free zone", not soldiers.

It's happened before, a gunman was subdued by students in a high school cafeteria. And these students weren't school children.

Police can't protect us, it's not their job.  Police aren't security, police are a reactive force, security is proactive.

In the US every capabable adult has the constitutional right to be an armed citizen cop in public places. And private business have the right to not allow guns to be carried on their property. But they should be aware of the ramifications of disarming their law abiding patrons.

Why on earth wouldn't you want to be in the company of gun carriers who aren't criminals or idiots?

[x0847Marine]

Originally posted by Dago
If you are not armed, run like heck.  If running isn't an option, pray.  People will generally not attack or swarm an armed shooter unless they are within arms reach at the beginning.

Depends, a shooter at one of the High Schools were I used to work walked up to 1 kid, said "cancel x-mas" and shot him in the face.. he was then swarmed from all directions and beaten with backpacks full of books, stabbed with a pen, then had his gun taken and was shot with it.

Swarming a single shooter could be effective if the students knew how, backpacks, ipods, pencils, chairs... anything you can throw or swing. A few of the ghetto kids wore their backpacks full of books across their torsos as a type of bullet resistant vest as they rushed the guy, which I though was pretty quick thinking.

But these were ghetto kids used to gunfire, mostly cholo gangsters.. not upper crust college students.

[FrodeMk3]

XMarine, not to Hijack, but could it be possible, with the way things are with kids in school, that when they saw the shooter go up to the victim, they had an idea as to what was gonna happen? Especially in an LA school?

They might have been almost forewarned.

[Hornet33]

Originally posted by AquaShrimp
Did you see how many freshmen were killed?  These were kids right out of high school, in their second semester of college.

It's a sad thing they were killed but they were NOT kids. They were adults. These people are the same age as half the people in the military. You going to call half the military kids??? For crying out loud, I was in combat at the ripe old age of 18 and be damned if anyone called me a kid. Granted some of the people interviewed after the incident acted like little kids, but the fact remains they are all adults.

Those that survived just got a harsh wake up call. The world is a dangerous place no matter where you are. You want to survive, take responsibility for yourself, and stop waiting for the rest of the world to take care of you. The real sad part is most of them will never learn that leason, and people think a college education makes them smarter than everyone else.

[soda72]

4- Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users and HTC. Flaming or abusing users is not tolerated.

[x0847Marine]

Originally posted by FrodeMk3
XMarine, not to Hijack, but could it be possible, with the way things are with kids in school, that when they saw the shooter go up to the victim, they had an idea as to what was gonna happen? Especially in an LA school?

They might have been almost forewarned.

Absolutely. Plus these kids, probably ALL of them, have been to a party or something where shots have been fired, its not new to most of them.

There was also a "collective conscious" response by these kids, immediately one kid yelled "he shot my homeboy, kill that...." as he charged the shooter, which motivated others to join in. The shooter kid was pelted with cd players, burritos, books, milk cartons... anything they could throw, which actually did a pretty good job of disorientating him.

Neither kid died BTW, the victim lost his jaw, the suspect had multiple broken bones, and a punctured lung..  but the grand prize was a colostomy bag and he lost the ability to have an erection.

Edit:
These are often called "AVI" incidents.

[BBBB]

4- Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users and HTC. Flaming or abusing users is not tolerated.