Religious gun nut kills Batman moviegoers

[Animavore]

[Seth]

But I wouldn't really expect you to understand anything at all about the tactics of armed encounters in the first place.

Correct and nor would I want to, I also know nothing about how to survive a nuclear attack in a bunker or what to do if a wing falls of in an aircraft.

Far better to live in a society where that the chances of that are as minimised as possible instead of preparing for them which actually makes the chances of of it happening far more likely

Sucks to be you then, since no such society exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist.

[mozg]

There's something hilarious about that.

That came from a series of events where realistic toy guns were brandished or pointed at police officers and they reacted. Separating the sheep from the goats.

It is pretty funny. No realistic waterpistols, either.

But it makes sense. Especially since there are also people who make real guns look like toys, too-- painted goofy colors, all that.

It's sad.

My cousin has a bright pink one. I loathe it.

Yeah I pretty much only like guns that are black, brown or stainless steel.

[Wumbologist]

But I wouldn't really expect you to understand anything at all about the tactics of armed encounters in the first place.

Correct and nor would I want to, I also know nothing about how to survive a nuclear attack in a bunker or what to do if a wing falls of in an aircraft.

Far better to live in a society where that the chances of that are as minimised as possible instead of preparing for them which actually makes the chances of of it happening far more likely

Sucks to be you then, since no such society exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist.

The ancient Egyptians probably didn't have to know how to react to an armored shooter in a crowded movie theater, nor were they likely to find information on how to survive nuclear attacks or plane crashes useful.

[Warren Dew]

Hey, here's another idea on who to blame for the shootings:

James Holmes, Aurora Theater Gunman, May Have Used Federal Student Grants To Fund Shooting

James Holmes may have used grant money from the National Institutes of Health to purchase the weapons he allegedly used to kill 12 people and injure 58 others.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/2 ... 02740.html

[Twoflower]

But it makes sense. Especially since there are also people who make real guns look like toys, too-- painted goofy colors, all that.

It's sad.

I want that.

[Seth]

Hey Seth, Would you engage the shooter if it was difficult to see from the tear gas he had tossed in the theater? If your eyesight was compromised wouldn't that mean you might accidentally hit someone else while aiming for the shooter? I'm curious if you would shoot no matter what, or decide based on other factors?

Many factors would come into play when making the shoot/don't shoot decision, including target identification and sight picture acquisition, what's in front of and beyond the target, what other risks might exist in taking a shot. In this specific scenario, because he was standing on the stage at the front of the house, the potential for hitting unwanted targets behind him was minimal, but the possibility of someone darting into the line of fire in the chaos was a very real possibility. However, given the fact that he was heavily armed and potentially could kill hundreds of people, I would have likely engaged him as best I could regardless of the potential for hitting someone darting into the line of fire. In such a situation, it's a matter of reducing the casualties, not necessarily avoiding all possible casualties.

This is what most police departments learned from Columbine when dealing with the "active shooter." Prior to Columbine, the standard practice was a "hostage" scenario that called for establishing a perimeter, trying to contact and negotiate with the hostage-taker, and waiting for the SWAT team to arrive.

After Columbine, law enforcement professionals came to understand the new threat of the shooter bent on killing as many people as possible then committing suicide by cop and they changed their tactical plans to provide for immediate "hasty assault" by the first responding officers. Their job is to make entry as quickly as possible and engage the shooter even if they can't kill him in order to give civilians as much time and opportunity as possible to escape or take cover rather than waiting for heavily armed and armored SWAT teams to respond as the shooter(s) are continuing to kill.

This is the purpose of an armed citizen engaging such a killer; to provide a distraction that allows others to escape or take cover with the potential of injuring or killing the shooter. This is precisely what happened at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where a deranged shooter tried to enter the building to kill people in the church during services. Armed church members, including former police officer Jeanne Assam, ran towards the sound of gunshots in the parking lot, where the killer killed two teenage girls on the way in, and engaged him in the lobby. Assam, with no regard whatever for her own safety, advanced on the shooter while under fire, firing steadily and wounding him so that he fell to the ground and then shot himself in the head rather than be taken alive. Assam, a civilian with a CCW permit who was an armed volunteer security guard for the church, certainly saved dozens or hundreds of the more than 1000 people in the church at the time.

When such events happen, the victims don't have six minutes to wait for the police. They don't have sixty seconds. They are lucky if they have six seconds. That's why deranged mass shooters specifically choose venues like churches, schools, universities (Virginia Tech) and movie theaters. They calculate that they can successfully kill large numbers of people before the police can possibly respond, and they are exactly correct in that assessment. That's why such attacks will continue to happen until other societies adopt the same sort of sane policies that Israel has adopted, where every law abiding citizen can be armed openly with semi and fully-automatic military-grade firearms, including M-16 rifles and Uzi submachine guns. Such mass shootings are very rare in Israel because there is almost always one or more people who are well-armed and prepared to respond in such situations in any crowd, whereas even here in the US, only about 5 percent of people choose to go about armed.

Until many more people come to understand the nature of the threat and choose to arm themselves in much larger numbers, mass massacres like this will continue to happen here, and everywhere else (need I mention Dunblane, Norway and Tasmania?) because terrorists and deranged killers will ALWAYS be able to acquire firearms if they are intent on mass killing, no matter how strict the gun control laws are. And if they can't get firearms, they will use dynamite, plastic explosives or gallon glass jugs filled with Tide laundry detergent and gasoline to commit mass murder.

The ONLY way to stop them is for armed citizens on the scene to respond in the first five seconds of the attack to distract, deter or kill the terrorists. By the time the police arrive, in virtually EVERY such mass killing, the shooter has already completed his task and is either reloading or has run out of ammunition or experienced a jam or malfunction.

[Wumbologist]

they will use dynamite, plastic explosives or gallon glass jugs filled with Tide laundry detergent and gasoline to commit mass murder.

If I've got to die at the hands of a mass murderer, I'll admit I'd at least appreciate it if he took stainfighting into consideration.

[Twoflower]

they will use dynamite, plastic explosives or gallon glass jugs filled with Tide laundry detergent and gasoline to commit mass murder.

If I've got to die at the hands of a mass murderer, I'll admit I'd at least appreciate it if he took stainfighting into consideration.

[Seth]

they will use dynamite, plastic explosives or gallon glass jugs filled with Tide laundry detergent and gasoline to commit mass murder.

If I've got to die at the hands of a mass murderer, I'll admit I'd at least appreciate it if he took stainfighting into consideration.

Tide laundry detergent + gasoline = homebrew napalm. Sticks and burns.

[Twoflower]

they will use dynamite, plastic explosives or gallon glass jugs filled with Tide laundry detergent and gasoline to commit mass murder.

If I've got to die at the hands of a mass murderer, I'll admit I'd at least appreciate it if he took stainfighting into consideration.

Tide laundry detergent + gasoline = homebrew napalm. Sticks and burns.

But no stains!!!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There are pix of LP brandishing a pink rifle at Wal-mart.

[Wumbologist]

CCW's are useless to stop crimes, they said....

http://www.abc4.com/content/about_4/bio ... CM9dQ.cspx

[JimC]

Some of the responses here by gun enthusiasts are utterly surreal to anybody from the rest of the world outside the US... (yes, there is a world outside...)

They begin to suggest that the real problem is not too many guns, but not enough...

Arm everybody!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Some of the responses here by gun enthusiasts are utterly surreal to anybody from the rest of the world outside the US... (yes, there is a world outside...)

They begin to suggest that the real problem is not too many guns, but not enough...

Arm everybody!

The gun is a symptom, not the disease.