Maybe more importantly, uniformed people with guns. In an active shooter situation, people in plain clothes are all suspects and suspects holding guns get shot.
Myself and coworkers joke about our "armory" of weapons ready to combat a shooter. However, we're not stupid enough to actually do that. We know the police that would show up within seconds would see us as targets as well.
America's obsession with credentials at its finest... these people are allowed to have guns because we say so, but no one else! (except those pesky criminals and shooters who don't abide by laws)
America has a pretty big obsession with thinking that they would be the hero in this situation if only they were there and had a gun.
The average gun owner (hell, the average police officer probably) is in no way prepared for an active shooting situation. It's a fantasy to think you'd be the one to stop it.
Bear in mind that after the recent Florida school shooting, the President of the United States declared that if he were there, he would have, despite being unarmed, physically overpowered the shooter and saved the day. If that is not worrying enough, half of the country believed him when he said that.
This is a man who got out of his limo to confront a mugger in Manhattan. (old news articles cover it) I think that this is evidence enough to suggest that yes, he actually would do it.
Good for Trump that he said that. He has an imposing physique, and he might just have impressed the disturbed kid enough to put down his gun. (Ten years ago there was a school shooting in Germany where a teacher did stop a student that way.)
But we must respect the decision of the policeman in Florida who found himself outgunned not to confront the shooter, first responders are trained not to be heroes and to keep their life first priority.
Oh, man. Having known a bunch of CCW holders who also carry their guns with them at all times, I would be far more scared of those guys in this situation, full stop.
They talk tough, but I have zero confidence in their ability to add the good kind of violence to a violent situation. Sooooooo overconfident, smh.
It has nothing to do with being the hero. People who are a good law abiding citizens should not be denied the right to own firearms because some people misbehave.
This is just a result of America’s individualist society. If we were collectivists we would ban guns for the good of society. But we’re not, and we never will be. We’re rugged individualists, for better or worse, and some people actively vote for things that make their lives worse just to uphold that value. It’s what America was built on. I don’t see a problem with it. It’s just a different way of life.
The same Americans were perfectly ok with draconian sentences for marijuana and other drugs. The same America is imprisoning most people among all countries oftentimes for surprisingly long time. You can get arrested for jaywalking or loitering, both of them being unimaginable to me. You have to keep your hands on wheel when cop stops you, lest cop can shoot you. Meanwhile, I can keep my hands where I want when cops stop me in a car.
I am not sure individualism and freedom are good enough explanations.
Very few Western countries actually ban guns. Sweden, for example, has 2M registered guns (21 for each 100 persons). Germany has 5.5M. In the Czech Republic you can get a PAR MK3 (local version of the AR15).
To the best of my knowledge in Germany it's mostly long guns for hunting, not handguns. To carry a handgun you'd need a permit and demonstrate your need to be armed.
I agree with your observations about the US (as an inhabitant myself), a lot of people forget or deny these points.
I do disagree with your conclusions that it must stay this way, because I feel that on the gun issue, the resulting policies are leading to more guns in unqualified hands and more violence. I think there is space for rugged individualism and sane gun ownership requirements.
I think we're at a middle ground that is worse than either idealistic extreme (zero guns everywhere VS everyone trained and carrying).
Having gun-free zones exist alongside available firearms has repeatedly resulted in mass shooters picking the least armed location. The eventual Pulse shooter scoped out the Disney parks but was discouraged by the guards. The presence of a few qualified people carrying is a deterrent that we shouldn't rule out, and it's not worth staffing police on every block like a police state.
Perhaps a better combination might be legislation for sane gun ownership requirements combined with legislation limiting the proliferation of gun-free zones. That way vetted gun owners wouldn't be unarmed in the places in their community that they care about when they come up against a killer with no regard for rules.
I own an AR15 and a shotgun. Law enforcement is the right call for rapid response versus someone like myself with limited range time.
I don't care about your credentials; if you have actual training, that's what matters. Your average civilian has almost no training, therefore law enforcement is the preferred response. Can you prove training without credentials? Certainly, but we're not all going to the range together to see who we are and aren't going to trust to respond to active shooters.
It's not just the training in a broad sense - if you're armed with your concealed carry, and you witness a shooting, are you duty-sworn to act?
Put it another way, in that it actually happened: If you're duty sworn to act, and don't, are you partly responsible for further deaths? See: The on-campus resource officer for a recent highschool shooting who did hide.
I for one support a clear division between who is responsible for general civilian safety. I draw the line at buckling my seatbelt and not drinking cleaning product - beyond that, I don't think I should be in charge of making sure I don't get shot, or smashed into by a drunk driver, or ensuring the train I get on doesn't derail. I want my government to take care of that and I'm happy to pay for it.
> the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists
The country was founded on the notion that all you have is the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So I rather defend myself.
If you want to “happily pay for” your own protection, you should hire your own bodyguard. I don’t want my taxes to go to your protection just because you want the government to solve all your problems.
Agree, but edge case. Maybe you're armed, maybe you have the training, and maybe you're not going to panic. Can't base sound policy at scale on the stars aligning.
I tend to think that mass shootings would turn out better if everyone was armed. It is so much harder to kill a lot of people if someone is shooting back at you.
However, overall, it would be terrible policy because such a proliferation of arms in public would result in all kinds of extra mass shootings, suicides, homicides, accidents, etc. that would cause more deaths than any reduction in the lethality of a given mass shooting.
Nobody has ever successfully used a shooting situation with victims as an opportunity to convince other people to own and carry firearms when going to school, work, or church.
All it does is piss people off, make gun enthusiasts look bad, and start up flamewars online.
If you want to convince other people of the merits of gun ownership, the time and place to do that is offline, with friends, at your favorite range or other safe shooting area.
If only America were actually obsessed with credentials on this one...
But before playing into your hand further: It doesn't seem odd that most people are not mentally/physically capable of dealing properly with an active shooter/combat situation and therefor don't feel that they would/should be the person to deal with it. Gonna make the bold assumption that most people's job descriptions don't involve annual firearm training, and they would therefor feel more comfortable with police dealing with these sort of situations. Which is the point other sane humans are trying to make before you deride the conversation for douchery.
Actually no, most shooters do not own their guns legally. Only 18% of guns used in crimes were legally owned. Although your claim may be the case for mass shooters, a tiny minority of all perpetrators of gun homicide. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/27/new-e...
It's hard to see minor details like that from high up in an ivory tower.
Lower income urban voters tend to be split on gun control depending on the type. There's little support there for anything that would make it more costly or time consuming for someone without a record of violent crime to buy a firearm.
Consider, though, those living outside major population centers, where the police response time can be on the order of 10 to 30 (or more) minutes and there's an active shooter situation. There's very little that can be done to mitigate damage done by the shooter or prevent him from escaping in that span of time.
Well they not only have a gun. They have something far more important: body armor. Even a completely untrained SWAT member is going to be more successfull than a random citizen with a gun.
The big edge the SWAT guys have is armor and shields, and sometimes armored vehicles, along with enough tactical training to use them. This lets them survive getting close enough to do something. Regular cops have guns too, but that's not enough. The Parkland shooting had an armed sheriff's deputy in the school, but he wasn't armored up to take on someone with an assault rifle.
Qualified people with guns (ideally).