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.
The current laws in Sweden - the short version is that you need a justified reason (hunting or "shooting club"), you need to pass tests and not have a recent criminal record. Fully automatic weapons are much harder to get permits for than standard ones.
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 could have worded it differently, but I think it is important to point out that the rugged individual label does not apply to most Americans who live in cities and follow the herd.
Also this was in a response to a building where I have many friends was attacked by an active shooter.
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.
"The community is better at self defense than the individual."
- Not sure what this means. My own experience comes from someone abusing someone at a bus. Nobody intervenes. Just a bunch of sheep until I have to say "Stop it". So while the community may be better defending, they don't, and it is up to the individual to secure his / her own protection.
If my family was murdered while I was out, then by definition I cannot defend them. The law system will take care of it presumably, but that is not "defense", it is post-fact "justice."
Unclear what your mutually destruction comment was.
In your first example - why aren't there more assaults on buses? Why wasn't there a gang member on the bus demanding a secondary fare or "protection fee"? Because your taxes pay for a local police department and a federal policing force. I'm not talking about "bystander effect" here, I'm talking about government resources designed to protect the population at whole. Isolated incidents will still happen. The Law, and Government, is about doing as much good as possible.
Your family is de-facto defended from murder because it is harder to commit murder and get away with it when the FBI exists, generating criminal investigation resources and distributing them among local police detectives. Your taxes pay for this and are protecting you right now. The very existence of a justice system is preventing crime. Not all crime, obviously, but a great deal. The remainder is more a socioeconomic failure of this country than a justice system failure (or, a justice system failure in that the war on drugs is policy failure enforced by the justice system).
Mutually assured destruction is more a macro-comment. Why aren't hordes of Russian barbarians coming over the hill? Because the US exerts its sovereignty within its borders. Why doesn't an organized community (government) challenge that? Because both communities would be vaporized.
Since we're on the subject, your taxes are a much cheaper way to get clean water, medicine that you are guaranteed actually contains the active ingredients you're looking for, food that won't poison you, and ensure that the city upriver doesn't dump toxic waste into the river. If you wanted to "take care of those problems yourself," you'd be running around like a headless chicken. Communitize, instead.
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.
What range training features people who are bent on killing _actively shooting back_ at you?
_You_ don't want to harm anyone else, you only want to protect yourself (and possibly others). They have no such compunction.
Being able to put a few downrange with a Glock is not an active shooter situation, and honestly, as a first responder, most people in such situations find themselves vomiting, urinating in terror (and reasonably so).
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.
I grew up with gun culture. I was taught you don't pull a gun unless you are genuinely ready to kill someone. If you aren't prepared, both logistically and psychologically, to actually kill someone, this goes very bad places.
The idea that we just need to arm everyone pretty much guarantees that most people won't actually meet that standard. It goes all kinds of bad places.
The other thing is you don't find your way to a more peaceful civil climate by escalating the violence. That's so very much "Going to war to protect the peace is like fucking to preserve virginity."
We need to be fostering a more civil climate where Americans are better cared for. That's the real solution here. We need to be fixing healthcare and housing and the extremes of poverty in this country that are appalling for a first world country.
And I think that most of the discussions of gun violence overlook that larger reality and see it is as not relevant. But there are reasons people go postal here, and it isn't because a side effect of gun ownership is insanity.
> 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.
I don't think you've thought this through. You hear one, then two gun shots coming from two different people in a plaza with a bunch of people. Who's the real attacker?
Say you actually witnessed it, what about the 50 other people around you who now see you brandishing and firing a gun? Are you now the threat?
If everyone is shooting back at everyone else, the death toll will be WAY higher than just ducking and hiding with only one shooter. The real threat is clear in this scenario. The police know who to take down.
> 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.
It's probably much easier, if you count the deaths you cause and not just those from bullets you fire. When there is one person shooting, there are myriad reports from eyewitnesses with different numbers and descriptions of the shooters. When you've got multiple people shooting you are going to have multiple people perceiving who started the shooting differently.
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...
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.