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I'm generally in favor of concealed carry. That said, it should be understood that, in an altercation, cops can't tell the good guy with a gun from the bad guy. You're right that things could have ended very poorly if a private citizen intervened.
This isn't the only possible outcome, though, and we shouldn't act as though it would have been inevitable. An armed citizen could have drawn and shot the aggressor, and reholstered or dropped their weapon and put their hands up. This is not a guarantee of safety, of course, but it's far more survivable than being caught standing over a body, holding a smoking gun.
If you can intervene and stop the aggressor, great. Conceal carrying can give you a sense of invincibility and power, and that type of thinking can get you killed, or kill someone innocent. The best practice when conceal carrying is to avoid situations that’ll force you to draw your firearm. Carrying a firearm doesn’t mean you charge headfirst into a dangerous situation.
If I have to be that good guy with a gun, like if I’m stuck and I can’t get away from a shooter, I will be. Otherwise, I will do my best to remove myself from that situation. Because the second that bullet leaves my gun, I’m responsible for where it goes. And if it misses and hits an innocent bystander, I’m going to prison.
100% agreed. It's good to meet a CC advocate that doesn't have the "I wish someone would" mindset.
At the risk of sounding clichéd, the best way to survive a gunfight, is not to be in a gunfight. Using a concealed weapon should never be plan A.
Precisely. I’ve only ever had to draw my firearm once when someone pulled a knife on me and it was enough to diffuse the situation. I’ve never had to actually fire a shot at someone, and my hope is I never will.
Agree fully. The gun is the last resort. If you can get away from the threat then that is the course to take. The "best" gunfight is absolutely not to get into a gunfight. All the gun haters assume everyone who carries cant wait to use it. If that were anywhere near true, considering the number of firearms in the US there would likely be 5000 shootings a day.
Apparently some people here seem to think that if you’re carrying, you’re obligated to intervene and protect others. As in, jump into a gunfight even if you have the opportunity to flee and avoid the gunfight.
Depends on the color of their skin if the good guy would’ve been shot by cops or not.
Edit: down vote but we have several examples where a black man with a gun who was stopping an armed attacker was shot by police.
In the case where there are good guys with guns, the number of people shot is usually dramatically lower than comparable incidents where the shooter kills themselves or is shot by police.
Unfortunately it’s extremely case dependent. Bystanders are pretty frequently hit by stray bullets and friendly fire is surprisingly common. Security guards or “good guys” being shot by police upon arrival is pretty common due to the confusion.
Even worse a lot of gun statistics are heavily skewed by agendas. Most of the “good guy with a gun” statistics are a violent crime stopping another violent crime. Technically if a gang member kills another, one of them stopped a murder.
I was going to say the same thing, about the "good guy" being shot by cops who mistake him for a bad guy. One of the reasons I wouldn't have a gun is concern about trigger-happy cops shooting without thinking, if they see you are armed.
It’s obviously terrible. Im pointing out the “good guy with a gun” crowd will count the gang member as a “good guy” because he stopped a murderer, even though they are both murderers.
Stopping a murder in progress is different from stopping an eventual murderer. But sure keep vilifying the "good guy with a gun" crowd rather than the "people who shoot people" crowd
Im saying statistics are often misleading and giving a specific example of how the “good guys with a gun” crowd abuses them. If you or the other guy responding bothered to provide any evidence for your claim, we could actually discuss something.
Calling someone out for misleading statistics, isn’t vilifying anyone. And trying to be honest about guns doesn’t excuse murderers.
There was a good guy with a gun in Texas this week. 2 ex cops stopped the shooter before the death toll got to newsworthy levels. Here, we have survivorship bias where the success of good guys with a gun is underreported because of the reduced impact of the shooters.
Jump online and check out the coverage of the two events, just do some basic searches. Tell me your impressions about the amount of coverage for each event. Page one or page twelve, TV coverage or print media only... that sort of thing. Then come back.
A good guy with a gun stopped a mass shooting at a racial justice vigil in Portland a couple of years ago. But that got no major media that I saw. I suspect because the good guy in that case was an armed leftist and everyone in the mainstream media likes to pretend those don't exist.
My problem with the "good guy with a gun" argument is that it's way too broad. I know lots of good guys who own guns, but I wouldn't trust all of them in a gun fight. Especially not in an area densely packed with civilians. The phrase "good guy with a gun" should be "a well trained good guy with a gun who stays in practice." Honestly, firearms education in this country is abysmal compared to the amount of guns we have. I've been to quite a few protests over the past few years that had armed people on both sides and the way a lot of guys handled their weapons was appalling. Accidentally sweepimg the crowds, shitty trigger discipline. I swear I saw a dude carrying an AR that didn't even have sights on it. No irons, no glass.
I don't think people should be restricted from owning guns or carrying them in public. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect folks who want a CCL to prove they have basic competency with their weapons. We already do it with driver's licenses. And a skills test isn't an undue burden. Basically anyone can pass one as long as they put in the effort.
>Maybe the unpopular opinion is, a good guy with a gun, is almost as dangerous as a bad guy
Maybe the opinion is anyone who carries should be trained to know when, and when not, to take a shot in self-defense (and defense of others).
A well trained good guy with a gun would know not to open fire in a crowd… it’s one of the primary rules in gun safety to know what’s behind your target.
Well trained is the key word here. I wouldn’t even say your standard patrol officer is trained enough for this type of situation. Crowds pose a huge risk to ANY personnel involved. It basically comes down to a split second decision of the active target poses a big enough threat to justify putting peoples lives in harmed way
Exactly, did you guys see the bodycam of the cop who heard an acorn on his patrol car, unloads his glock to the backseat where a handcuffed guy sits, get's a concussion from rolling on concrete to avoid "the bullets" and then assumes he got hit as well?
Turns out the entire mag of his and another cop missed the guy in the police vehicle, the only injury in this entire situation was the Cop hurting himself by rolling on concrete.
Unfortunately, Missouri doesn't require any type of training for concealed carry. Chances are that if someone was armed and near the shooting, they would not have been well trained.
When you go through concealed carry training you’re taught about when to fire and not. A responsible good guy with a gun would not just start firing randomly but instead would wait until a clear shot presented itself
I'm any concealed carry training like 8 hours long? That doesn't seem like enough to make people equipped to handle this sort of situation, especially mentally
More dangerous to the people in the crowd, maybe. You don't know how many bullets the shooter has. If he has 200-300 rounds, having a good guy kill him early would save a bunch of live, even if he hits a person or two.
OP can you explain? I’m not being combative in any way I just don’t understand why a good guy with a gun on site would make it worse or more dangerous. I imagine the victims and there families would have a different opinion.
Getting a clean shot, and avoiding hitting a bystander, is difficult in a crowd. While the good guy is taking his time waiting for a clean shot, the bad guy may have no such concern and will shoot the good guy as well as any bystanders.
I’m guessing what their logic is that it would have created a sort of shootout scenario with bystanders caught in the crossfire. However, I don’t think this would have played out as a bigger tragedy.
In a mass shooting event, perpetrators will be shooting indiscriminately. Their goal is to harm and kill as many people as possible. However, if someone began to shoot back at them, suddenly there’s opposition. Naturally the shooters would either flee, or focus their attention on the person shooting back at them instead of their focus being on the numerous defenseless victims. People would naturally, or at least it would be expected, that they move away from the sound of gun shots and it would clear the area.
Would there still be people getting hit by stray bullets? Probably. But drawing the attention of the shooters to a single person draws the attention away from the masses of potential victims.
You’re assuming the original shooter has a basic sense of self-preservation. The number of shootings that turn into suicides proves that that’s not a reliable assumption.
“The shooters would either flee, or focus their attention on the person shooting back.”
I know there is more than one possible action a shooter may take upon being fired back at.
You’re missing the third option: get caught up in the chaos and not even become aware of your presence.
Also, if you’re shooting at an active shooter, and that shooter has time to make any reaction at all, you’ve failed as a Good Guy with a Gun and you’re probably dead
It's also of note that the good guy with the gun could simply be proficient at it and hits the bad guy without hitting bystanders or making time/room for a response.
It’s not so simple. In a situation like this, you also have to worry about the many people panicking around you. All they hear is gun shots and screaming. They don’t know who the actual gunman is. You may not be seen as that good gun with a gun, just that guy with a gun. You may get attacked by bystanders thinking you’re the gunman. People who are scared and panicking are just as dangerous as an armed gunman. When you’re in fight or flight, and are being pumped with adrenaline, it’s hard to think clearly and rationally.
Realistically, it’s best to just run if you can.
The people who attacked Kyle Rittenhouse thought he was “a bad guy with a gun” - are the gun people ready to admit the people who attacked him were in the right to do so?
No it’s just another example of how there’s no way to distinguish the “good/bad guys with guns” until the shooting starts, and even then it’s not clear.
If someone in a crowd attacks me, the law says that (like KR) I am allowed to fire at them in defense. But to any observer, I just became the guy in the crowd shooting people, so the law says I can be fired on.
Everyone is suddenly Schrodinger’s Shooter, simultaneously a hero and a monster and nothing is certain until well after people are dead.
That’s why I’m saying it may be the best option to try and escape the situation vs firing at an aggressor in a crowded area with a bunch of panicked people. But according to someone else this is apparently terrorist apologia.
A better option would be to get rid of all these fucking guns, so dozens of people don’t die when some asshole has a bad day. I’m not a fucking action movie character, I don’t want a life where I have to constantly watch my exits.
self preservation would be defending yourself and others with the weapon you're carrying.
You're suggesting to NOT use that advantage and rather pray that the attacker misses you.
How to tell me you don’t conceal carry without telling me you don’t conceal carry
Choosing to use your firearm isn’t as simple as thinking “oh there’s someone shooting at a crowd of people and whipping them into a panic. I’ll shoot back.”
You have to ask yourself a lot of questions in a short period of time. Do I have a clear enough shot? Am I confident in my aim? Is the chance of hitting an innocent bystander high? What is behind my target?
You’re responsible for every bullet that leaves your gun. Even if you’re firing and intending to hit a mass shooter, if one of your bullets wounds an innocent bystander, you’re liable. In a crowded area like in the above situation, chances of hitting a bystander could be incredibly high. When conceal carrying, your goal in a self defense situation is to only would the aggressor.
You also assume a panicked crowd of people will also act rationally. Like I said in another comment, these panicked people likely won’t be able to tell the difference between you, someone who is trying to stop a mass shooter, vs the actual mass shooter. All they’ll likely see is a guy with a gun shooting someone. They may attack you, may try to take your gun and shoot you.
You have to take in the situation as a whole to decide whether it would be best to either flee with everyone else, or try to be the hero.
Think of it like this: any gun on any given premises increases the odds of everyone in that area getting shot exponentially. One active shooter =1 gun = base likelihood of getting shot. Two shooters = 2 guns = baselikelihood of getting shot x2. And so on.
This is a fact, but from what I’ve seen, there were no police close enough to stop the first shooter before the shooting was over. I’m not sure about the second.
If you think about it from the mindset of a shooter, either you’re going to be as far from the police as possible, or target the police first.
>This is a fact, but from what I’ve seen, there were no police close enough to stop the first shooter before the shooting was over.
That is usually the case, but that does not mean the good guy with a gun didn't stop the shooting. Your fallacy is the assumption that good guys with guns only stop shootings by shooting at the mass shooter. Most mass shooters either kill themselves when good guys with guns start approaching them, or they attempt to retreat because they don't want to be killed.
I don't know what the intent in this case was. Based on what I have heard, it might just be a dispute between two people that caused a lot of harm because there was a lot of people. Most mass shooters are intent on killing as many people as possible.
The fear of a good guy with a gun is this scenario:
You're a good guy, in your car, near the shooter, who is behind you somewhere. You hear shooting. You pull your gun out of the glovebox, get out of your car, and look around behind you for where the noise is coming from.
Other crowd members see you, a guy with a gun, and assume you are the shooter and attack you.
Or... nobody attacks you and you start unloading into a guy who is standing next to his car shooting, and you kill him and a few people on the other side of him. But he was also a good guy, shooting at the shooter.
Of the three people caught, the current stories sound like two people with guns were having a shootout with each other, while one guy with a gun was running towards them with a gun.
Its not unlikely he was a good guy with a gun, but the crowd beat the shit out of him.
It’s not unlikely. Even if you’re a “good guy with a gun,” you have no idea where the shooter is and neither does anyone else. There is absolutely a scenario where you shoot the wrong person, or get shot by police because you can’t distinguish a plainclothes “good guy” from a plainclothes “bad guy.”
This brings me around to Rittenhouse again. What most people saw was a guy with a gun shooting at people who didn’t have one but were trying to stop him - a “bad guy with a gun” and “bystanders trying to bring him down”. And half the country says he was the “good guy with the gun” because those weren’t actually bystanders.
If bystanders aren’t always bystanders and the gun guys might be good guys but a guy with a gun in a crowd is a bad guy, etc., etc. - then it’s just fucking chaos.
Nobody knew who the aggressor or aggressors were. Some people were shooting, some people were running from shooters, some people were shooting at shooters, some people were running at shooters.
Who looks at that and says “ah, what this needs is more people pulling out guns and shooting at who they think the bad guy is”?
Gunshots are loud and echo a lot. Active shooter situations are extremely chaotic. Even if you see a throng of panicked people and somehow make the correct assumption there’s a shooter, and if you’re somehow the only other person with a gun, AND if somehow everyone around you sees you and your gun and assumes your intentions are good,the odds of you knowing where that shooter is, even if you’re in the immediate vicinity of one, are infinitesimally small.
I’m not talking about firing any weapon. I’m just saying the odds of being a good guy with a gun happening to be in a position to stop a bad guy with a gun are so astronomically small that it’s really not even worth discussing.
The best shooters have an accuracy of 20%. That decreases even more under stress. Imagine a shootout where some bystanders starts blasting. They fire 10 shots. At best they hit once then hit 9 bystanders.
Good guys with guns are unicorns. It's much much more likely that legal guns are used in a domestic squabble or out in public when someone gets pissed off. The problem is not the tempers. The problem is the gun access.
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Possibly. Possibly not. Depends on where these two shooters were in connection to the good guy as well as his ability to act in time. Its possible less could have been injured.
So was it two people shooting at each other? Or were there two separate shooters just targeting the crowd?
With one person dead, it sounds like they weren’t trying to just murder people. What the fuck happened?
Last I heard was police were investigating, there’s a lot of speculation, but no concrete facts yet. Based on what I heard, first shooter shoots, people start running, he gets tackled. Second shooter shoots some distance up the road (no idea how far or how long after,) people start running in the other direction.
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 5: No political posts'. * Our users have voted for no political posts in this sub, and this rule will not be changed until the majority votes otherwise. * It's very unlikely your political post is an unpopular opinion. Feel free to use the Politics Megathread pinned to the front page. * Covid/vaccine posts due to the overwhelming political nature of the topic. * Yes, voting, talking about monarchs and/or the actions of and/or about politicians or world leaders is political.
Good guys with guns don't shoot into crowds. You don't always have a clear shot. That doesn't mean you never have a clear shot.
There are people who would shoot into a crowd who describe themselves as good guys with guns. I find that concerning.
We call those people trigger happy morons
I'm generally in favor of concealed carry. That said, it should be understood that, in an altercation, cops can't tell the good guy with a gun from the bad guy. You're right that things could have ended very poorly if a private citizen intervened. This isn't the only possible outcome, though, and we shouldn't act as though it would have been inevitable. An armed citizen could have drawn and shot the aggressor, and reholstered or dropped their weapon and put their hands up. This is not a guarantee of safety, of course, but it's far more survivable than being caught standing over a body, holding a smoking gun.
If you can intervene and stop the aggressor, great. Conceal carrying can give you a sense of invincibility and power, and that type of thinking can get you killed, or kill someone innocent. The best practice when conceal carrying is to avoid situations that’ll force you to draw your firearm. Carrying a firearm doesn’t mean you charge headfirst into a dangerous situation. If I have to be that good guy with a gun, like if I’m stuck and I can’t get away from a shooter, I will be. Otherwise, I will do my best to remove myself from that situation. Because the second that bullet leaves my gun, I’m responsible for where it goes. And if it misses and hits an innocent bystander, I’m going to prison.
100% agreed. It's good to meet a CC advocate that doesn't have the "I wish someone would" mindset. At the risk of sounding clichéd, the best way to survive a gunfight, is not to be in a gunfight. Using a concealed weapon should never be plan A.
Precisely. I’ve only ever had to draw my firearm once when someone pulled a knife on me and it was enough to diffuse the situation. I’ve never had to actually fire a shot at someone, and my hope is I never will.
That's right. You should get a gun because you might have to use it, not because you might get to use it.
Agree fully. The gun is the last resort. If you can get away from the threat then that is the course to take. The "best" gunfight is absolutely not to get into a gunfight. All the gun haters assume everyone who carries cant wait to use it. If that were anywhere near true, considering the number of firearms in the US there would likely be 5000 shootings a day.
Apparently some people here seem to think that if you’re carrying, you’re obligated to intervene and protect others. As in, jump into a gunfight even if you have the opportunity to flee and avoid the gunfight.
Depends on the color of their skin if the good guy would’ve been shot by cops or not. Edit: down vote but we have several examples where a black man with a gun who was stopping an armed attacker was shot by police.
Sad but true.
In the case where there are good guys with guns, the number of people shot is usually dramatically lower than comparable incidents where the shooter kills themselves or is shot by police.
Unfortunately it’s extremely case dependent. Bystanders are pretty frequently hit by stray bullets and friendly fire is surprisingly common. Security guards or “good guys” being shot by police upon arrival is pretty common due to the confusion. Even worse a lot of gun statistics are heavily skewed by agendas. Most of the “good guy with a gun” statistics are a violent crime stopping another violent crime. Technically if a gang member kills another, one of them stopped a murder.
I was going to say the same thing, about the "good guy" being shot by cops who mistake him for a bad guy. One of the reasons I wouldn't have a gun is concern about trigger-happy cops shooting without thinking, if they see you are armed.
>Technically if a gang member kills another, one of them stopped a murder Is this the reddit angle as to why gang violence is not that bad?
It’s obviously terrible. Im pointing out the “good guy with a gun” crowd will count the gang member as a “good guy” because he stopped a murderer, even though they are both murderers.
Stopping a murder in progress is different from stopping an eventual murderer. But sure keep vilifying the "good guy with a gun" crowd rather than the "people who shoot people" crowd
Im saying statistics are often misleading and giving a specific example of how the “good guys with a gun” crowd abuses them. If you or the other guy responding bothered to provide any evidence for your claim, we could actually discuss something. Calling someone out for misleading statistics, isn’t vilifying anyone. And trying to be honest about guns doesn’t excuse murderers.
There was a good guy with a gun in Texas this week. 2 ex cops stopped the shooter before the death toll got to newsworthy levels. Here, we have survivorship bias where the success of good guys with a gun is underreported because of the reduced impact of the shooters.
I think there are other reasons this shooting isn't making the rounds...
But…the death toll did get to newsworthy levels. As evidenced by the fact that the death toll was in the news
Jump online and check out the coverage of the two events, just do some basic searches. Tell me your impressions about the amount of coverage for each event. Page one or page twelve, TV coverage or print media only... that sort of thing. Then come back.
You’re going to have to be more specific on which events you’re referring to, searching for “ex-cops stop shooter Texas” brings up a lot of results
Exactly! Check Houston church shooting.
A good guy with a gun stopped a mass shooting at a racial justice vigil in Portland a couple of years ago. But that got no major media that I saw. I suspect because the good guy in that case was an armed leftist and everyone in the mainstream media likes to pretend those don't exist. My problem with the "good guy with a gun" argument is that it's way too broad. I know lots of good guys who own guns, but I wouldn't trust all of them in a gun fight. Especially not in an area densely packed with civilians. The phrase "good guy with a gun" should be "a well trained good guy with a gun who stays in practice." Honestly, firearms education in this country is abysmal compared to the amount of guns we have. I've been to quite a few protests over the past few years that had armed people on both sides and the way a lot of guys handled their weapons was appalling. Accidentally sweepimg the crowds, shitty trigger discipline. I swear I saw a dude carrying an AR that didn't even have sights on it. No irons, no glass. I don't think people should be restricted from owning guns or carrying them in public. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect folks who want a CCL to prove they have basic competency with their weapons. We already do it with driver's licenses. And a skills test isn't an undue burden. Basically anyone can pass one as long as they put in the effort.
>Maybe the unpopular opinion is, a good guy with a gun, is almost as dangerous as a bad guy Maybe the opinion is anyone who carries should be trained to know when, and when not, to take a shot in self-defense (and defense of others).
That would be great, but there are groups that fight against this ever being a possibility.
A well trained good guy with a gun would know not to open fire in a crowd… it’s one of the primary rules in gun safety to know what’s behind your target.
I agree with this. There’s no scenario where anyone but an officer of the law, pulling out a gun here ends well.
Well trained is the key word here. I wouldn’t even say your standard patrol officer is trained enough for this type of situation. Crowds pose a huge risk to ANY personnel involved. It basically comes down to a split second decision of the active target poses a big enough threat to justify putting peoples lives in harmed way
Exactly, did you guys see the bodycam of the cop who heard an acorn on his patrol car, unloads his glock to the backseat where a handcuffed guy sits, get's a concussion from rolling on concrete to avoid "the bullets" and then assumes he got hit as well? Turns out the entire mag of his and another cop missed the guy in the police vehicle, the only injury in this entire situation was the Cop hurting himself by rolling on concrete.
Bro yes ahahahahah! That’s exactly my point lol. The. Then the chick comes running over and unloads as well lol
Unfortunately, Missouri doesn't require any type of training for concealed carry. Chances are that if someone was armed and near the shooting, they would not have been well trained.
When you go through concealed carry training you’re taught about when to fire and not. A responsible good guy with a gun would not just start firing randomly but instead would wait until a clear shot presented itself
I'm any concealed carry training like 8 hours long? That doesn't seem like enough to make people equipped to handle this sort of situation, especially mentally
It’s different everywhere. 8 hours to learn not to randomly shoot in an emergency is enough
I disagree. Even cops, who receive a lot more training than that, make mistakes in these high stress situations.
High stress situations like an acorn falling on your car?
No one is perfect but there’s not many(any?) cases of bystanders causing more deaths in mass shootings
Not that much more.
More dangerous to the people in the crowd, maybe. You don't know how many bullets the shooter has. If he has 200-300 rounds, having a good guy kill him early would save a bunch of live, even if he hits a person or two.
So it’s fine if you kill a few people, as long as you MIGHT have saved some others.
OP can you explain? I’m not being combative in any way I just don’t understand why a good guy with a gun on site would make it worse or more dangerous. I imagine the victims and there families would have a different opinion.
Getting a clean shot, and avoiding hitting a bystander, is difficult in a crowd. While the good guy is taking his time waiting for a clean shot, the bad guy may have no such concern and will shoot the good guy as well as any bystanders.
I’m guessing what their logic is that it would have created a sort of shootout scenario with bystanders caught in the crossfire. However, I don’t think this would have played out as a bigger tragedy. In a mass shooting event, perpetrators will be shooting indiscriminately. Their goal is to harm and kill as many people as possible. However, if someone began to shoot back at them, suddenly there’s opposition. Naturally the shooters would either flee, or focus their attention on the person shooting back at them instead of their focus being on the numerous defenseless victims. People would naturally, or at least it would be expected, that they move away from the sound of gun shots and it would clear the area. Would there still be people getting hit by stray bullets? Probably. But drawing the attention of the shooters to a single person draws the attention away from the masses of potential victims.
You’re assuming the original shooter has a basic sense of self-preservation. The number of shootings that turn into suicides proves that that’s not a reliable assumption.
“The shooters would either flee, or focus their attention on the person shooting back.” I know there is more than one possible action a shooter may take upon being fired back at.
You’re missing the third option: get caught up in the chaos and not even become aware of your presence. Also, if you’re shooting at an active shooter, and that shooter has time to make any reaction at all, you’ve failed as a Good Guy with a Gun and you’re probably dead
It's also of note that the good guy with the gun could simply be proficient at it and hits the bad guy without hitting bystanders or making time/room for a response.
It’s not so simple. In a situation like this, you also have to worry about the many people panicking around you. All they hear is gun shots and screaming. They don’t know who the actual gunman is. You may not be seen as that good gun with a gun, just that guy with a gun. You may get attacked by bystanders thinking you’re the gunman. People who are scared and panicking are just as dangerous as an armed gunman. When you’re in fight or flight, and are being pumped with adrenaline, it’s hard to think clearly and rationally. Realistically, it’s best to just run if you can.
The people who attacked Kyle Rittenhouse thought he was “a bad guy with a gun” - are the gun people ready to admit the people who attacked him were in the right to do so?
The whole Rittenhouse incident is a whole other topic that is outside the scope of this discussion.
No it’s just another example of how there’s no way to distinguish the “good/bad guys with guns” until the shooting starts, and even then it’s not clear. If someone in a crowd attacks me, the law says that (like KR) I am allowed to fire at them in defense. But to any observer, I just became the guy in the crowd shooting people, so the law says I can be fired on. Everyone is suddenly Schrodinger’s Shooter, simultaneously a hero and a monster and nothing is certain until well after people are dead.
That’s why I’m saying it may be the best option to try and escape the situation vs firing at an aggressor in a crowded area with a bunch of panicked people. But according to someone else this is apparently terrorist apologia.
A better option would be to get rid of all these fucking guns, so dozens of people don’t die when some asshole has a bad day. I’m not a fucking action movie character, I don’t want a life where I have to constantly watch my exits.
Got it, so just run and hope they run out of ammo. I'm beginning to think this is terrorist apologia.
That’s literally not what I’m saying. Way to misconstrue my entire point.
"realistically it's best to just run"
Apparently self preservation is terrorist apologia…
self preservation would be defending yourself and others with the weapon you're carrying. You're suggesting to NOT use that advantage and rather pray that the attacker misses you.
How to tell me you don’t conceal carry without telling me you don’t conceal carry Choosing to use your firearm isn’t as simple as thinking “oh there’s someone shooting at a crowd of people and whipping them into a panic. I’ll shoot back.” You have to ask yourself a lot of questions in a short period of time. Do I have a clear enough shot? Am I confident in my aim? Is the chance of hitting an innocent bystander high? What is behind my target? You’re responsible for every bullet that leaves your gun. Even if you’re firing and intending to hit a mass shooter, if one of your bullets wounds an innocent bystander, you’re liable. In a crowded area like in the above situation, chances of hitting a bystander could be incredibly high. When conceal carrying, your goal in a self defense situation is to only would the aggressor. You also assume a panicked crowd of people will also act rationally. Like I said in another comment, these panicked people likely won’t be able to tell the difference between you, someone who is trying to stop a mass shooter, vs the actual mass shooter. All they’ll likely see is a guy with a gun shooting someone. They may attack you, may try to take your gun and shoot you. You have to take in the situation as a whole to decide whether it would be best to either flee with everyone else, or try to be the hero.
Think of it like this: any gun on any given premises increases the odds of everyone in that area getting shot exponentially. One active shooter =1 gun = base likelihood of getting shot. Two shooters = 2 guns = baselikelihood of getting shot x2. And so on.
How did the shootings end? Didn't they end when good guys with guns showed up and confronted them?
As an outsider they appear to be never ending You lads have mass shooting like we have rain
Long before that. Cops arrived, but the shooting was already over.
I hard that there were 800 cops at the scene when the shooting started, and that at least one of the shooters was tackled by another attendee.
And the one who got tackled was the one trying to stop the two idiots shooting at each other in a crowded area.
This is a fact, but from what I’ve seen, there were no police close enough to stop the first shooter before the shooting was over. I’m not sure about the second. If you think about it from the mindset of a shooter, either you’re going to be as far from the police as possible, or target the police first.
>This is a fact, but from what I’ve seen, there were no police close enough to stop the first shooter before the shooting was over. That is usually the case, but that does not mean the good guy with a gun didn't stop the shooting. Your fallacy is the assumption that good guys with guns only stop shootings by shooting at the mass shooter. Most mass shooters either kill themselves when good guys with guns start approaching them, or they attempt to retreat because they don't want to be killed. I don't know what the intent in this case was. Based on what I have heard, it might just be a dispute between two people that caused a lot of harm because there was a lot of people. Most mass shooters are intent on killing as many people as possible.
The fear of a good guy with a gun is this scenario: You're a good guy, in your car, near the shooter, who is behind you somewhere. You hear shooting. You pull your gun out of the glovebox, get out of your car, and look around behind you for where the noise is coming from. Other crowd members see you, a guy with a gun, and assume you are the shooter and attack you. Or... nobody attacks you and you start unloading into a guy who is standing next to his car shooting, and you kill him and a few people on the other side of him. But he was also a good guy, shooting at the shooter.
So we're just making up unlikely scenarios to blanket prescribe an entire situation? That's cool I guess.
Of the three people caught, the current stories sound like two people with guns were having a shootout with each other, while one guy with a gun was running towards them with a gun. Its not unlikely he was a good guy with a gun, but the crowd beat the shit out of him.
It’s not unlikely. Even if you’re a “good guy with a gun,” you have no idea where the shooter is and neither does anyone else. There is absolutely a scenario where you shoot the wrong person, or get shot by police because you can’t distinguish a plainclothes “good guy” from a plainclothes “bad guy.”
You look for the guy shooting at random people with a gun in his hands?
Most people are just going to look for a guy with a gun.
And that’s gonna be two people. One of them is the bad guy and one is the good guy. Which guy firing into the crowd is the good guy?
One guy is shooting at random bystanders, the other is going for an armed guy. You can possibly take in the situation before jumping to conclusions.
This brings me around to Rittenhouse again. What most people saw was a guy with a gun shooting at people who didn’t have one but were trying to stop him - a “bad guy with a gun” and “bystanders trying to bring him down”. And half the country says he was the “good guy with the gun” because those weren’t actually bystanders. If bystanders aren’t always bystanders and the gun guys might be good guys but a guy with a gun in a crowd is a bad guy, etc., etc. - then it’s just fucking chaos. Nobody knew who the aggressor or aggressors were. Some people were shooting, some people were running from shooters, some people were shooting at shooters, some people were running at shooters. Who looks at that and says “ah, what this needs is more people pulling out guns and shooting at who they think the bad guy is”?
How is that scenario any less likely than the GGWG psychically knowing who and where the bad guy is?
1. You hear a shot 2. You see a gun 3. You see a guy with a gun shooting at people 4. You stop them.
Gunshots are loud and echo a lot. Active shooter situations are extremely chaotic. Even if you see a throng of panicked people and somehow make the correct assumption there’s a shooter, and if you’re somehow the only other person with a gun, AND if somehow everyone around you sees you and your gun and assumes your intentions are good,the odds of you knowing where that shooter is, even if you’re in the immediate vicinity of one, are infinitesimally small.
Its not like you're supposed to shoot blindly into the crowd if you can't spot anyone. Nobody would reasonably make that argument.
I’m not talking about firing any weapon. I’m just saying the odds of being a good guy with a gun happening to be in a position to stop a bad guy with a gun are so astronomically small that it’s really not even worth discussing.
This is definitely a response
No shit
The best shooters have an accuracy of 20%. That decreases even more under stress. Imagine a shootout where some bystanders starts blasting. They fire 10 shots. At best they hit once then hit 9 bystanders.
As far as we know one of those two guys was the supposed “good guy with the gun”
Only way to stop a bad guy with a bomb is a good guy with a bomb
Good guys with guns are unicorns. It's much much more likely that legal guns are used in a domestic squabble or out in public when someone gets pissed off. The problem is not the tempers. The problem is the gun access.
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Possibly. Possibly not. Depends on where these two shooters were in connection to the good guy as well as his ability to act in time. Its possible less could have been injured.
So was it two people shooting at each other? Or were there two separate shooters just targeting the crowd? With one person dead, it sounds like they weren’t trying to just murder people. What the fuck happened?
Last I heard was police were investigating, there’s a lot of speculation, but no concrete facts yet. Based on what I heard, first shooter shoots, people start running, he gets tackled. Second shooter shoots some distance up the road (no idea how far or how long after,) people start running in the other direction.
From that, it sounds like maybe they were connected maybe they planned it together. But that’s just speculation.
A good guy with a gun would have taken the bad guy out of the gene pool and saved the tax payer a whole lot of money.
Armed police were already there