With the upcoming trial of James Holmes looming around the corner, the Second Amendment is once again being discussed. And it’s the Aurora theatre shooting that tends to divide people with regard to concealed carry. In short, those against expanding firearms rights in the US tend to say that the Aurora shooting would’ve been a “hail of gunfire” if there were people carrying concealed in that theatre on that fateful night.
And anyone who knows how these situations tend to play out know that is not true in the least.
Sure there would’ve been a small handful of people who would’ve tried to put shots on Holmes. But let’s assume everyone in the theatre was of lawful age and capacity for carrying a firearm. We’re talking a lot of people. And let’s assume they were all armed.
To assume that everyone would start trying to open fire on Holmes is absurd.
First, most people who are licensed or permitted to carry concealed don’t have any kind of training for those kind of scenarios — or for really any scenario. They are not mentally prepared to defend others, let alone themselves, in such a chaotic situation. As such, the outcome would likely have not been much different, with many attempting to flee and many not being able to do so.
Further, the chaos that erupted when the shooting started would’ve made any counter response difficult to initiate had anyone been armed.
The one word that most people seem to forget when it comes to talking about concealed carry is ambush. Another concept comes to mind that applies: “fish in a barrel”.
Play any online FPS and watch for a situation where a person is ambushed and watch how they react. We’re talking someone with the capability to return fire who, very likely, does not have the opportunity to do so. There are also ambush situations where the player is able to return fire and the person who attempted the ambush is the one killed. You might get lucky, or you might not. It all depends on the variables.
The police are often nowhere nearby as well. Adam Lanza was active in Sandy Hook for approximately 5 minutes before he took his own life. James Holmes had approximately 7 minutes.
In the former, police showed up 3 minutes after the dispatcher’s initial broadcast. In the latter, it was 90 seconds. A lot can happen in that time. A lot did happen in what to most seems like a short amount of time. The police could not save the souls at either Aurora or Sandy Hook — yet the anti-gun rights crowd pushes for reliance on the unreliable.
This isn’t about owning a rifle with 30-round magazines for sport shooting. This is about life and death scenarios.
A person carrying a weapon concealed can still be ambushed. Yet the language of the anti-gun rights crowd seems to be that the mere existence of the ambush concept means concealed carry is worthless and should not be allowed. I wrote such not long after the Sandy Hook massacre:
Yet many seem to think that if anyone dies in a situation arrested by a person carrying a concealed weapon, that if that CCW person could not prevent all of the deaths in a situation, then that person is little better than useless. Talk about a high bar to reach. And I think that’s the point.
But if a lawfully carrying person had violated the “gun free zone” of that public school and stopped things such that 19 children died instead of 20, I think everyone would agree that even saving that one life would still be a win, especially when we’re talking about children. One need not save all lives to justify using a firearm to put a stop to such a situation. After all, lawfully permitted carriers of concealed weapons are not superheroes, and to expect us to be superheroes, saving everyone facing peril and near-certain death, is beyond unfair. They can, however, be the first responders and arrest a bad situation while the police are on their way. After all the sooner someone responds to the situation in the proper manner, the quicker a bad situation is interrupted on its way to being a worse situation. And a person best able to respond to a mass shooter is a person already in the vicinity, and that person need not be a law enforcement officer.
There is an agenda to be followed, and so long as the agenda does not personally impact them, they’re fine. The person who doesn’t own guns doesn’t mind seeing gun rights restricted. The person who owns guns and does not plan to purchase any more likely also will not have a problem with seeing gun rights restricted, so long as he isn’t going to lose what he already has.And to that end they will twist words and make absurd arguments.
