Terror attack in another gun free zone

From CNN a few minutes ago:

Eight people are dead and about a dozen injured after the driver of a truck drove the wrong way down a well-trafficked bike path, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

“This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror,” he said.

The driver then exited the vehicle while displaying imitation firearms and was shot by police, according to the NYPD. The suspect is in police custody and was taken to a hospital for treatment, sources at the NYPD said.

The incident is being investigated as terrorism, according to multiple law enforcement sources. Witnesses reported the suspect was yelling “Allahu Akbar,” according to four law enforcement sources. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is taking over the lead of the investigation.

We don’t have enough information at this time to know if the innocent people had been allowed to exercise their specific right to keep and bear arms things would have turn out any better, but it’s unlikely it could have turned out worse.

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17 thoughts on “Terror attack in another gun free zone

  1. It’s a good thing that NYC’s gun laws kept anyone from being shot; that would have been bad.

    He said “Allahu Akbar?” I guess his motives will remain a mystery.

    At least it happened in die-verse NY, who applaud this sort of thing, just so long as it’s not a straight white Christian male doing it.

    /bitter sarc

  2. what rolf said. 100%. people don’t like guns? wait until they find out what two gallons of gasoline will do in an urban setting.

    john jay

    • Some of the news pundits have now taken one of our long-standing jokes and run with it. They’ve broached the subject of regulating truck rentals, to keep them out of the wrong hands. I heard it this morning.

  3. It usually takes the mayor a week or two before he admits it maybe a terrorist act. Quite a rush to judgment in his case. I guess there were too many witnesses to the attack.

  4. My wife and I were talking about the self-defense angle on this. Suppose the people had been well armed (say, 10% or more carrying) and that hadn’t deterred the bad guy as it often does. What is the likely scenario in that case? In other words, how, specifically, would armed self defense play out in a truck vs. bicycles and runners setting?

    • My guess is as follows:

      You start putting rounds into the driver. You will have to penetrate glass and/or layers of steel and plastic. Bullet penetration and expansion into the target will be reduced or nonexistent. Bullet trajectories will be changed. Multiple shots will help compensate for the reduced effectiveness.

      At a speed of 60 MPH they are moving at 88 feet per second (nearly 30 yards per second). This will give you a very short window to engage them with anything close to aimed fire and you will need to lead the target if you are shooting from anything other than ahead or from behind. If you are shooting from the front you better have a much larger vehicle or large mass of concrete/rock/etc. to give you protection from impact.

      It’s a tough problem while the perpetrator is moving fast. If the vehicle is stopped pump rounds into them before they become mobile with their own weapon. Shooting from even slightly to the rear of them while they are still in the vehicle will give you a significant advantage in targeting.

      A full capacity magazine and a spare may come in handy.

    • good question. wish i had a good answer.

      there’s obviously no stopping a motor vehicle with a concealed-carry handgun, certainly not in the immediate term, so prevention and stopping an attack short seem to be unlikely. chasing a fleeing attacker down would be difficult for most cyclists, impossible for runners, and probably a bad idea tactically anyway if you can’t stop them from running in the first place. (plus, if you do catch them, then what? using a firearm at all from a bicycle is right out without unsaddling first, of course.)

      about the only thing that comes to mind goes down the lines of, “oh shit, i can’t get out of the way in this location and can’t run away fast enough — he’s going to run me down, no preventing it. maybe i can pop one through his windshield and at least take the bastard with me?” but i might not be imaginative enough, and i certainly wouldn’t want to have to find out in practice.

      • “there’s obviously no stopping a motor vehicle with a concealed-carry handgun, certainly not in the immediate term”

        True, but busted glass, a leeky radiator, a flat tire or two and a couple of ragged holes in the driver’s body, and secondary projectiles moving through his cabin space can certainly modify his behavior in the immediate term.

        Vehicle stopping is a subject worthy of further study. I once witness a vehicle stopped “in its tracks” and burned to the ground after a very minor accident. It had lightly struck a higher-framed Jeep or similar, the hood was peeled back a bit, the top of the engine where the fuel is fed (the “upper intake”), was broken. Fuel leaked out, caught fire and that was that. The aluminum engine block ended up as a large puddle in the ditch. Total destruction. Theoretically, a well-placed gun shot would have done the same thing. That part of the engine is typically aluminum, and lightweight in construction, and therefore easily broken by standard service pistol rounds.

        Just a little data point. The thing is; further study into the subject is probably warranted. If a person has been a gun owner for some years and hasn’t experimented with such things at all, then you’re neglegent in your duties, says I. I’m not saying a person needs to be an expert in the designs of a thousand different venicles, but do experiment. You’ll end up with some measure of worthwhile experience.

        • Try shooting a tire and see how long it takes to deflate. Hint: If there is penetration it’s a puncture, not a blowout. Also try angled hits as well and perpendicular on the sidewall as well as the tread.

          A work associate (nearly 40 years ago, so changes in tire and bullet design may have changed this) was once on a jury where the shooting of a tire was, for some reason, a important event. The jury was told that tests had shown that a rapidly rotating tire would typically resist a handgun bullet without being punctured.

          • Clearly more testing is required. I have some modern design tires and some rims I won’t mind ruining. I’ll make sure they’re up to pressure and shoot them with 9 and 10 mm. I believe I’ve done it before, but it would have been on an older tire. I would assume that the dynamic situation of being mounted on a rolling vehicle would make for some different effects, but penetration of a static tire first.

            But hasn’t this been done quite a bit on YouTube before? I thought I’d seen both side walls penetrated by a single pistol bullet.

            “Handgun bullet” is of course a general term. We wouldn’t want to lump a 32 ACP in with a 475 Linebaugh for this purpose. I think there’s a solid order of magnitude difference in KE between the two (not that there are many people in the habit of carrying a Linebaugh as a CCW).

            Tires of course are not all the same. I’ll try to find a “light truck” tire to sacrifice.

            Anti-Materiel Studies is certainly an interesting subject, jihad John notwithstanding.

          • On some documentary about native warriors in South America, an old warrior with several scars from arrows explained that if you can’t get away, twist rapidly to reduce penetration. Might be same principle at play, different scale and speeds.

    • Innocents would still die, but the jihadist would have been taking fire, and that fire would have had a decent chance of at least reducing the death toll. You tend to be distracted when your windshield is exploding in your face and you have several leaks in your body. Every situation is different of course. A similar incident happened in Israel. The truck and the driver were full of holes before he stopped.

      If a person is willing to die in the process of killing people, he almost certainly will kill people. “Deterrence” in the moment, in that case, is not possible. The act must be physically stopped. Also, you might even kill the driver instantly with a head shot, but that truck is still rolling.

      Any deterrence, as such, would come from a history of thwarting, to some degree, these attacks, but more so from taking the initiative against the jihad movement itself, where ever it may be.

      Deterrence could also come from the way these incidents are reported. That won’t change until the American left has been defeated. The left is acting more like an advocate than an enemy of jihad.

      If we’re going to tolerate Muslims in this country, we’ll have to keep an eye on them, and when one of them slips through the cracks and does something like this, we’ll have to go after his support and encouragement network, which I’ll call the “Global Cooperative of Self-Radicalizing Lone Wolves”. That’s real deterrence.

      Our society/government is not at all willing to do what it would take. The problem will therefore get worse. The Israeli/Palestinian phenomenon, of never-ending combat with no resolution in sight, with more people blaming Israel than Hamas, Hezbollah or the old PLO, I believe has been a goal. We were set up for this, and for now we have no way of preventing it until we change our mindset significantly.

  5. Eventually the subject of “aiding and abetting the enemy” will have to be brought to the forefront in politics and law. It seems that this Mr. Hakalaka Muhomud Jihad Dirka Dirka was brought into the U.S. as part of some outreach program, or “lottery” advocated by Progressives (Progressive Democrats aided by Progressive Republicans).

    Just take a moment to imagine America and the media treating Nazis during W.W. II. in the same way they treat radical Islam today;
    “Let’s not be too hasty to paint all Nazis with a broad brush…”
    Imagine having an official Nazi radio broadcast network in America, set up and sold to them by a U.S. senator. Nazi schools (paid for by Americans’ tax dollars), Nazi mayors, Nazi tows, Nazi fashion promoted by New York designers, and by Levis and other companies, right here in the states. Imagine the left taking large numbers of German men of military age into the country as “refugees”, who then use our court system to advocate for their “rights” while we’re being bombed, shot and run over by them and their global network.

    Sure, as many American and British soldiers have said, most young German men at that time might have been our friends in different circumstances. Yes; after their full surrender, and many actually were friends after that. Until then we had to kill and kill and kill them until they surrendered. AND we brought charges and harsh sentences against those who aided them.

    And remember the American propaganda campaigns against the Germans and the Japanese in W.W. II? Hell we’re subsidizing them now. What can one expect?

    When the world’s most prominent Muslim clerics all get together and officially call off all jihad, and participate substantially in going after the offenders, and remove all jihad talk and insinuation from their rhetoric in the Mosques, and we see all of that working for a few years, then maybe we can talk about tolerance and immigration and getting along.

    That’s what the end of jihad (a solution to the problem) would look like. I say all the above in preparation for one question;

    What do you suppose it would take to make that happen?

  6. More about anti-materiel;
    Some friends and I tried 9mm, 10mm and 7.62 x 39 on a small engine. Aluminum crank case with steel-lined aluminum cylinder. The 9mm (Glock 17) would break the aluminum cooling fins. The 10mm (Glock 20) with factory FMJ (moderate load) would strip the cooling fins off clean, with possible deformation of the cylinder. The 7.62 x 39 from an SKS busted up everything, punching the case easily, and breaking and deforming the steel parts inside. Total destruction. That’s not an iron v-8 engine block by any means though. Just a data point. The 7.62 x 39 is not known for its power, but for its compact size and intermediate power, between a service pistol and full sized rifle cartridge like 30-06.

    Modern car and light truck bodies are easily penetrated by 9mm. I’ve seen a 40 S&W rip through two walls of a steel fifty gallon drum, and that steel was a lot heavier than any modern vehicle body. A vehicle door can have a lot of fiddly stuff inside though, like window mechanisms and motors, and bracing, so multiple shots would always be called for. Just be aware that a bullet could pass clean through the vehicle.

    Paul Harrel’s YouTube channel has some demonstrations also. 5.56 often fragmented, but still did impressive damage.

    Also, Bonnie and Clyde were stopped inside their vehicle (when car bodies were much heavier) though 30-06 was in play.

    • Were you using FMJ bullets in that test, or expanding (self defense type hollow points or the like)?

    • I would also want to test 308 Win. and 5.56 M855 (two common patrol carbine rounds) on a typical pickup truck differential. There are some relatively small, important parts in there. That and a front wheel, hub, and brake rotor. There may be some possibilities there, for them as have the shot. The driver is of course the softest target, and you know where he is.

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