It was illegal to possess guns in the Orlando night club. How did that work out?
This was published on June 7, before the Orlando shooting, but it’s still applicable.
It’s time to eliminate “gun free zones” those are nothing but victim disarmament zones.
The French have been working hard for years to show the Muslims that they mean them no harm. THAT, we are told, is how you get along in peace with people of other cultures, and if other people hate you then there must be a good reason; you need to look at yourself and see what you can do to make them stop hating you.
The French have also adopted the idea of massive violations of the right of honest citizens to keep and bear arms. Criminals will have whatever they want, but the honest must be disarmed.
Predictably then, we get this quote after last night’s coordinated jihad attacks in and around Paris. This was from someone at a rock concert;
“We lied down on the floor not to get hurt. It was a huge panic. The terrorists shot at us for 10 to 15 minutes. It was a bloodbath.” (That’s from CNN if you want to look. I’m not linking to them)
If all you can do is lie down and hope, while people around you are being shot, for 10 to 15 minutes, then your tactics suck. Dozens of people died on that scene, like the helpless sheep they worked so hard to become.
They’ve brought this upon themselves, I’m very sorry to say, and it’s difficult to have much sympathy for them. We’ve tried for years to warn them.
The left in the U.S. sees all this and says to themselves; “We totally need more multiculturalism and more gun control.” That attitude, that insanity, is the enemy as much as any jihadist, for it is that attitude that has emboldened the jihadists. They must be laughing their asses off at our stupidity.
To laugh or cry. Hard call. A recent terrorist shooting Paris has some unlikely, er, heros? (it’s transplated, and a little hard to tell if it was the big ISIS shooting or another one at a nearby or related restaurant) It is being reported that when the terrorists entered and started shooting, there were people in the restaurant that rose and returned fire, killing “the two attackers.” So score two for the good guys? Well, ordinary civilians can’t easily carry for self-defense, there. Turns out the concealed-carry guys were Columbia narco-cartel traffickers.
Huh.
Oh, well. Red-on-red fire still counts as a win, yes?
King County contains Seattle and many of the surrounding cities. So this is in deep blue territory. And yet King Co. Sheriff asks off-duty officers to carry guns, extra mags after Paris attacks:
King County Sheriff John Urquhart has instructed off-duty deputies to carry their sidearm with extra magazines, following the deadly Paris attacks.
The violence in Paris prompted the sheriff to request, via a letter to his deputies, that off-duty officers be armed with their service weapons and extra magazines of ammo should a terrorist attack hit the Puget Sound region.
…
The King County Sheriff’s Office has 700 commissioned officers, according to Urquhart. While off-duty deputies were once required to carry their service weapon wherever they went, that is not the case currently.
You only have to extrapolate a little bit to come to the conclusion that the thousands of private citizens with concealed carry permits in the county would dramatically improve the odds of a Paris like attack running into armed resistance in the first few seconds instead of having free rein for several minutes.
Every place in the world that’s tried to ban guns… has seen big increases in murder rates. You’d think at least one time, some place, when they banned guns, murder rates would go down. But that hasn’t been the case.
John Lott
August 5, 2015
Gun Control Lies
[See also Just one question.
You have to ask: If gun control doesn’t make society safer then just what is the real reason they want to ban guns? Other than stupidity and ignorance the only answer that makes sense to me is that they want to do something to people which the people wouldn’t want done to them.—Joe]
Bill Whittle brings the facts;
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE
You decide. Would you rather raise your children in Democrat controlled-since-the-Stone-Age, Detroit, or in Gun Nut Central, Plano, Texas?
(Hat tip Kevin Baker)
Would you rather more places be more like Detroit, or more places be more like Plano? There are causes and effects involved here. Are you interested in cause and effect, or are you more interested in furthering the Progressive agenda?
If you’re interested in “saving the children” the answer is fairly simple, and yet you’ll reject it out of allegiance to your political agendas. Therefore you’re not interested in saving children, QED, and no one should listen to you. You’re interested in something else entirely, and it isn’t pretty, or noble, or based on compassion or understanding.
I’ve often criticized the use of statistics, when asserting the principles of liberty takes back seat, and I will likely continue to do so. This bit from Whittle however will be very useful in the sentencing hearings of Progressive operatives who’ve been depriving people’s rights under color of law. One of those rights being deprived is the right to protect one’s children using a gun, and a very high death rate has resulted from that deprivation. Progressives are killing people at an astonishing rate, right here, right now.
Save the children; get a gun. Save the children; defeat Progressivism and relegate it to the dust bin of an ugly history. Save the children; advance the American Principles of Liberty.
ETA; There can be no “getting along”, or making nice, or living with, an idealogy that violates human rights on a wholesale level as a matter of national policy. Practicing Progressivism is in fact a crime, right now. All of it. It’s a violation of everythig America stands for and a violation of the constitution, and it’s perpetrators should be dealt with accordingly. The only question left is; are we going to it the easy way or the hard way?
I-594 has claimed its first casualty, even though it doesn’t go into effect until December. A museum in Lynden, WA, is returning some WW II rifles it was loaned, loans which would become problematic once the law is in effect. So, people going to the museum will not be able to see the parts of history they once could. I’m sure you feel much safer now.
The push to marginalize guns and gun owners, to make them seem “other,” different, freakish, and strange continues.
Interesting news blurb today. Toppenish is a city/school district in central Washington state, about 20 miles south of Yakima. It’s a poor, gang- and crime-ridden part of the state, with lots of native Americans and Spanish speakers. It’s the sort of place that if I stop in to gas up, I’m likely the only white guy in the joint. They have decided to allow 11 administrators to exercise their 2nd Amendment (and article 24 of the WA St constitution) rights to carry arms at school. Be nice if they allowed teachers to be armed, but hey, baby steps, one at a time.
Be interesting to see how it all goes.
I’m sure we are all shocked when a gun-control activist is caught with a gun. Oh, the horror, how could it happen? But when he’s caught carrying in an elementary school? That’s just another day in Buffalo, NY. He committed what was a simple misdemeanor, that was turned into a felony by a law he helped pass. The SWAT was a total over-reaction, but I hope they make him rot in jail for a LOOOOONG time. Not because I think what he did was wrong, but because it’s a law he supported and help pass to punish people exercising an enumerated right.
Schadenfreude at it’s most ironic.
I suppose the reasoning would go as follows;
Since cops are the Only Ones trained and competent enough, and with good enough judgment, to carry guns, anything they do that causes harm to innocents must therefore be someone else’s fault. QED. Move along. Nothing to see here. Relax and enjoy your shoes.
I’m all for wiping the personnel roster completely clean, right down to the janitor, in some departments, and starting over. It’s the only way to clean out a bad culture. Otherwise the culture perpetuates itself even as the personnel come and go.
In New York City even that may not be near enough, since the whole town is corrupt and its corruption radiates out for miles and miles like a volcano’s ash cloud.
From Reason comes a report of a study about An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates. Their conclusion, unexpectedly of course, is that assault weapon bans don’t do squat, and limiting the legal ownership and carry of guns for self defense (or, presumably, other purposes) increases crime rates. I’m sure we are all shocked that enforcing and encouraging defensive passivity and defenselessness encourages criminals, but there you have it.
Looking at the headlines, it looks like the Navy Yard shooter is fading from the above the fold news with incredible speed, considering the number of bodies he left in his wake. I wonder (rhetorically) if it’s because it doesn’t fit the left’s narrative on guns and race? He’s black, obviously crazy, and used a PC weapon (a pump shotgun, perhaps purchased on “Sheriff” Joe Biden’s recommendation). So, they “see nothing to be learned,” and much egg of their face from the early blather reporting.
I think that’s a Rush Limbaugh quote, to give credit where I believe credit is due, but maybe he got it somewhere else.
The shipyard shooting was described on the news tonight as having taken place in a “heavily secured” area. Has the term “heavily secured” been redefined while I wasn’t looking, or is that a blatantly moronic description?
Yet another mass shooting in what amounts to a gun free zone, in a long line of mass shooting in gun free zones, but in this case it can be said that this was a “heavily secured gun free zone”. In other words, the shooting took place inside a real live, physical, three-dimensional contradiction in terms. Which of course is the problem.
Last time this happened I had military vets tell me that trusting kids on the military bases with guns is not practical, which is either coming from a mental position of pre-conditioned, certain defeat, or it means we don’t have a military, which is certain defeat. Sorry guys; that’s insane. You may believe it with every fiber of your militarily experienced being, but it’s insane.
One would think we should have learned this lesson, that military bases can and do come under attack, in, say, December of 1941, but then people do forget. Fort Hood on the other hand, was in the news just within the last few weeks due to the trial. Is anyone in the military feeling a clue coming on yet, or are we simply going to ramp up the stupid, as I predict?
If we had sanity in our military, every low level grunt, every secretary, every truck driver, etc., would be a rifleman first and a whatever else, a floor polisher or cook, second. Militaries are for killing people and breaking things, and so if you don’t have the ability to kill people and break things on short notice, on any base or any boring flower planting assignment in some peaceful corner of the world, you’re not military material. (By the way there are no peaceful corners of the world. There are only places wherein the violence is taking a break and readying itself for the next push)
Which, practically, means we need the CMP back in full force and effect, jr high and high school shooting teams should be reinstated, and of course the NRA needs to be doing more of what it was born to do. If our government and military are tying their own hands, we’ll have to do it on our own.
It is being reported that the DC metro police were called in……….to protect a military installation against a single attacker (or maybe two we don’t know for sure yet). A civilian force had to go in and help save a United States military installation from one or two dumbshits.
Let that sink in for bit. We’re now telegraphing to the world, AGAIN, that a single trained squad, or two, could likely dominate an entire base inside the U.S. Could it get any worse, Mr. commander in Chief? How f-ing lame is that, you generals?
And their response appears to be that we need more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, i.e. more of the kind of poison that made this latest act possible. They want restrictions on the provision in the constitution that was designed to foster the security of a free state.
You know the saying; once is happenstance, twice is coincidence… Well the Fort Hood shooting was enemy action or worse. This last one (maintaining the conditions that made the Fort Hood shooting possible) borders on treason, or it leaps over that border. Conspiracy theories abound in regard to the lack of preparedness in Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. This is at least as bad, considering that Ft Hood was in the lime light just this summer.
If criminals and the irresponsible obeyed gun laws both gun crimes and accidental gun fatalities would virtually cease. Of course violent crime would continue with other weapons… In gun banning Russia criminals and suicides use other methods so successfully that both murder and suicide are four times higher than in the U.S.
Don B. Kates
May 23, 2013
“Easy Availability of Guns” – – Not!!!
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
…and of mass killings, and most wars.
It has been the thesis on this blog that disarmament has lead to more death by violence than any other single factor. I submit that such an assertion misses a critical point.
This is hard to put into words. Criminals, evil, exists everywhere and in all times. What separates times of relative peace from times of chaos and mass death then? I submit that it is resolve. A state of mind.
Tam recently spoke of a seeming dichotomy between Europe’s tendency toward docility or complacency and Her capacity for mass killing on a grand scale. I say that they are the same thing.
The willingness to go along to get along, the fear of making waves, the unwillingness to stand up and draw a line in the sand, and more importantly the lack of understanding or embracing of basic principles…together, THAT is the cause of chaos and mass death. Disarmament, while critical to the end of mass killing, and being a virtual guarantee of it, is but a symptom of that cause. The criminal element need but wait for the time to strike, meanwhile preaching peace at the cost of freedom. That includes the criminal element that always lurks in the halls and offices of government.
How else do you explain a thousand Jews guarded by a pathetic few Germans, while no one organizes a rush against the guards to easily overpower them? It wasn’t merely the lack of arms, but the lack of hutzpah THAT RESULTED iN the lack of arms. This is currently the state of all of Europe, the UK, and it’s becoming the case in the U.S.
I recently heard a phrase that will stay with me for the rest of my life. “The most powerful weapon of the oppressor is the the mind of the oppressed.” — David Masters quoting Stephen Banta
Intimidation is in the mind of the intimidated, not in the mind or the hands of the bully. Guns are only a factor in the hands of those who aren’t easily intimidated. For the easily intimidated, guns are pretty well worthless. Discuss.
Later we can talk about who’s the more easily intimidated, the self sufficient individual or the desk jokey politician with a team of interns.
As civilization breaks down and looters roam through New York, New Jersey, and other places devastated by hurricane Sandy and made defenseless by unconstitutional laws it is a good time to remember The Gun is Civilization.
There are reports of looting in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. The National Guard has been mobilized to help stop the looting but what I don’t see or mentioned are people defending their homes and stores like what we saw after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Most people in New Jersey and New York probably do not have a firearm which would give them a decent chance against the supposedly planned “flash mob robberies”.
I wonder if this will change any opinions on the right to keep and bear arms. Will more people purchase a firearm and get some training so that next time they will be better prepared? Or will government workers with guns do such a wonderful job that people will see no need for private citizens to own guns?
A search of Google news for hurricane sandy gun turns up nothing of interest. I wonder why that is.
Sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 words.
Or
How and why: implement a classroom “CHARGE!” plan for active
shooters
Every year,
some students in K-12 schools are crippled or die playing football and other
sports. If you asked the players to quit because it was safer, they’d laugh at
you. We accept those risks as part of the cost of participating in life,
because the benefits for those not
seriously injured or killed are numerous and significant – physical fitness,
sportsmanship, how to work as a team, self discipline, etc. It is an acknowledgment that with life comes risk, and benefits
are not without costs. To attempt to eliminate ALL risk is to utterly
stifle life, and merely… exist. That is NOT what America is
about. That is not what being human is
about.
When an irate parent shows up at school, yelling that their kid should
not have failed a test, or whatever, it is usually not a mass shooting threat,
even though schools have been locked down for such events as a precaution
against a possible escalation. The same has happened for a gunman or a robbery near the school, and many other
possible-but-unlikely threats. So, in those such cases where there is a
perceived threat, the risk-averse school “locks down:” all the teachers close
their doors, turns off the light, pull the shades, and tell the kids to hide,
trying to make themselves low visibility targets, much like a rabbit in an open
field that freezes in place hoping the fox, whose vision keys very well on motion, won’t see them. In most cases, the
lockdown procedure is reasonable, and it works fine, because the threat is not an actively shooting psychopath bent on a
body-count. BUT, once the shooting starts, the picture changes radically,
and continuing to hide motionless in the dark hoping he picks another room to
shoot up, or hoping to talk the gunman into stopping, is just as stupid as the
rabbit continuing to stay motionless while the fox is running and looking
straight at it, jaws agape, with hunger in its eyes. Reasoning with a
psychopath is a non-sequitur. Once the threat is demonstrated, and the shooter
is active and closing fast, the risk-assessment of freeze-vs-action changes;
the time for hiding is over, and action
is the best path for survival. Pretending to be a motionless rabbit after being
seen is to be raptus regaliter.
The British
Redcoats wore red, of all the possible colors, to march in formation toward a
mass of people firing at them. Why?
It would seem like they would make good targets, what with a bright white X
across their scarlet chests. It served a couple of purposes, aside from saving
money by using cheap red dye. It identified friend from foe – an important
thing in a fight, especially in a mad melee surrounded by thick smoke and
confusion. It made the soldiers look sharp, professional, which both intimidated
the enemy AND made the Brits act more
like professionals, because self-image is vital to esprit de corps (especially
when the odds look bad on the surface). School sports teams want nice uniforms
for the exact same reason. But, most
importantly, a bright uniform makes it hard to be a coward, run away, and
escape the deadly insanity of the battle field; by keeping the unit cohesive in
the face of danger, it raised the odds of victory, decreasing the overall
casualty rate, and thus, counter-intuitively, it made staying in formation and
fighting less risky than running away. By running away, an individual
raised their personal odds of
surviving that particular battle considerably,
but it is at the cost of an increased
risk of loss by the side he deserted. In the big picture, it might mean he
survived the battle only to lose the war and die, just a little bit later, as a
deserter.
In a fight, as
in a union, collective, unified action, even if imperfectly coordinated, is a
powerful thing. Numbers count. Speed counts. Determination counts. Conceding a
fight invites a follow-on attack. The Japanese were stopped at the Battle of Midway
even though the first half dozen valiantly lead but almost entirely ineffective air attacks were poorly
coordinated, used mainly obsolete aircraft, and were too few planes in number
at any one time to do much more than provide target practice for the skilled
Japanese fighter pilots and gunners. BUT… they tied things up and confused the
Japanese navy just enough so that a
small squadron of dive bombers came upon them unprepared; that final wave of
planes were able to drop out of the sky and sink the centerpieces of the attacking
Japanese fleet, the carriers. The scores of airmen dying in the first,
ineffective, attacks were NOT in vain, because they paved the way to success.
The Japanese ships and weapons were first rate, their planning was meticulous
and sweeping (but flawed); the US attack disorganized, but determined. The US pilots
took risks and won the battle decisively, and changed the course of the war
dramatically.
So, what can teachers and students do differently, so that things don’t
go badly for the “false positive” scares, but gives them a fighting chance when
things take a dramatic turn for the worse, and the shooter is at the door? What
can be done that doesn’t require massive bureaucratic intervention and
interference? The police come to stop the violence by displaying a willingness and ability to use
counter-violence – why can we, the average person, not do the same?
Use history and human nature as guides. Most mass shootings (just
talking about in the developed world, and not government-sponsored or drug-war
stuff) have been lone gunmen, so you likely only need to stop one and you are
done – that’s the history. Secondly, it is human nature to duck and dodge
things flying into your face or at your body, and it is very hard to focus on
something precision (like aiming and shooting) when you are in pain and blind.
So, when a lockdown occurs, rather than immediately cowering in fear hoping to
be shot last, everybody grab something they can throw, or hit with, to use as a
weapon, or get out a BRIGHT flashlight (or even a cell phone camera flash;
temporary blinding and disorientation is a MAJOR help in a fight). When hiding,
arrange yourselves around the door or other most likely entry point, with the
biggest and strongest nearest the door, but at least a few paces back. Those
nearest the door should be holding stuff that makes a good club (be creative –
like the heavy iron 3-hole punch, a meter stick, using a marker or Sharpie like
a kubotan, or a shovel from the wetlands ecology project last month you just
“happen” to still have), or a couple of them might use a desk they can push or
hold up in front of themselves. If an active shooter comes in the door,
everyone shine lights in his eyes, throw stuff at him, scream a battle cry, and
CHARGE! The folks in the first rank charge in, planning on knocking the weapon
up, jamming the action, hitting or blinding or disabling the shooter in any way
possible. Bury him in weight of numbers, use knees, biting, clubbing, anything
that causes pain, distraction, immobility, damage, or blindness. The second
rank should be ready to dive in to help, pull back the injured to clear the way
for more counter-attackers, or whatever. The physically weakest should shine
flashlights into the attacker’s eyes to blind him, watch for other shooters, or
prepare to lend a hand in any way possible (such as keeping a power-cord or
other tie-‘em-up handy to give to the primary counter-attackers once the
shooter is subdued). If the event
happens in a cafeteria or gym, throw your lunch, a can of soda, hot soup or
coffee, a ball, or anything else handy, and charge in for the take-down.
This sort of plan does not interfere with the normal lock-down
procedures of “lock-lights-hide”, can be implemented independently by
individual teachers, and can be modified and adapted to specific classroom
layouts and student age and abilities.
It empowers kids, and trains them that the proper reaction to senseless
violence is not cowering in fear or meek compliance but to do what the police do and use determined and
purposeful counter-violence, to raise the
price of being anti-social. It creates an anti-victim mindset. It lays
the groundwork for a stronger appreciation of what it is to be an American, and
a free human. It also inculcates a recognition that action is what stops psychopaths.
Now, to be sure, many police departments are likely to oppose this idea
– it’s their job we are talking about taking from them. If after an attempted school
shooting, two rookies, a sergeant, and a coroner with a spatula can clean up
and document the mess, then there are a whole lot of neat toys the local PD
can’t justify buying, and a lot of security programs that won’t get funded, a
lot of grief councilors won’t be hired. It is in their best interests for you to be dependent on them; it is not in your best interests, however. Some teachers will be opposed to it
too, on the grounds that it flies in the face of their ideology of “violence
never solved anything,” which is laughably, provably, wrong, as well as being
quite at odds with American history.
If people are trained to do this in schools, then mass-shootings
elsewhere in public become less likely, too, because a “counter-attack”
mentality means they are more likely to be dragged down promptly, ending the
spree. It will teach teamwork and coordination, self-defense, and an active
rather than passive mentality. It will
also help in building self-confidence, by creating an independent outlook on
life. Research shows that people who are targeted in a violent
confrontation have much less PTSD and
other psychiatric recovery issues if they fought back and won, even if
injured, than if they were a passive
receiver of violence. When the would-be victims fight back, it allows for
heroes worthy of emulation on the good guys side, and destroys the image the
sociopath has of themselves.
Is this a perfect solution to the problem of mass shooting and
murderous psychopaths? Will it guarantee no casualties? Will it always work
perfectly? Well, no, of course not. All
choices and actions are an exercise in trade-offs. But it is virtually free to
implement, may be laid out in a very short time to a class if an emergency
arises elsewhere in the building that you fear might head your way, has many
potential positive side-effects, and few downsides. It’s a start toward
creating a mindset in the nation of refusing to be a victim.
Know any teachers? Mail a link to this page on to them for thinking
about. This essay is a more school-specific follow-on to my original, more
general, “Let’s
Roll” article, which lays out the case why fighting back is the best way to
both stop and prevent mass shootings.
Guest post from Rolf.
“Let’s Roll!”
Or
Re-defining the “no-win” situation and dealing with sociopaths intent on mass shootings and murder
The “Kobayashi Maru” scenario has become a famous “no-win” situation. It is presented as a situation where no matter what choice the person makes, lots of people die, and they “lose.” Facing a “no-win” isn’t anything a person ever wants to face, but seeming no-wins do happen, so, what DO you do? Lie down and die, already? That, to my mind, is never the right answer, so then… what IS? Is it possible to think like Kirk and change how things play out, so something like a win is possible in a seeming no-win situation?
The first thing to do is to re-evaluate how you define “win,” particularly in light of the perpetrators likely goals. If “all the bad guys get caught/killed, and no innocents get hurt” is impossible, then what is the best you can aim for? Maybe all that is possible is to make the final outcome suck less. Maybe it is laying the groundwork for a future win – after all, the battle of Thermopylae was a loss for the Greeks (with the 300 Spartans and another thousand or so Greeks dying to a man, and their king butchered), but it laid the foundation for major defeats of the Persians later. Maybe it is nothing more than reducing number of total casualties, even at the possible (or perhaps likely) loss of your own life. Todd Beamer and the passengers of Flight 93 stormed the cockpit after it had been taken by hijackers, knowing that they were already headed for near certain death after hearing of the WTC crashes – their actions likely reduced the total number of deaths by denying the hijackers on their flight the opportunity to crash into a crowded target. His last known words in the counter-attack were “Let’s Roll!”
Looking at many of the modern mass shootings, such as Columbine, Stockton, Virginia Tech, Aurora (Batman), Luby’s Cafeteria, Ft Hood, and more, there are some similarities that may help change how we think about responding to them:
Essentially, anything that denies the attacker HIS goals should be considered a point on the defenders score-card. If he wants to see immobilizing terror, let him face the fury of righteous anger instead.
Obviously, if you are carrying a gun and you are close enough for it to be practical, drawing and returning fire at an appropriate time would be a great option, but what if the situation is more complicated? Most teachers are not allowed to carry guns on school grounds; in a crowded theater, cafeteria, office, or mall, there may be LOTS of moving no-shoots; and so-forth.
In a case where a nut wants a body-count and associated media attention, what might constitute a “win?” I’d say anything that meets one or more of the following (in no particular order):
I can only think of one course of action that would apply in most lone-gunman mass shooting cases: EVERYONE on the scene channel the inner Super Hero, Marine, mama grizzly, Todd Beamer, or whatever amps up their kill instincts to 11, and as a group do a mass “charge the ambush!” with the express intent of taking his screw-cap off, ripping off his arm and beating him to death with the bloody stump, or stopping him in any way possible. Grab, bite, hit, pull down his pants, pull his hat over his eyes, jam a finger in the action of his gun, blind him, throw things at him, shine a flashlight in his eyes, do anything and everything you can to slow him down, tie him up, foul his vision, screw up his aim, distract him, cause him pain or disability. Assume others are coming and doing the same. If just one person does this, sadly, it may just hasten their demise; but if even a handful do it, he’s done for, he can be dragged down and halted.
In a true worst case scenario, like the Beslan Siege (dozens of heavily armed religious fanatics not only willing but almost eager to die, with large quantities of explosives, suicide vests and fully automatic weapons) there are going to be a lot of bodies in any case. In a “nearly” worst case scene, such as the Aurora Batman shooting, where he was well-armed, in a crowded theater in the dark, wearing some body-armor, used gas/smoke bombs, and he started shooting during an action scene, the transition will be hard to recognize. But if everyone, once they recognized the threat for what it was, had yelled out, thrown cell phones, flashed lights at him (such as cell phone camera flash), and CHARGED, he could have been dragged down, and many innocents saved. It would have been ugly, but possibly over quickly; it is extremely unlikely that it would have been worse than the 70 killed or injured that occurred.
In a typical school “gunman seen, lock down!” scenario, normally they have all the teachers close and lock classroom doors, draw the blinds, turn off the lights, and hunker down and wait… but there is NO plan for what to do if the gunman actually comes in your door, beyond pray, comply, and hope you get shot last! The best course is to follow procedure as far as it is, but then make sure you surround the door a little ways back, with the teacher and biggest / strongest closest. Everyone picks up something they can throw – textbook, chair, can of soda, laptop, or whatever (my favorite is the big heavy iron three-hole punch). The “front row” around the door has chairs or desk handy. If the gunman comes in, then everyone throw what they have and CHARGE! The front row holds their desks/chairs in front ( or up high in front of their chests) and CHARGES, with intent to batter, beat, rip apart, and disassemble the gunman. This sort of training and mindset MUST start in the schools
What does this do?
It has been known at least since the early Greek phalanxes 2500 years ago that massed infantry charges can be very effective, especially when they outnumber their opponents. Even heavily armored mounted knights feared to enter into a mass of infantry standing their ground with simple weapons, because once they were dragged off their horses the mass of grasping hands and clubs would crush them. Many on the political right will see this as common sense; many on the left may find it abhorrent (even though THEY are always the ones talking about solidarity and collective action). While the average man-on-the-street is not to be confused with a hoplite of yesteryear, I believe that the average American IS capable of learning that sometimes individuals taking collective action for the common good really IS the best course.
When a psycho is looking for sheep to slaughter, intending to see terror in their eyes and ready compliance at gunpoint, hoping to have his twisted ego stroked by his control over them, let him instead see the blazing rage of righteous anger, and feel the pain of furious defense ripping at his flesh, and know the pain and fear he had hoped to inflict on others. Let his battered and beaten face be shown on the screen, swollen and without arrogance or contempt, because HE GOT BEATEN TO A BLOODY PLUP BY THE VERY PEOPLE HE DISPISED. That will knock his psyche down more than a crowd of cops taking them would, where he can brag about how tough he was to stop. Let the sociopaths have no more than a moment of victory, like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, before suffering a crushing, absolute, and total defeat at the very hands of those they wronged. Deny them any hint of a win in the final score. The next psycho will decide it might be safer and less humiliating to choose another path.