Pretty incredible to see as first response “If you had a gun may not need to hide”. From an European point of view.
Qualified people with guns (ideally).
I don't care about your credentials; if you have actual training, that's what matters. Your average civilian has almost no training, therefore law enforcement is the preferred response. Can you prove training without credentials? Certainly, but we're not all going to the range together to see who we are and aren't going to trust to respond to active shooters.
This may not be true if you're right there and SWAT is 5 minutes away.
However, overall, it would be terrible policy because such a proliferation of arms in public would result in all kinds of extra mass shootings, suicides, homicides, accidents, etc. that would cause more deaths than any reduction in the lethality of a given mass shooting.
I don't think you've thought this through. You hear one, then two gun shots coming from two different people in a plaza with a bunch of people. Who's the real attacker?
Say you actually witnessed it, what about the 50 other people around you who now see you brandishing and firing a gun? Are you now the threat?
If everyone is shooting back at everyone else, the death toll will be WAY higher than just ducking and hiding with only one shooter. The real threat is clear in this scenario. The police know who to take down.
It's probably much easier, if you count the deaths you cause and not just those from bullets you fire. When there is one person shooting, there are myriad reports from eyewitnesses with different numbers and descriptions of the shooters. When you've got multiple people shooting you are going to have multiple people perceiving who started the shooting differently.
The idea that we just need to arm everyone pretty much guarantees that most people won't actually meet that standard. It goes all kinds of bad places.
The other thing is you don't find your way to a more peaceful civil climate by escalating the violence. That's so very much "Going to war to protect the peace is like fucking to preserve virginity."
We need to be fostering a more civil climate where Americans are better cared for. That's the real solution here. We need to be fixing healthcare and housing and the extremes of poverty in this country that are appalling for a first world country.
And I think that most of the discussions of gun violence overlook that larger reality and see it is as not relevant. But there are reasons people go postal here, and it isn't because a side effect of gun ownership is insanity.
This is by no means an "edge-case" if you live in a rural area. "Sound policy" within a heavily urbanized area may be unworkable elsewhere.
> Can't base sound policy at scale on the stars aligning
"Failing to scale" here would be to allow urban population centers to dictate policy that would be untenable in other areas of the country.
_You_ don't want to harm anyone else, you only want to protect yourself (and possibly others). They have no such compunction.
Being able to put a few downrange with a Glock is not an active shooter situation, and honestly, as a first responder, most people in such situations find themselves vomiting, urinating in terror (and reasonably so).
Put it another way, in that it actually happened: If you're duty sworn to act, and don't, are you partly responsible for further deaths? See: The on-campus resource officer for a recent highschool shooting who did hide.
I for one support a clear division between who is responsible for general civilian safety. I draw the line at buckling my seatbelt and not drinking cleaning product - beyond that, I don't think I should be in charge of making sure I don't get shot, or smashed into by a drunk driver, or ensuring the train I get on doesn't derail. I want my government to take care of that and I'm happy to pay for it.
Legally, no. See Warren v DC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
> the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists
If you want to “happily pay for” your own protection, you should hire your own bodyguard. I don’t want my taxes to go to your protection just because you want the government to solve all your problems.
If your family member was murdered while you were out, do you have the expertise to find out who did it and meter justice?
Do you have the resources to guarantee mutually assured destruction with another community?
If my family was murdered while I was out, then by definition I cannot defend them. The law system will take care of it presumably, but that is not "defense", it is post-fact "justice."
Unclear what your mutually destruction comment was.
Your family is de-facto defended from murder because it is harder to commit murder and get away with it when the FBI exists, generating criminal investigation resources and distributing them among local police detectives. Your taxes pay for this and are protecting you right now. The very existence of a justice system is preventing crime. Not all crime, obviously, but a great deal. The remainder is more a socioeconomic failure of this country than a justice system failure (or, a justice system failure in that the war on drugs is policy failure enforced by the justice system).
Mutually assured destruction is more a macro-comment. Why aren't hordes of Russian barbarians coming over the hill? Because the US exerts its sovereignty within its borders. Why doesn't an organized community (government) challenge that? Because both communities would be vaporized.
Since we're on the subject, your taxes are a much cheaper way to get clean water, medicine that you are guaranteed actually contains the active ingredients you're looking for, food that won't poison you, and ensure that the city upriver doesn't dump toxic waste into the river. If you wanted to "take care of those problems yourself," you'd be running around like a headless chicken. Communitize, instead.
The average gun owner (hell, the average police officer probably) is in no way prepared for an active shooting situation. It's a fantasy to think you'd be the one to stop it.
They talk tough, but I have zero confidence in their ability to add the good kind of violence to a violent situation. Sooooooo overconfident, smh.
This is just a result of America’s individualist society. If we were collectivists we would ban guns for the good of society. But we’re not, and we never will be. We’re rugged individualists, for better or worse, and some people actively vote for things that make their lives worse just to uphold that value. It’s what America was built on. I don’t see a problem with it. It’s just a different way of life.
https://polisen.se/lagar-och-regler/vapen-regler-och-tillsta...
I am not sure individualism and freedom are good enough explanations.
Citizens shooting back in a crisis only makes things worse, how do you know who is the real shooter now?
Have you ever been in a shooting situation? If you are not trained for it it is terrifying and it is unlikely you will make a positive difference.
Your comment would be fine without the first paragraph.
Also this was in a response to a building where I have many friends was attacked by an active shooter.
I do disagree with your conclusions that it must stay this way, because I feel that on the gun issue, the resulting policies are leading to more guns in unqualified hands and more violence. I think there is space for rugged individualism and sane gun ownership requirements.
Having gun-free zones exist alongside available firearms has repeatedly resulted in mass shooters picking the least armed location. The eventual Pulse shooter scoped out the Disney parks but was discouraged by the guards. The presence of a few qualified people carrying is a deterrent that we shouldn't rule out, and it's not worth staffing police on every block like a police state.
Perhaps a better combination might be legislation for sane gun ownership requirements combined with legislation limiting the proliferation of gun-free zones. That way vetted gun owners wouldn't be unarmed in the places in their community that they care about when they come up against a killer with no regard for rules.
But we must respect the decision of the policeman in Florida who found himself outgunned not to confront the shooter, first responders are trained not to be heroes and to keep their life first priority.
Okay, while attempting to be as neutral and objective as possible, Trump is an obese geriatric. He's decently tall, 6' or so. But that's about it.
https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bin...
But before playing into your hand further: It doesn't seem odd that most people are not mentally/physically capable of dealing properly with an active shooter/combat situation and therefor don't feel that they would/should be the person to deal with it. Gonna make the bold assumption that most people's job descriptions don't involve annual firearm training, and they would therefor feel more comfortable with police dealing with these sort of situations. Which is the point other sane humans are trying to make before you deride the conversation for douchery.
Get your facts straight. Hint: the large majority do abide by gun laws in their purchase.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-s...
(Though I suppose that's not "gun laws" that they're breaking, but rather laws against murder.)
Nobody has ever successfully used a shooting situation with victims as an opportunity to convince other people to own and carry firearms when going to school, work, or church.
All it does is piss people off, make gun enthusiasts look bad, and start up flamewars online.
If you want to convince other people of the merits of gun ownership, the time and place to do that is offline, with friends, at your favorite range or other safe shooting area.
See all the innocent bystanders shot by police who miss the alleged offender.
https://www.popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-lov...
Lower income urban voters tend to be split on gun control depending on the type. There's little support there for anything that would make it more costly or time consuming for someone without a record of violent crime to buy a firearm.
A gun is a weapon, not armor.
We had a shooter situation at my apartment complex not long ago and the police were on scene before I had time to unlock my pistol.
It's both funny and sad that you think that being a SWAT member boils down to "here is a gun".
Not just "people with guns".
People with guns that will take down anyone else brandishing a gun in that area. Still think it's a good idea to have a gun in this situation?
People committing violence choose soft targets over hard ones when they can.
There is a better way, other countries have figured it out already.
(Edit: nevermind, I guess you’re talking about Australia and not Europe)
I'm Australian.