This time, the quote of the day was vocalized by Sevesteen by way of a comment left at An NC Gun Blog:
When someone shoots back towards a spree shooter, the spree is over, with no more unarmed victims getting shot. I have been unable to find a single exception to this. It isn’t always the defender’s bullet that ends the spree–sometimes the shooter suicides, sometimes he surrenders.
I would edit Sevesteen’s comment to start, “When someone provides effective resistance against a spree shooter…,” as the shootings at the Unitarian Universalist church here in Knoxville indicate that you do not necessarily have to shoot back at a spree shooter to stop him or her, but the sentiment remains the same – spree shooters continue shooting people until they either kill themselves, or someone forcibly stops them. I cannot think of a single instance wherein someone went on a shooting spree, and then escaped, never to be heard from again.
A rational human being’s response to this information is to realize that the quickest way to reduce deaths from a spree shooter is to respond with that force as soon, as quickly, and as decisively as humanly possible. Unfortunately, the police simply cannot be everywhere, and even when they are, their response times can frankly suck. On the other hand, armed citizens acting decisively and quickly have a demonstrated history of drastically truncating, if not outright ending, shooting sprees: at the Appalachian Law School, two lawfully-armed citizens ended a shooting spree mere minutes after it started; in Tyler, Texas, Mark Wilson saved a child’s life by shooting and distracting the spree shooter (though Mr. Wilson was murdered by the shooter for his interference); in Winnemucca, Nevada, an anonymous man decisively ended a spree shooting while the murderer was reloading; the list goes on and on.
So which makes more sense? Wait for a police reaction that could take anywhere between 10 and 60 minutes to come, resulting in anywhere between 1 and 30 additional deaths, or realize that armed citizens at the scene of the incident stand at least a non-zero chance of delaying, if not outright terminating, the spree shooting?
Me, I am all about saving lives… it is unfortunate that the anti-rights nuts cannot honestly claim the same.
I was in a situation the cops thought was a spree shooter once. It was like three days before I ETSed, on a Sunday morning, and one of the CQs at the barracks thought a guy had a gun and called the cops. They cordoned off the building and waited for people to come out, frisking them as they came, but didn’t even notify people in the building that something was up.
There were at least thirty cops on scene but nobody made any effort to enter the building or tell people something was wrong. That was when I realized cop SOP for the situation is isolate the area and wait for the killing to stop, not make an effort to do something about it. Sure, sometimes a SWAT team might try to intervene, but how long does that take?
I’ve said for years the best possible defense is an armed populace, no matter what the threat. From muggers to terrorists, armed citizens are the key to a safe society. Too bad so few people get that, especially our “leaders”. And don’t get me started on the disgraceful state of military installations in particular.
Another famous case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_Square_shooting
In this case the mall was posted “No Guns” thankfully an off-duty cop decided to pack his off-duty gun that day, a man with a handgun engaged a man with a riot gun, and the man with the handgun came home.
Of course let’s not mention the shooter was Muslim, nor that for some strange reason he picked a posted “No Guns” mall to do his shooting.
I’m with weambulance, its pretty obvious the jerks who do this are very consistently cowards, seeing how they they choose their victims, and how they react to confrontation. An armed populous will destroy a lot of their false bravery, and so will eliminating “Gun Free Zones”, as they’re a bit of a misnomer given how many people get shot in them…
@weambulance – Yeah… that “let the shooting stop, then go in and whack the guy (if he has not done so himself) and start making the ‘dead body’ outline” mentality is definitely one we need to heavily re-evaluate… Yes, going into an active shooter situation is inherently risky, dangerous, confusing, and complicated, but it sure as hell beats standing around, letting people die while waiting for something approximating an ‘opportunity’. No, you do not know how things are going to fall out when you go charging in… but I can damned well guarantee you what is going to happen when you just stand around.
@Weer’d Beard – It is definitely fair to say that spree-style shootings predominantly occur in areas and locations where firearms are either prohibited, or heavily regulated… which just makes sense. When people want to murder tends, if not hundreds, of other people, they do not exactly strap up and go storm a gun store. They pick the softest target they can find, and go to town.
That revelation rather calls into question the honor and motivations of those seeking to turn the world into a soft target…
The only problem I have with ‘effective resistance’ as a criteria is that effective is determined by success, and is therefore not falsifiable. ‘Shoot towards’ can be determined separately from success or failure.
Statistically is it really all that dangerous to go after an active shooter? It sure seems like it would, but again, I can’t recall a case of an active shooter continuing once someone shoots back, or of an active defender getting shot. I vaguely recall a case of an armed man who was shot while trying to negotiate, after he put his gun away.
What the Unitarian shooting shows is that resistance is worthwhile. Maybe Greg McKendry couldn’t have done it by himself, but someone has to go first, and that took massive courage. Sometimes an unarmed person can defeat an armed gunman, and sometimes the first to step up will show others the way.
OK, I will certainly grant that “effective” is not a sufficiently-narrow determining factor for this kind of thing, but maybe “resistance”, in and of itself, is. Are there situations where spree shooters were physically accosted by unarmed individuals, but continued to go on murdering people afterwards? And by “physically accosted”, I do not mean threatened or reasoned with, but actually hands-on force applied against them.
Unfortunately, active defenders get shot all the time – the Tyler, Texas shooting I linked to above, the Tacoma Mall shooting (the defender was and is still paralyzed from the waist down, though I do not know if he actually shot against the aggressor – he did try to negotiate). But, again, that just comes down to the risk-benefit equation… what are the chances, are you comfortable with them, and are you willing to accept either outcome.
Unfortunately, active defenders get shot all the time
I was unaware of the Tyler, Texas incident–and that may be another problem of definitions, it may have been omitted from the sources I was aware of that differentiate between ‘spree’ and a family murder.
But defending against an active shooter is in no way the suicidal exercise that the gun grabbers would claim–according to them, if you survive the spree shooter the cops will mow you down. Most of the time you’ll survive with no physical injury, and I’m still convinced that ‘most’ could legitimately be replaced with ‘almost always’.
Yeah, that one is a bit hard to quantify, since the murderer did shoot a lot, did succeed in killing a few people, but hardly acquired the numbers of the VA Tech shooter, for instance. So, “spree shooting”, or “death by cop”? Hard to say.
Regardless, I completely agree that defending one’s self from any kind of active shooter is hardly the automatic-suicide that the anti-rights nuts would have us believe. There is certainly some element of risk involved, as there is with any action, but it beats the certainty of being nothing more than another victim…