Quote:
"The only way as a nation that we can possibly prevent these things from happening is to get everyone armed at all times."
Oh yeah that will make things better. We'll have the gunman shooting 8 innocents and all the untrained but well intentioned people doubling that death toll trying to take out the shooter. Sorry being armed is a serious business and I certainly wouldn't want everyone carrying. There are some people who shouldn't be allowed to drive, much less carry a firearm. Let's leave CCW voluntary ok? That way hopefully those who do choose to carry will be responsible enough to get some training and think about these scenarios in advance. I don't think arming everyone is a good idea.
Quote:
"6 minutes for police to arrive and it's over?"
SOunds like a pretty good response time to me. Short of keeping a police detail at the mall, you aren't going to do much better then that.
Quote:
"Hmm, how about, "4 seconds until a shopper terminated the man." Sound any better?"
How about impossible. Maybe if the shooting happened right in front of an armed citizen. Otherwise it's going to take a bit longer then that for someone to hear the shots, recognize them for what they are, locate the disturbance and move to a place they can engage the shooter.
Jeff
Jeff,
Thank you for taking the time to nit pick my response apart with your sense of correctness, and also for placing my words into your own context to better attack them.
I said "get everyone armed", but with that comes the great responsibility of carrying and handling the weapon. Of course
everyone isn't going to be armed, as that day will never come. The fact that not everyone can use CCW is the obvious fact. But I'm talking about those that are active firearms users, take advantage of CCW and GET ARMED. I stretched to say everyone. We need more of these folks, not 1 in every 100. The unfortunate side that this sensible action has, is that it has no use in a mall which bans CCW to begin with. So, get people armed, and get rid of the CCW bans in public areas such as malls. What is the point of CCW if we are restricting its use in areas like this?
And Jeff, this 6 minutes "sounds like a pretty good response time"? Apparently 8 deaths is small potatoes to you. If we were an entirely smart nation, the amount of response time to an incident such as this, whether it be by police force or by armed citizens, should be seconds and not minutes. Instead we take the tools away to fix the job at hand, and the problem remains.
And 4 seconds is impossible unless there are armed citizens nearby? Thank you, the whole logic clicked for you then. The entire point I was trying to emphasize was that if we had nearby armed citizens, the response time would be greatly diminished and deaths could be less.