So many Walmart shoppers drew their CC firearms ........

Doesn't say how many. I would also wonder why no one illuminated him if there really was a lot of armed citizens.

I don't think I would lay my gun down unless the police were already watching me. I think I would try to put it back into its concealed position, and I would try to do that when no one was watching me. Maybe best to not actually draw unless in immediate danger. Hearing shots at the far end of a huge store does not mean I am in immediate danger.

Hmmm. Maybe don't draw until/unless you've got a pretty good idea of the threat and its location? But I don't see this as a clear call to any sort of action, really. The armed citizens managed not to be shot, nor arrested and charged with crimes. And they were better prepared than the unarmed customers to resist being killed, themselves.

Guess I don't see a compelling problem.

Sure, I'll comment...

You just need to break out this bad boy and flash one of these (I would recommend the deluxe version since it is much more official looking).

It also helps to yell authoritatively that you're licensed to carry a concealed firearm. This will disarm law enforcement (heh, no pun intended) arriving on the scene.

cjwils said:

I don't think I would lay my gun down unless the police were already watching me. I think I would try to put it back into its concealed position, and I would try to do that when no one was watching me. Maybe best to not actually draw unless in immediate danger. Hearing shots at the far end of a huge store does not mean I am in immediate danger.

Click to expand...

That's easy to say. Have you been in an area when a shooting is going on? I have.

It's total chaos. The first shot or two on't register. You'll be processing what is happening. Then you'll try to a safe location. The next thing you'll do is try and secure your location once you are safer. If you're armed, I promise you you'll reach for your gun. If not, you'll be swearing that you weren't armed (and it's why I avoid so called "gun free zones" as I was in one during the shooting) and why "gun free zones" should be illegal. After that, what you do depends on how your body reacts. Some will freak out, while some of us will have the fight instinct kick in.

Shooters can cover a lot of ground before the police arrived. They can reload, and cause a lot of terror in a short time. They can reload because they have the advantage over the public, and since they aren't thinking rationally they're like sharks going after chum.

Having been there, my advice is to get cover, help those around you, get someone to call 911 while you cover your area, then when police arrive make it clear you're a good guy. Communication is your friend. It'll feel like slow motion and when you're done you'll be shaking for days or longer.

I can tell you that my incident was at the college I taught at and it was rough going back to that campus. In fact, it's been hard to go to malls, and other places with large crowds. And in some ways after the incident will be harder than the actual shooting. So you can guess what you'd do, but I'd suggest you learn more, that you realize that it's easy to say things, and that things never go as planned. If they did, I'd have been armed and the shooter would be in the ground and not prison, but I didn't have a crystal ball and I'm now willing to risk my freedom so I followed the law and almost died because of it. But the rest of the story is off topic for this discussion.

So I'll just say, please cut the BS, and try to learn all you can because in a shooting you only have seconds to react and minutes until the police arrive. What you do between the two determines if you and those around you live or die.

Citizens and non-uniformed police outside their own home shouldn’t be drawing until there’s a target that requires shooting.

If you’re on one side of Walmart and there’s a guy shooting people on the other side, the gun stays holstered while you escape. If you run into the bad guy, draw and defend.

Don’t be moving around with a weapon out or, like the story, cops or other armed citizens may think you’re the bad guy. What if you’ve got your gun out while you’re escaping and run into another armed person who thinks you’re the bad guy? The cops (or other carrier) you run into might just blast you when they see the gun.

CLP said:

Sure, I'll comment...

You just need to break out this bad boy and flash one of these (I would recommend the deluxe version since it is much more official looking).

It also helps to yell authoritatively that you're licensed to carry a concealed firearm. This will disarm law enforcement (heh, no pun intended) arriving on the scene.

Click to expand...

I cannot decide if that was sarcastic or not?

Wisco, I agree unless you’re trapped. If so you need to draw and cover the area until police arrive. You won’t have time to draw and shoot if a bad guy comes at you if you don’t.

Things are happening much faster than you can imagine and there isn’t time to mess around. Either you use your gun to defend yourself of you don’t.

Hokie_PhD said:

Wisco, I agree unless you’re trapped. If so you need to draw and cover the area until police arrive. You won’t have time to draw and shoot if a bad guy comes at you if you don’t.

Things are happening much faster than you can imagine and there isn’t time to mess around. Either you use your gun to defend yourself of you don’t.

Click to expand...

If you’re defending a specific location, by all means, be ready. I don’t disagree.

I’ve been in gunfights and they are sometimes fast moving and dynamic, sometimes of lower intensity. I didn’t walk around Iraq with my M11 out, but when I needed it while I was being shot at by two dudes with AKs, I drew it and I’m still here.

Had I known those two were going to round the corner, I would’ve had the pistol aimed there already, but there was also minimal chance of me being mis-identified by friendlies which could easily happen in a mass shooting police response.

PegLegPeat said:

I cannot decide if that was sarcastic or not?

Click to expand...

Yes., most certainly was...

If we were to wander around a store during shots being fired, while gripping a handgun, how would Anybody else know that we are Not one of the bad guys?

And we might be dressed worse, and less clean cut than the actual shooter.
I read somewhere about the incident where an armed citizen saw a firefight in a parking lot, and killed both sleazy-looking guys, who were undercover officers. The drug dealer was well-dressed.

Hokie_Phd: about feeling shaky for quite a while after a sudden, violent event: the reaction after being in or very near a shooting might resemble a milder form of soldiers' PTSD?

The police were looking at the surveillance footage after the perp had left, and had to eliminate defensive handgun carriers in the footage to identify the perp. The shooter shot three people and left. 3 deaths and 0 non-fatal injuries. So far no motive. I am not sure that the fact people were armed in self-defense and drew their weapons in response to an active shooter was a huge hinderance to police catching him based on a phone call about 12 hours later. None of the civilians fired unnecessarily in contrast to typical antigun hypotheticals. The perp shot only three people and left. It will be interesting to find out if he was aware of an armed civilian response.

There is an article going at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton,_Colorado_shooting

BTW at the Daily Mail WP article: "In February 2017, the English Wikipedia community decided that the Daily Mail was "generally unreliable" to use as a reference in Wikipedia. Some in the discussion objected on the grounds that the more formal decision had no precedent, that it would be widely misinterpreted, and that the Daily Mail is useful for some topics, such as sports reporting. The Daily Mail issued a statement objecting to the decision, while other parties expressed little surprise."

Daily Mail has a tabloid reputation.

Sad Story

Back to the OP.

I have been told repeatedly that if you defend yourself or others, do not be "the man with a gun" when the police arrive, because the police are responding to MWAG. That implies you should put the other guy down and put your gun down and show empty hands when the responding officers arrive.

That said, we have had several situations locally where civilians detained home invaders/burglars at gun point until the police arrived, but in all those cases the 911 had been advised of the situation and the responding officers knew the good guy was holding a gun on the bad guy.

You have some serious thinking to do if you decide to be armed for self-defense.

Seems that they could have ruled out most of the CC's by looking at the time stamps on the cameras. If victim #1 goes down at 6:01:20 and a possible suspect produces firearm at 6:01:45, then that's not your shooter; keep looking.

Our local department runs active shooter drills continually. They regularly put a know-nothing concealed carrier in the mix on certain scripts where the BG is down and detained. Swat commander told me that every single time the team rounds the corner and sees chosen Mr. Sheepdog covering the perp on the deck and calls out "Freeze! Police!", Mr. Sheepdog turns their direction, sweeping them with his muzzle, and always promptly gets a paintball or two. They have not run a drill where the citizen carrier doesn't get himself shot by the police yet.

This seems to me to be a pathetic attempt by the liberal media to demonize what is probably a successful cessation of hostilities due to legal concealed carriers. As near as I can tell, the shooter opens fire on unarmed people, meets force in the form of concealed carriers, and flees instead of sticking around to kill more people.

Then police show up after the shooter has already left, and all they can do is bitch and moan that the people who saved the day made it more difficult for them to identify the shooter.

Let's examine what didn't happen. First and foremost, the concealed carriers didn't shoot each other, which is the inevitable outcome so often claimed by gun control advocates. Secondly, none of the concealed carriers were shot by police, another "inevitable" outcome claimed by such advocates.

And what would have happened if the concealed carriers hand't been there? I think it's safe to say that the death toll would be higher.

grampajack, I agree with your position on the fact that no CC-ers were shot, or shot at each other.

Regarding the idea that the shooter may have encountered potential resistance and was aware of it, is there some evidence of this? I've been wondering myself and have looked around a little, but haven't found anything beyond speculation. It would be nice if that could be determined to be factual. So far, though, I haven't heard about anyone claiming to have made eye contact with the shooter while himself presenting a firearm.

BK said:

Our local department runs active shooter drills continually. They regularly put a know-nothing concealed carrier in the mix on certain scripts where the BG is down and detained. Swat commander told me that every single time the team rounds the corner and sees chosen Mr. Sheepdog covering the perp on the deck and calls out "Freeze! Police!", Mr. Sheepdog turns their direction, sweeping them with his muzzle, and always promptly gets a paintball or two. They have not run a drill where the citizen carrier doesn't get himself shot by the police yet.

Click to expand...

I can’t imagine the scenario where I will ever detain someone with a firearm. If things are bad enough that I’ve drawn my gun, they are bad enough that I’m using it as soon as I get a sight picture.

grampajack said:

I think it's safe to say that the death toll would be higher.

Click to expand...

While I am an enthusiastic supporter of CCW, I don’t think it’s safe to say this at all. We simply cannot know what might have happened.

I believe I would have drawn as well. I think I would have kept it down and concealed by my leg best I could but the alternative of drawing on a gun pointed at me in a meeting engagement is a losing proposition. If there were no more shots fired I'd holster it again in a few minutes. Almost certainly before a police response would get there. Certainly, when I heard sirens outside the store.

I'm not and never have been a police officer but I'm not buying the delay thing. Its not as though one camera is covering the whole store. It would be pretty easy to tell whether a gun was fired or not on the spot. It might delay the clearing of the store a little but that is it and its not as though any detectives did the clearing. By the time they got there it was over. Did someone have to check the tapes, almost certainly but they would have had to do that anyway. But I'd be surprised if it delayed the BOLO, if they still call it that, by a second.

What I'm noticing about the shooting is the bad guy didn't stick around,
and continue his killing spree. The article doesn't explain why he left.
My takeaway is many more people could have been shot, if folks had not
been able to defend themselves.

Elkins45 said:

While I am an enthusiastic supporter of CCW, I don’t think it’s safe to say this at all. We simply cannot know what might have happened.

Click to expand...

Well, it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots. Nearly all mass shootings happen in gun free zones, and the death toll is usually a lot more than three.

Wisco said:

Citizens and non-uniformed police outside their own home shouldn’t be drawing until there’s a target that requires shooting.

Citizens and non-uniformed police outside their own home shouldn’t be drawing until there’s a target that requires shooting.

If you’re on one side of Walmart and there’s a guy shooting people on the other side, the gun stays holstered while you escape. If you run into the bad guy, draw and defend.

Click to expand...

Well, you certainly assume a lot, don't you?

BK said:

Our local department runs active shooter drills continually. They regularly put a know-nothing concealed carrier in the mix on certain scripts where the BG is down and detained. Swat commander told me that every single time the team rounds the corner and sees chosen Mr. Sheepdog covering the perp on the deck and calls out "Freeze! Police!", Mr. Sheepdog turns their direction, sweeping them with his muzzle, and always promptly gets a paintball or two. They have not run a drill where the citizen carrier doesn't get himself shot by the police yet.

Click to expand...

If I suddenly hear gunfire erupt in my local Walmart, I will roll the dice on your SWAT team not being there yet as I make a speedy exit..with my weapon in hand.

Now there`s a subject for discussion.