Armed Citizen stopped church shooting in Texas by shooting at suspect perhaps killing him

[entropy]

I want to keep my TCP, but there's a world of difference between a pint sized 380 and a modern rifle.

Not to the anti's. That's the point. They will take away exactly as much as we allow, until they can take them all in one fell swoop. If you had the courage of your convictions, you'd sell ALL your guns.

There's a word for folks like you, though they usually just want to keep their lever and bolt actions, at the expense of selling out other types of guns. That word is Fudd.

Personally, I think that there is some pretty strong evidence that decreasing the availability of assault weapons will decrease their frequency of use in crime.

Factually. I don't. All an AWB would do is drive the prices of those out there up just like they did last time. Maybe I should side with you, I made a mint selling mine right before the Klinton Ban took effect. The suicide-by-cop killings that are happening lately weren't in vogue back when the first one happened, so data from that era isn't relative. Want to cite other countries? Australia had few personally owned semiauto military-style to begin with, the UK even less. Try citing Switzerland. See how that works for you. Fudd.

 

[Sam1911]

...the attacks on any opinion other than UNLIMITED SECOND AMENDMENT FOR EVERYONE! espoused by members like Sam1911.

Gee, you're going to attack my credibility when you just declared your self FULLY in favor of making rights only available to the nation's wealthy elites?

And, I quote:

I think that regulations like the AWB that effectively raised the cost of assault weapons priced them out of the reach of guys like this (Vegas is an aberration due to that guys wealth)...

So, first off... you're DEAD wrong about whether the AWB made any rifles any more expensive, because it didn't at all.
Second, you're pointing at these two recent attacks and you're proposing a "fix" that would have been COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to one of the two killers, and which you can have no idea would have bothered the second one at all. So a "fix" that's a gross class-ist, elitist blight upon our society and yet WOULDN'T STOP THE PROBLEM.

Shoot, how about freedom of speech for the wealthy, too? And of religion? Why should poor people be allowed to decide how they should worship? And let's not even get started talking about voting. Of COURSE there should be a wealth test for that...


Good grief. I don't have to attack your arguments...you do it well enough yourself!

 

[entropy]

So, first off... you're DEAD wrong about whether the AWB made any rifles any more expensive, because it didn't at all.

Actually, he's not totally incorrect. Right before the ban, there was a spike in prices at gun shows. I know this because I got $1600 for a CAR-15 I built for $375. But yes, that was a blip, prices stayed pretty much the same.

 

[Sam1911]

Sure, we could get into tracking prices of AR variants across all the years between 1994 and 2004 and there would be all sorts of little swings and fluctuations, but that always happens. Manufacturers kept on making them and selling them in "post ban" configuration, which usually meant a fixed stock, no bayonet lug, possibly the barrel left unthreaded instead of having a flash hider.

I don't think Rocketmedic is going to be able to make up a theory under which those changes make us safer.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Stephen Willeford's daughter heard the shooting at the First Baptist Church next door. He had friends who went there. Willeford took his AR-15 rifle out of the safe and he went to see what was happening. Kelley emerged from the church carrying his rifle. Stephen Willeford struck Kelley with two shots in the leg and torso. Kelley dropped his rifle and got into his vehicle (where he had other guns) and fired rounds through his side window before driving off. Willeford then flagged down Johnny Langendorff and they pursued Kelley in Langendorff's pick-up. Kelley could not shake them off, phoned his dad and said he had been shot and wasn't going to make it, then pulled off the road and shot himself in the head. LA Times reported that the residents of Sutherland Springs regard Langendorff and Willeford as heroes.
http://beta.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-shooting-guns-20171106-story.html

 

[Carl N. Brown]

On the aside: the gun control advocates who demonize military style rifles like the AR also have a loooong track record of demonizing inexpensive imported pocket size pistols like the Taurus TCP 380.

The National Research Council review of the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban on the eve of the sunset of the AWB in 2004 could find no empirical research finding of an impact on crime from the AWB. And the chairman of that review Stephen Levitt was not a pro gun researcher.

Looking at FBI UCR reports on annual murders, you are more likely to be killed by an unarmed assailant using personal weapons (hands, feet, elbows, knees, etc.) than be killed by an assailant armed with a rifle of any sort Iincluding single shot bolt action to magazine fed semi-auto).

 

[Deanimator]

Most anti-gun cultists have VASTLY more animosity for the good guy with the gun than for the bad guy.

It's just who they are.

 

[Rocketmedic]

There's a whole lot fewer crowds and churches being massacred by hand-to-hand combat, or Fudd guns, or pistols, than by angry men with AR-15s....

I am definitely a Fudd. I think that my right to go to church, a concert, school, work or a mall overcomes your right to cheaply, easily, and freely own weapons that put a WW2 fire team's firepower to shame. I recognize that there's a difference between being in favor of reasonable, massacre-limiting gun control and wanting complete disarmament.

 

[Deanimator]

There's a whole lot fewer crowds and churches being massacred by hand-to-hand combat, or Fudd guns, or pistols, than by angry men with AR-15s....

I am definitely a Fudd. I think that my right to go to church, a concert, school, work or a mall overcomes your right to cheaply, easily, and freely own weapons that put a WW2 fire team's firepower to shame. I recognize that there's a difference between being in favor of reasonable, massacre-limiting gun control and wanting complete disarmament.

Clearly you know nothing about WW2 OR firearms.

"Reasonable gun control" is of a kind with "reasonable Jim Crow", "reasonable anti-sodomy laws" and "reasonable Sharia".

My answer now, as always is, "NO, I REFUSE." I guess you'd better think of something else.

I recognize that there's no difference between a candid anti-gun cultist and one who dissimulates.

I knew the fifth column would activate itself. I wasn't disappointed.

 

[Deanimator]

As long as y'all insist on making assault rifles as available as water, we're going to see high-casualty mass shootings happen with regularity.

I was unaware that a firearm capable of full auto was used. Where can I find documentation of that "fact"?

Or are you just engaged in an attempt to mislead and disinform?

 

[Art Eatman]

This view of semi-auto rifles essentially says that the rare horror show by a crazy person who kills twenty or more is horrible, but one at a time in Chicago and a total this year of some 600 is nothing to worry about.

Per Kleck's study, there are some 600,000 incidents per year of criminal misuse of a firearm. Only one or two incidents of misuse of a semi-auto rifle in such an event and some years, none.

A datum from testimony during the 1993 Assault Weapons Ban effort said that of some 2400 homicides in New York state, three were via assault weapons and the rest were via fists, feet,, clubs and knives.

If there must be a fault found, it is that the USAF did not inform NCIC of the domestic violence conviction--which might have served to keep this murderer out of the gun business. Unless, like Sirhan Sirhan, he borrowed one.

 

[Sam1911]

I think that my right to go to church, a concert, school, work or a mall overcomes your right to cheaply, easily, and freely own weapons that put a WW2 fire team's firepower to shame.

There is no conflict between MY right to own whatever weapon I so choose and YOUR right to go where you want in peace.

The fact that a bad person may choose to violate your right to life isn't impacted by my rights -- as a free and law-abiding citizen -- to own weapons of my choosing. You cannot legislate away a bad person's ability to harm you, unless you're able and willing to lock him away from society, after due process of law.

The idea that you might lessen the results of a bad person's actions by infringing the freedoms of the millions upon millions of other citizens who did NOTHING wrong is utterly spurious. It just doesn't work. It practically CAN'T work. Nothing you've proposed is even a hint of an effective way to produce an ACTUAL benefit.

I recognize that there's a difference between being in favor of reasonable, massacre-limiting gun control and wanting complete disarmament.

Sure there is. Lots of people are in favor of gun control for others, and for guns they don't care for, in the illogical and ineffectual hope that somehow it will "limit" massacres or whatever they're afraid of. The fact that those who DO want complete disarmament use guys like you who want "a little" disarmament to advance their cause is just the nature of the beast.

 

[Deanimator]

I think a lot of gun culture overemphasizes the 'power' one derives from a high-powered assault rifle, that the tools have evolved to the point where nearly anyone physically capable of manipulating the tool can literally shoot a building full of people very quickly, and that the cost and effort required to do these things have placed these tools in reach of essentially everyone.

Once AGAIN, where can I find documentation that a fully automatic firearm was used?

Are you ignorant or are you attempting to deceive?

 

[pintler]

There's a whole lot fewer crowds and churches being massacred by hand-to-hand combat, or Fudd guns, or pistols, than by angry men with AR-15s....

Can I ask a couple of questions?

1)Is it your opinion that if AR's are banned, spree killers won't substitute wood stocked Mini-14's, or for that matter a 5 gallon bucket of gas? I mean, maybe that's true - Lord knows I don't have much insight into the head of anyone that whacko; maybe in their twisted brain shooting people with an AR is fun, but shooting them with a Mini, or immolating them, isn't. But I want to understand what assumptions you are operating under.

For example, if they switch to other gun types, is the plan to keep banning until there are no more mass killings (i.e. 4 or more victims)? If they then switch to gasoline, do we start restricting gasoline, or at that point do we just say, well we banned all the guns, so we'll call it good and live with gasoline murders?

2)There have been non-AR mass killings - Va Tech comes to mind - where the shooter used pretty pedestrian guns. If the shooter in Texas of Sandy Hook had been limited to, say, a 1911 with 8 round mags, do you think the outcomes would have been different? I'm thinking about Sandy Hook in particular - it seems that an adult male standing in the single door of a 2nd grade classroom armed with a 1911 and a pocketful of mags would have had the same outcome. If you disagree, can you share your reasoning? If not, can you explain why getting killed with a 1911 is different than being killed with an AR?

I'm trying to think things all the way through here, instead of falling into the 'We must do something; this is something; therefore we must do this' hole.

 

[Wisco]

I want to keep my TCP, but there's a world of difference between a pint sized 380 and a modern rifle. Personally, I think that there is some pretty strong evidence that decreasing the availability of assault weapons will decrease their frequency of use in crime.

More people are killed by handguns than rifles. You should do the right thing and give up your handgun. Report back when you’ve rid yourself of that killing machine.

 

[Sam1911]

Hey now. Be reasonable.

Only being killed in a mass shooting is scary. Just being shot to death in an average stick-up is fine.

 

[Deanimator]

Hey now. Be reasonable.

Only being killed in a mass shooting is scary. Just being shot to death in an average stick-up is fine.

And resisting only "escalates the violence"...

 

[old lady new shooter]

I think a lot of gun culture overemphasizes the 'power' one derives from a high-powered assault rifle, that the tools have evolved to the point where nearly anyone physically capable of manipulating the tool can literally shoot a building full of people very quickly, and that the cost and effort required to do these things have placed these tools in reach of essentially everyone. I think that regulations like the AWB that effectively raised the cost of assault weapons priced them out of the reach of guys like this (Vegas is an aberration due to that guys wealth), and the added regulations ensure that guys like this have a far harder time legally obtaining weapons. Could it be done illegally? Sure, but criminals aren't generally using their guns for mass shootings. The goal is no shots fired for the overwhelming majority of criminals.

The simple fact is that this guy, and the mass shooters before him, used rifles and handguns with deep magazines, cheaply available and quickly changed, to shoot a lot of people really fast. Those are the weapons evolved on battlefields across the planet. They weren't Garands, Springfields or Mausers or whatnot ( although Austin showed us how deadly those could be too). They use legal, easily-obtained, popular modern rifles with low recoil, easy aim, rapid-fire and deep magazines.

I personally think that I'd rather live in a society where these are legal, but harder to obtain than small pistols and less-combat-capable long rifles. I really don't want a society where there are no guns, nor do I want a monthly mass murder. Will there still be gun crime and death and even mass killings with a renewed AWB? Yes. But instead of a full church, we would likely only be burying a quarter of a church.

-as to those "well he could have done something else"....yes, he could have. He could have rammed the building, or started a fire, or made a car bomb or tried to poison or stab everyone, but he didn't. Paddock could have tried to Kamikaze the crowd but he didn't. A modern rifle was easier, quicker and more powerful in their hands and twisted senses of satisfaction. In their shootings, with that rifle in their hands, they became God in terms of what they could do to individuals, and the peculiar ease of use of the AR helped them do it.

Watch the long interview with Stephen Willeford, the hero citizen who prevented the shooter from continuing his rampage. Pointing out that the shooter himself had an AR-15, was wearing body armor, and first had to be shot from a distance of about 20 yards, he specifically says that he would not likely have been able to stop him if he had only had a handgun.

In any case, THE PROBLEM HERE WAS NOT THE GUN OR THE MAGAZINES, THE PROBLEM WAS THE MENTALLY DISTURBED SHOOTER, WHO WAS NOT LEGALLY ALLOWED TO OWN FIREARMS, but THE AIR FORCE FAILED TO ENTER HIS CONVICTION FOR DOMESTIC ASSAULT INTO THE BACKGROUND CHECK DATABASE. LET'S ENFORCE THE LAWS ALREADY ON THE BOOKS.

 

[DT Guy]

There's a whole lot fewer crowds and churches being massacred by hand-to-hand combat, or Fudd guns, or pistols, than by angry men with AR-15s....

I am definitely a Fudd. I think that my right to go to church, a concert, school, work or a mall overcomes your right to cheaply, easily, and freely own weapons that put a WW2 fire team's firepower to shame. I recognize that there's a difference between being in favor of reasonable, massacre-limiting gun control and wanting complete disarmament.

I think you need to read up a bit more on WW2; my M-1 Carbine is from that era, and certainly shoots as fast, and at short range is as lethal, as an AR-15. It also holds as many rounds.

In the end, though, you're just buying into the fallacy that banning certain guns will stop crime, as long as they don't ban the guns YOU want to own. It strikes me as a position less intellectually honest than an actual Bloomie gun-grabber, to be honest.


Larry

 

[old lady new shooter]

Do you actually know what the AWB did?

Basically, you couldn't buy a new AR-15 that had both a collapsible stock AND a bayonet lug. That's it. There were a few other features that you could swap and mix, like flash hiders and such, but for the most part the rifles legally sold during the AWB were functionally IDENTICAL to those sold today, or before.

The AWB was effectively a farce. It accomplished NOTHING. It didn't save any lives. Didn't make anything better. Was at most a minor annoyance to those of us who wanted "correct" cosmetic features on their rifles, but made not one iota of difference to the functionality of the firearms themselves.

This is similar to current California laws, banning all kinds of features that do NOT make a rifle more lethal. For example, I am an old lady under 5'1" with not-long arms and some muscle issues. A vertical foregrip would enable me to use an AR-15 much more comfortably and effectively, but guess what, a vertical foregrip makes it an "assault weapon". So I'm waiting to get one until I move somewhere less insane.

 

[Apachedriver]

Firstly, the shooter on Sunday was a criminal already and wasn’t legal to access ANY firearms, not just semi-automatic rifles.

Secondly, it wasn't our current laws that failed to stop him. It was a breakdown in the system; the same system being proposed to babysit us further by enabling more restrictions on our rights.

Our rights are like the appendages and organs of our bodies. All equally important. You might be able to hobble along missing a few but you'll never be whole.

To think that any one right is more important than any other right is beyond Fudd-ish. It's self-righteous, immature, ignorant, and cowardly.

That last group, the cowardly, they're the true sheep. They want to restrict the rights of responsibly capable and willing individuals so as to create a larger herd for the helpless to hide within. They don't join together for strength, but instead for anonymity. Their survival strategy consists of increasing the chances of someone else being picked off instead of themselves. To them, no one beyond themselves is worth sacrificing for or saving. So, they play the games of unjust compromise and throw uninformed tantrums when others resist.

All hail the nanny state and its proponents.

 

[reidry]

There's a whole lot fewer crowds and churches being massacred by hand-to-hand combat, or Fudd guns, or pistols, than by angry men with AR-15s....

2016 Japan knife attack, single perpetrator, 19 dead. Occurred at a facility for the disabled.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/world/japan-knife-attack-deaths/index.html

I am definitely a Fudd. I think that my right to go to church, a concert, school, work or a mall overcomes your right to cheaply, easily, and freely own weapons that put a WW2 fire team's firepower to shame. I recognize that there's a difference between being in favor of reasonable, massacre-limiting gun control and wanting complete disarmament.

Please study your history before making such ridiculous allegations.

Per U.S. Army doctrine a typical fire team consists of four soldiers.

• Team Leader (TL): Usually either a sergeant or corporal (although occasionally a team is led by a specialist or private first class when the platoon has a shortage of junior NCOs). Provides tactical leadership for the team at all times with a "Do As I Do" attitude; standard equipped with backpack GPS/radio set, and rifle. Modern rifle would be an M16 rifle or M4 carbine. WW2 would have been an M1 Garand or M1 Carbine, either one is just as lethal as an AR-15.
• Rifleman (R): Is 'the baseline standard for all infantrymen'. The rifleman is usually assigned with the grenadier to help balance the firepower capabilities of the automatic rifleman. Modern infantry would be equipped with the M16 rifle or M4 carbine. WW2 would have carried an M1 Garand.
• Grenadier Rifleman (GR): Provides limited high-angle fire over 'Dead zones'. A modern grenadier is equipped with an M4/M16 with the M203 grenade launcher (or newer M320 grenade launcher) mounted to the weapon. WW2 grenadier would be issued an M1 Garand and special ammunition used to launch grenades from the barrel of the rifle.
• Automatic Rifleman (AR): Provides overwatch and suppressive fire through force multiplication. The most casualty producing person in a fireteam, in terms of firepower and maneuverability when compared to the standard nine-man rifle squad. The automatic rifleman is usually assigned with the team leader to maximize directed fields of fire and to help balance the firepower capabilities of the grenadier. A modern automatic rifleman is equipped with a M249 light machine gun. A WW2 Automatic Rifleman was issued a M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), while the BAR wasn't belt fed, the 20 round box magazines of 30.06 could be dispersed at 300-600 rounds / minute.

Regardless of the vintage, a four man fire team is a force far beyond the capabilities of a deranged person with an AR-15.

Ryan

 

[Walkalong]

I was unaware that a firearm capable of full auto was used. Where can I find documentation of that "fact"?

Or are you just engaged in an attempt to mislead and disinform?

That would be my guess, as he's the resident anti posing as a pro gun gun owner in favor of "reasonable" restrictions. He comes out from under his disguise in threads like this. And of course giving up ARs wil never stop mass killings, whether it is with poison, knives, guns, vehicles, ........It will only serve to further the antis cause of total disarmament of the people in the long run. Those of us who have been engaged in this fight for decades see people like him clearly for what they are. He will fool some newcomers, but that's about it.

 

[Sam1911]

Hey, you remember the time Rocketmedic came here asking everyone about advice because he was interested in maybe buying an AR-15? That was like way back in October of... uh, last week! LOL.

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/question-ar-or-old-school.828013/

I guess maybe he just wanted one so he'd have something to turn in when the ban he's so in favor of finally happens. It would be a shame to be left out of the fun.

 

[CoalTrain49]

I want to keep my TCP, but there's a world of difference between a pint sized 380 and a modern rifle. Personally, I think that there is some pretty strong evidence that decreasing the availability of assault weapons will decrease their frequency of use in crime.

Ponder this my friend.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/fbi-homicide-data-by-weapon.html

If you truly want to lower the homicide rate and you want to do it by restricting one type of firearm you will have to restrict handguns. That includes your TCP. By your logic you've chosen the wrong firearm by a margin of about 22 to 1.

Try to do a little research before you start peddling your righteous views here, please.