ECVMatt said:
lots of rioters were shot by police and civilians...I will find the reference asap. [ mentions his local police station was used as a make shift morgue. ]
I'd be
very interested in that reference. The reports I heard that made it to the other side of the nation indicated there were plenty of deaths (although as I remember
fewer than the normal rate!!!), but none could be attributed to defenders. This is part of my thesis that a lack of people getting shot by defenders helped lengthen the riot.
ECVMatt said:
And you could still purchase ammo in LA County, just not the city. [ And the store he worked in was just about cleaned out. ]
Of course; my point was more about the posture of LA city: the subjects were abandoned to the tender mercies of the mob, and everything LA dared to do was done to prevent self-defense (as far as I remember the police didn't have the stones to actually confiscate any guns, but it was confirmed policy, name of the PR official and all). Bottom line, from this, Katrina, at least one recent Florida hurricane, etc. etc.: in an emergency, you and your neighborhood may well find yourself completely on your own, with the authorities effectively your enemies, or just not there if you're lucky....
ECVMatt said:
However I agree that you should never let your stash get low. Those would be a harrowing 20 minutes to get to our store and the police had all the major freeways shut down.
Indeed. I'm sure plenty of people did not have the option of getting to your store or others, and you just never know if you'll be stuck in place (maybe you'll injure a leg just before an emergency...).
ECVMatt said:
[...] As I said before, any working firearm that you have experience with will do....
This I would like to emphasize, the best gun in the world is the one you have with you. And one you
know how to use; better a cheaper rifle and more money budgeted to practice ammo and range time than the best rifle and not enough of the latter.
But I'd argue one point I forgot on choices: make sure it's of military design or quality. If you need to maintain a high rate of fire, your gun will heat up more than it would in e.g. any normal hunting event. Some civilian design guns will then jam, military ones are obviously designed to avoid this (although your handguard just might catch on fire, e.g. old AR-180s have heat shields, the new ones are reported not to).
ECVMatt said:
I agree that early shooting of rioters would have stopped this thing cold. By the time these idiots started getting shot, there was just too much going.
This might be in the area of "we just can't say". But a lot was said then that other riots, even ones days into the event, were stopped cold by
one forceful event
by the authorties and the word then spreading.
In this case, the police never did that. As I recall, it was burning itself out about the time the National Guard arrived, but your up close and personal memories are likely to be a lot better. I was living in Arlington, VA at the time, my girlfriend and I had some vacation time saved up and were planning on going into D.C. to some of the museums and the like. There was a
little bit of violence in D.C., but we just stayed home and watched the TV in horror.
- Harold