Serious discussion on the likelihood of CCW preventing what occurred at VT

[greenflash107]

I agree with the fact that if it were legal for students and teachers to carry,(not that most would), it would take only the possiblity that one person that day, in that building, and in one of the affected classrooms might have one on them, to possibly deter someone like the shooter from doing what he did.

 

[dzimmerm]

Boil it down to the essentials

Your statistical analysis is fine as far as it goes. Statistical analysis is supposed to be used when you don't have the ability to find out the exact facts. That is why you use statistics, to make better guesses when exact facts are not available.

We know who was killed. We know for the most part who was present that was not killed. The simple answer to whether or not a CCW would have made a difference can be determined by finding out how many people dead or present at the scene were licensed CCW holders.

If the count of CCW holders present is greater than zero I hope the people responsible for "sensible" gun control laws can find a way to learn from this terrible event. If the count of CCW holders is zero then nothing would have changed in this one terrible example.

dzimmerm

 

[ZeSpectre]

Well said!

 

[willbrink]

Unarmed and vulnerable

Bradford B. Wiles (Wiles, of New Castle, is a graduate student at Virginia Tech.)

This article should be passed around the everyone and anyone. I plan to past it everywhere I can. Some interesting comments from a college proff:

_______________________________

A terrible tragedy. I know, I teach on college campus.

Once he starts to act, the only thing that can stop a single, psychotic killer who is willing to die is the rapid delivery of counter fire by whoever is near. Cop, civilian, it doesn't matter who or their job status. The more people who are nearby and capable of delivering return fire, the fewer and less serious the injuries (there's criminological data on this).

Virginia Tech. is a "gun free" zone guaranteeing that the psychotic killer had the only gun. He came prepared. He waited until there were no police in sight and then commenced his murderous acts certain that he would encounter no effective resistance. And , he didn't.

Twenty-one innocent dead because there was no one capable of fighting back. All they could do was cower or run.


Professor Joseph Olson, J.D., LL.M.
Hamline University School of Law

 

[pax]

A man walking along the beach just as the sun was coming up saw miles upon miles of starfish which had become stranded above the tide line. Ahead of him, he saw a child who was carefully returning starfish after starfish to the water. As he drew closer, he said to the child, "What are you doing?"

The child replied, "If the starfish are still above the tide line when the sun hits them, they will dry out too much and they will die. So I am putting them back into the water."

The man shook his head. "Why bother? Look how many starfish there are! You can't save them all! How could you think it would make any difference?"

The child nodded, picked up another starfish and turned it over in his hands thoughtfully. As he turned to place the starfish in the water, he replied, "It makes a difference to THIS one."

****

Old fable. Seems to have some bearing here.

pax

 

[hnk45acp]

Campus and state police were already on the scene and they still couldn't stop the shootings. Perhaps a CCW could have helped but unlikely. It's just one of those unfortunate things that are inevitable in a (somewhat) free and open society.

 

[Stump Water]

While Professor Olson is correct that the, "'gun free' zone guarantee[d] that the psychotic killer had the only gun".

But the statement that, "there was no one capable of fighting back." Is not true.

Unwilling? It seems.

The passengers and crew of Flight 93 were every bit as "incapable" as the Professor claims these people were.

No, this "keyboard commando" has no idea what he would have done. But I like to think I would have done something.

 

[ilcylic]

I do not think that Virginia Tech allowing CCW permit holders to carry on campus could have prevented this event from occurring, because that view demands the belief that guns are magical talismans that avert evil, which they clearly are not.

I do think that Virginia Tech allowing CCW permit holders to carry on campus would have increased the odds that the rampage would have ended sooner than it did. No guarantee, of course, but owning guns isn't about providing certainty, it's about improving your chances.

 

[ZeSpectre]

but owning guns isn't about providing certainty, it's about improving your chances.

Just like seatbelts

 

[buzz_knox]

I do think that Virginia Tech allowing CCW permit holders to carry on campus would have increased the odds that the rampage would have ended sooner than it did. No guarantee, of course, but owning guns isn't about providing certainty, it's about improving your chances.

It might have also reduced the chances of the event occuring at all. The concept of making a target "harder" includes deterring individuals who might otherwise be inclined to hit it think twice.

 

[ozwyn]

I do not think it would have prevented the shooting.

But it might have given something that yesterday's massacre did not have: hope that it could have been stopped sooner with a lot fewer victims.

That's all it could have done, might be all we could ask for anyway.

 

[3fgburner]

You know, I've been thinking about this

Antis keep talking about CCW on campus, in terms of "college kids with guns". Minimum age for a CCW in VA is 21. Any undergrad over 21, is probably in school after having done something else for a few years. In many cases, particularly if the person's gone and gotten a CCW, it's likely that they were in the military.

By the time I became old enough for a CCW, Uncle Sam was trusting me with the knowledge to do nuclear weapon delivery calculations as a fire control geek.

 

[ZeSpectre]

Plus staff and faculty

 

[recondoc]

Your statistical analysis is fine as far as it goes. Statistical analysis is supposed to be used when you don't have the ability to find out the exact facts. That is why you use statistics, to make better guesses when exact facts are not available.

We know who was killed. We know for the most part who was present that was not killed. The simple answer to whether or not a CCW would have made a difference can be determined by finding out how many people dead or present at the scene were licensed CCW holders.

If the count of CCW holders present is greater than zero I hope the people responsible for "sensible" gun control laws can find a way to learn from this terrible event. If the count of CCW holders is zero then nothing would have changed in this one terrible example.

dzimmerm

You have it close to correct with the model. The missing element is the group that would be "CCW holders, unarmed due to following the law, who were not wounded or killed but did not take any action."

Solid thinking though,
Doc

 

[TX_Shooter]

We all as parents and foe's of the neighborhood need to fight all schools and say we need to build them like a prison. That is to put a gate around the school/university property and have security guards @ the doors of entry way w/ metal detectors. Let's face it, our society sucks.

 

[TEDDY]

va school

I get mad when I hear it said the police only know how to shoot.I had guns when I was 15.pistols and 22 rifles.I lived in a city of 60,000 in Mass.I brought pistols to school and shot them in our rifle range.you had to have permit to carry and be 18.nobody cared about the permits.by 18 I was an expert with a browning 30/50.I went to Wentworth on the gi bill.all but 2 were ex service.you think we new how to shoot and had the mind set to shoot.our culture has changed,others on forums talk about the consequnce of shooting some one.people I knew never thought about that only servival.to bad your generation has to put up with the lose of "manhood" by being forced to kowtow to the antis.there are still those americans who dare to go in harms way.god bless them.

 

[Lucky]

That Math Is Wrong

To find the real probability you should take the probability of a person having a CCW (using the numbers you had) and then multiply that by every person he encountered.

The trick is not to find out the probability of someone HAVING a CCW, but that he DOESN'T meet someone with a CCW.

So if there's a 1% chance a person has CCW, you call it a 99% chance they don't. Supposing he only meets 50 people, that's 0.99 to the power of 50. The result is about 60%, meaning 60% chance that none of them have CCW.

IOW if he meets only 50 people there is a 40% chance that one has a CCW.



And in reality college age people are more likely to have a CCW than elementary students, or people in retirement homes, so 1% is probably low.

 

[Geronimo45]

About one percent of the population have CC permits... but those permits are not evenly distributed at all. Look at the DPS website for Texas - a lot of information on what ages the permit-holders are. The majority are in their 40s and 50s, IIRC. Very few on the younger end of the spectrum. I'm guessing that chances are significantly less than 1 percent, for the age group attending college.

It can't hurt to allow CC. If the students don't carry, chances are that some teachers would (there are pro-gun professors and school teachers). My mother teaches elementary school kids... and they were saying that she should get a gun in case something like this happened at their school. "An AK-47!" One of 'em suggested.
I wish we could get a few congresscritters to think the same way.

 

[KingHugh]

I can't speak for anybody but me....but if I had been there, standing next to the first victim, there would have only been two people shot, with 1 definite fatality. The perp would have dropped before the echo of his shot faded.

CCW woulnd't have prevented the entire tragedy, but it sure as hell would have reduced the numbers. I don't mean to sound flip, I'm sick about all those poor innocent people, it's just that somebody needs to stand up to these predators. Force with Force. He killed himself, so there was no reasoning with this guy. The outcome was already pre-determined.

 

[jlbraun]

Idle speculation...

It would have been interesting if the VA CCW database published by the Roanoke Times were still accessible.

...

Correlate the names of the dead and wounded with the CCW list for the state of VA...

 

[shadowalker]

If one was present and armed I'd like to believe that it would have stopped a lot sooner. The interesting thing is so far I've encountered more people wishing there was a CCWer present than thinking we should restrict guns. This incident has the potential to contribute positively to individual gun rights and maybe get people think about stripping away some of the silly restrictions on where people can't carry.

I work on a campus of 7000 people or so and am not allowed to carry, we have a very large percentage of people who have a CCW and are hoping they will reconsider at some point, this being a good case study as the university has an armed police force and we have guys in red shirts .

 

[Winter Borne]

My 2 cents...

The very idea of CCW is concealed carry. Does he have a gun? Does she? What about the lady over there? That's the point! The very fact that there MAY be someone at VT with a gun would have prevented the perp from feeling so safe as to have chained the doors. He had to have been feeling pretty confidant that he was the only one in the building with a gun. You can count the odds any way you wish, but there's a reason that Arlington, VA has a fraction of the gun violence as DC yet they are less than 1 mile apart. It's the perps knowledge that he may be facing an armed citizen in VA rather than an un-armed victim in DC.

mk

 

[JohnKSa]

My understanding is that he chained the doors of the building...

Ask yourself why?

1. To keep in the victims--the victims he knew would be unarmed.

2. To keep out the responders--which he knew would be armed.

Seems to me his strategy is an admission that he knew he needed an unarmed pool of victims and that an armed person would "wreck his party".

 

[Carl N. Brown]

from what I have gathered

The police response was at the site of the original shooting
across the drill field from the Norris Hall where the second
shooting was carried out with 30 victims killed.

The killer chained and padlocked the Norris Hall door from the inside
and began a three-minute killing spree.

The police responded from the original site to Norris hall,
breached the padlocked door, and the killer committed
suicide.

During those fatal minutes, some students blocked a door
with tables. In another classroom, a courageous teacher
blocked a door with himself and was killed, but his
students escaped by the windows.

If after the initial shock, there was reaction time to block some
doors and save some lives, there was reaction time for a
CCW carrier to respond to the killer.

SWAT team and hostage rescue training is good for
dealing with a hostage taker. With a crazed psycho
spree killer the first responder is the victim.
Three minutes. If one or more of the victims were CCW
it could have made a difference.

If VT had had a policy of allowing license holders to CCW
on campus, there is a possibility it would have inhibited
this coward. There are no spree killings at rifle ranges.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

statistics

It really does not matter if the count of CCW holders
at Norris Hall was zero: the killer knew that even if
everyone there was a CCW holder, they could not
carry on campus. He was guaranteed zero carry.