hammerklavier said:Small flaw in the good professor's logic. He stated that armed citizens can only reduce the casualty count, and cannot prevent the shooting altogether. But if the good folks at this church in SC had been known to be proud carriers of arms, the shooter would never have entered that church in the first place. In other words gun free zones should either be eliminated or secured by armed guards.
It's hard to say what a twisted individual like that might do. Armed people or not, he may have still entered the church with the idea of going out in a blaze of glory while starting the "race war" he wanted so much. It doesn't look like rational thinking was his strong point, so the possibility of armed resistance might not have mattered at all.
And you still hit this: elderly church ladies are elderly church ladies. They are not infantrymen. The youngest person in that church service was a 26 year old man, but everyone else was in their 40's to their 80's. An attacker would identify a young capable person as a potential threat and probably shoot him first. You can't reasonably just draw and shoot someone first in an Bible study because they look suspicious, and after the "outsider" sat through the service with you, would your guard still be up?
Someone being armed may have reduced the number of deaths and I wish those victims had that chance, but it's not realistic to expect that in some cases.