westernrover
Member
- Joined
- May 4, 2018
- Messages
- 1,863
New Year's Day on Bourbon street was just the latest. One that always stands out in my mind was the 1980 attack by Ms. Ford who drove a Lincoln through Reno and killed six, injuring 23 others on Thanksgiving Day.. The 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice was one of the worst in that 84 people were killed by one truck. More recently, it was only a few weeks ago that a vehicle attack happened at a Christmas market in Germany resulting in five deaths and 200 injuries. That followed another attack in 2016 where a vehicle driver killed 12 and injured 56 people at a Christmas market in Berlin. Security measures implemented since that attack did not stop the one a few weeks ago. Much has already been made of the failure of vehicle barrier implementation on Bourbon street. The fact is that many large gatherings remain insecure from vehicle attacks.
Chadd Wright of 3 of 7 Project offered a solution in one of his recent "Truck Talks." He advised not going to large gatherings. It seems common-sense to me, but Chadd seemed to think it wouldn't be popular. I don't have any sympathy for fat people that want to go to big pro sports events, but I can empathize with those who might feel that not gathering is a concession to the evil doers. On the other hand, I would have to ask: is the practice of concealed carry a concession to the evil doers?
Paul Harrel claimed to have defended his wife from a vehicle attack. He stopped a a belligerent drunk driver at a campground that had driven through their campfire and was heading toward Paul's truck behind which was his wife. Paul shot the driver six times with an AR-15. The driver, in this case, may or may not have had a malicious intention to kill anyone, but was drunk and took foolish actions that demanded he be stopped from doing so regardless of his intentions. Nobody is declaring open season on drunk drivers that aren't immediately posing a lethal and unavoidable threat that would cause imminent death, great bodily harm, or serious bodily injury to themselves or others if they were not stopped. It raises the question though, is gunfire effective at stopping drivers and th4e vehicles they are driving? At the risk of starting at stupid "caliber war", is 9x19 effective?
Here is the truck from the Bastille Day attack:
Paul did some inventive tests on various cartridges firing bullets through windshields and also on using different parts of vehicles as cover. Vehicle parts preventing sufficient penetration, interfering with bullet expansion, and causing deflection of the bullet's path are substantial concerns, but hitting the driver effectively in a moving vehicle would be sufficiently hard in and of itself. Michael Platt was sitting in a stopped car (one or the other) when anyone fired at him, and yet it took 70 shots and 12 hits to stop him. The Bastille Day attacker was shot at 54 times and took 18 hits from the police. We can't say that all 18 hits were required to stop him, but it's fair to say that those hits took too long to make.
Stopping vehicle attacks in general is outside the scope of this discussion. That's an issue for law enforcement and security personnel. As individuals, the pertinent questions are: how can we avoid being attacked with a vehicle, and if we're caught in a vehicle attack, what can we do to defend ourselves? I'm particularly interested in defense against intentional mass homicidal attacks on pedestrians. If a person were to find themselves the victim of a vehicle attack like that man who was hit while riding his bicycle in Dana Point by a driver who then got out of his car and stabbed the bicyclist also in February of 2023, I don't know how they could be expected to do much without any warning.
Chadd Wright of 3 of 7 Project offered a solution in one of his recent "Truck Talks." He advised not going to large gatherings. It seems common-sense to me, but Chadd seemed to think it wouldn't be popular. I don't have any sympathy for fat people that want to go to big pro sports events, but I can empathize with those who might feel that not gathering is a concession to the evil doers. On the other hand, I would have to ask: is the practice of concealed carry a concession to the evil doers?
Paul Harrel claimed to have defended his wife from a vehicle attack. He stopped a a belligerent drunk driver at a campground that had driven through their campfire and was heading toward Paul's truck behind which was his wife. Paul shot the driver six times with an AR-15. The driver, in this case, may or may not have had a malicious intention to kill anyone, but was drunk and took foolish actions that demanded he be stopped from doing so regardless of his intentions. Nobody is declaring open season on drunk drivers that aren't immediately posing a lethal and unavoidable threat that would cause imminent death, great bodily harm, or serious bodily injury to themselves or others if they were not stopped. It raises the question though, is gunfire effective at stopping drivers and th4e vehicles they are driving? At the risk of starting at stupid "caliber war", is 9x19 effective?
Here is the truck from the Bastille Day attack:

Paul did some inventive tests on various cartridges firing bullets through windshields and also on using different parts of vehicles as cover. Vehicle parts preventing sufficient penetration, interfering with bullet expansion, and causing deflection of the bullet's path are substantial concerns, but hitting the driver effectively in a moving vehicle would be sufficiently hard in and of itself. Michael Platt was sitting in a stopped car (one or the other) when anyone fired at him, and yet it took 70 shots and 12 hits to stop him. The Bastille Day attacker was shot at 54 times and took 18 hits from the police. We can't say that all 18 hits were required to stop him, but it's fair to say that those hits took too long to make.
Stopping vehicle attacks in general is outside the scope of this discussion. That's an issue for law enforcement and security personnel. As individuals, the pertinent questions are: how can we avoid being attacked with a vehicle, and if we're caught in a vehicle attack, what can we do to defend ourselves? I'm particularly interested in defense against intentional mass homicidal attacks on pedestrians. If a person were to find themselves the victim of a vehicle attack like that man who was hit while riding his bicycle in Dana Point by a driver who then got out of his car and stabbed the bicyclist also in February of 2023, I don't know how they could be expected to do much without any warning.
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