General News Texas gun rights group reenacts Charlie Hebdo Shooting

It is interesting. While I don't believe being armed or using a weapon if armed is the best option in many scenarios, it can be beneficial in certain situations. An example of this would be a situation like the Luby's massacre that occurred in Texas Luby's shooting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I view weapons as tools, not silver bullets; pun not intended. You have to use judgement on when to use them.


About the experiment, I think it was one scenario of countless many that could happen.

 

I can only applaud them for this experiment. Especially since they are a group that is in favour of gun rights, and so one would expect them to have at least some interest in not proving that guns were probably useless in this instance.

So: bravo for openness and science!

I don't personally own a gun, but this is pretty much what my family members (all military. I'm the one black sheep in my family who joined the citizenry ) said right after the shooting.
If a bunch of guys is dedicated and well-prepared, and minimally coordinates their action, it's highly unlikely that just any citizen with a gun could be able to properly oppose them without extensive training.
So in all situations where one can evacuate and avoid violence, one really should. And then contact authorities ASAP and provide detailed info when prompted.


In any case: I would like to see more of this kind of research. Opinions are a dime a dozen, good data is much harder to come by.

 

I don't know if the experiment gives "proof," but I find it interesting. It's pretty cool that someone thought to do this.

Interesting, too, that Americans thought this up, not France. I don't believe guns would have saved the Charlie Hebdo victims. The shooting has not sparked any sort of debate on allowing more people to have guns in France, nor arguments (here) about whether the victims would have lived if they'd been carrying guns.

 

I kind of think it is a bit too soon to reenacts a horrible shooting where many people die and suffer. Give it a year or two and we can go "what if"later. Right now it disturb a still open wound in the heart of in many people.

 

It has been shown in other scenarios that untrained shooters thinking that will play the hero end up dead or shooting a hostage my mistake.

However the problem is not guns, there, it's lack of training.

I'm just as nervous as the rest of you about straight white cismales (who are least likely to be attacked) indulging their violent fantasies. However, I don't think we should take weapons away from women and minority people.

 

I think this is a good idea... but I feel like the people reenacting it would have too much of a bias.

 

This has been my opinion all along. However this training is not something that is practice for most people. It is not a once and done thing. It is something that you have to practice and train for over time.

 

Lets consider the bias they have: they are in favor of guns. So what would they want to prove? That guns stop crime 100% of the time. What would their bias thereby lead them to show? That the lone gunman stopped the terrorists 100% of the time. What did they find instead? The lone gunman died unless they took off running.

 

Which is what I found the most interesting. I would expect them to be bias, but instead showed results that contradict their cause. I'd be interested in reading about more of these experiments, as they show some interesting results.

 

I'm not sure how much relevance this shooting situation has on concealed carry issues in general. Multiple assailants bursting into a small boardroom with AK-47's and immediately starting to shoot people,including an armed bodyguard (and they knew in advance who that person was) it doesn't take a rocket scientist to assume that if someone pulled out a pistol in that situation that they would be shot. Granted, they might be able to shoot one of the attackers before getting shot, but shooting all the attackers without getting shot themselves in that circumstance?

It's not impossible (google Jim Cirrillo NYPD) but it's highly unlikely for the average person, even if that person is a cop. Plus, in the Jim Cirrillo case, he was an expert pistol shooter, and already had his handgun out and started shooting at the moment of the confrontation. He had the drop on them, not the other way around.

 

What I can tell you is: If they used lightsabers instead of those inferior guns, the situation would had played out differently.

 

Gun rights groups aren't exactly known for using their brains.

 

It's pretty much common sense, and what I've been saying the entire time: arming everyone isn't going to stop random shootings. It's just going to ensure more people on both sides wind up injured or dead.

 

Yes, there are many cases in which it might be problematic, but I still don't want public policy crafted in such a way that as a woman or a minority person, I can't defend myself.

What it does mean is that we have to be critical about weapons in public spaces.

 

Here in Australia, there are so many hoops you have to jump through to own a firearm, that only the most determined (or, those who can afford the expenses, or love the sport of shooting enough to fork out what is needed) will get one. You have to be an active member of a shooting club, you need to be licensed, have a special safe set in concrete or in the ground (or something like that), and to have a pistol it's even harder. So, most ordinary citizens obviously don't have firearms. The trouble is, many criminals do have firearms, and seem to get them very easily. So the situation in Australia is: ordinary law abiding folks mostly don't have firearms, and criminals, law enforcement and the military do. I mention this because I think that, if proper background checks can be carried out, I wish it were not so damn hard to own a gun in my country. It's the other extreme to America, where it's too easy to get a gun. Our government went the other way, using the 'Port Arthur Massacre' as a pretext to disarm much of the population some years back, and bringing in the current system.

 

The science of their "reenactment" is extremely iffy. Aside from the fact that paintballs act different than bullets and there's no accounting for training, there's also the extraneous variable of surprise. Nobody knows what would have happened if somebody had shot back against the terrorists, who expected no resistance.

And even if their conclusion that concealed-carriers did nothing but die, that doesn't mean the practice itself is harmful or useless. There's a reason people don't intentionally use pistols to go up against rifles (as it's said the point of a pistol in a shootout is to "fight your way to a long gun"), and guns are used to save lives in many other instances that far outnumber the 12 deaths they would have failed to prevent in France.

 

Their intent was to cause death at any cost including their own lives, that much is/was obvious. Arming the population of a country is inherently a bad idea.

I certainly think in situations like you had in in the Paris tragedy armed civilians would have done more harm than good.

Fortunately the majority opinion in the UK is that civilians with weapons are a bad thing and mass killings which are a relatively rare thing here lead to a hardening of gun ownership laws.

I can understand simpler weapons like shotguns and such for hunting in the great outdoors, but things like assault rifles??? Absolute craziness.

I have no doubt because of the ease of buying weapons within America that there are no doubt a fair few terrorist cells with large stashes of weapons that are under the radar of the security services there. Scary thought.

 

For the most part I understand your first sentence. Even gun enthusiasts treat military-style rifles (actual "assault rifles" are selective fire, not semi-only and are already pretty much banned) as something of a luxury. They're not good for home defense because they pierce walls and not good for public carry because, well, they're huge and would still over-penetrate all but the hardest targets. But in the mindset of preparedness, it's what I'd go to if there was a threat of heavily-armed gunmen in the area. Not necessarily to charge out at them and play hero, but if the need ariose, I'd want it.

The problem with the second part is that yeah, it's easy to get guns here, but it was apparently easy enough to get them over there too. Fewer shootings is a good thing; however, the idea of being killed without even a sporting chance of saving yourself is what Second Amendment supporters consider unacceptable.