A lot of people have their knickers in a bunch over the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. A lot of voices are crying "we need to fix this so it never happens again!" as if their opinion mattered, or as if criminals or the insane gave a rats ass about laws in the first place. "Knee Jerk" legislation sucks like a chest wound.
First off it could have been a lot worse. Had I, or anyone else who put their mind to it wanted to kill a bunch of people in a theater it would have been a lot more effective to use door wedges, chains, padlocks, and a few molatov cocktails to kill more than 12.
Think about it this way:
Step One, use the door wedges, chains and padlocks to defeat the emergency exits.
Step Two, use the molatov cocktails to start a fire and create panic and confusion.
Step Three, as people find out that they can't get out start mowing down groups as they rush into the fatal funnel, the last remaining exit from a now burning theater.
Step Four, ditch your gun and disguise into the burning flames and run from the theater like everybody else afraid of the crazy gunman. If you can do this all in under 5 minutes you have a good chance of escaping beyond the "security cordon" that law enforcement is going to put up to "contain the situation."
None of this is secret information, police response times are public knowledge, and all the components are readily available for purchase or manufacture. There are even some very good plans to make a functioning submachine gun out there for anyone to use, simply using common hand tools.
In terms of life lost, the attack in Aurora barely comes up as a blip on the radar against nightclub fires: http://listverse.com/2010/03/08/top-10-modern-night-club-fires/
Is this cold hearted of me? Probably, but a "knee jerk" reaction to "stop this tragedy from ever happening again" is even worse than cold hearted, it is stupid. The "knee jerk" reaction to 9/11 gave us the TSA, how's that been working out?
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11 comments:
You're 100% correct. This could have been far worse.I had the funnel pictured as soon as I heard about this, but adding fire to the equation would have been disastrous on a scale I could not imagine.
The thing that has bothered me the most about this is the "if I had been there" types of posts I've been seeing about this. People think that because they have a concealed gun they could have changed the outcome of this situation. Really? You could have, in the dark, with a respiratory and visual irritant and panicked people running all around you, shot and killed an assailant wearing body armor?
It absolutely sucks that this will inevitably lead to more legislation for gun owners and even more so that the media will not make the distinction between a whackjob that wants to kill people and gun owners that want to protect themselves from someone that wants to commit a terrorist act.
survivingcontact said...The thing that has bothered me the most about this is the "if I had been there" types of posts I've been seeing about this. People think that because they have a concealed gun they could have changed the outcome of this situation.
Maybe, maybe not. I read that there were at least 5 permit holders in the theater, all disarmed because of a sign. Could one of them had made a difference? who knows. The fact that they let a sign that holds no force of law dictate their safety says a lot about the sheep mentality. The signs here in Iowa also don't hold the force of law, and I ignore them. I'd rather be asked to leave than to trust my safety to... who?
Those numbers are just about an ordinary weekend toll in Chicago. Perhaps Brian Ross could research those background stories.
While you are completely correct here, on the off chance that one of your readers isn't entirely sane or reasonable, I would tend to shy away from potentially giving pointers to would-be-mass-murderers. I mean, I've got some ideas for good ways to dispose of a body, but I'm not going to go posting them on a blog.
Anonymous,
Tom Clancy wrote a book where a jumbo jet is kamikaze'd into a government building. A couple years later jumbo jets slam into the twin towers and the pentagon.
The information is out there, not talking about it doesn't stop the crazy people or terrorists.
I am not as much interested in all this as the timing and consequences that will arise from it:
How convenient/what a coincidence this happens less than a week from a Small Arms Treaty vote in the Senate...I'm sure Mizz HITLERy and the rest of the communists will just look the other way and not make political hay of it...Or not.
Waiting in the wings is a President who has signed almost a thousand communism-imposing Executive Orders, looking for an excuse to use them to disarm the "white devils".
The civil war confiscation would breed is an excellent excuse indeed!
Yes, anyone could have changed the outcome. It isn't clear the incendiary used was CS, and such a device doesn't permeate the entire space wall-to-wall instantaneously. And wearing body armor head to knees encumbers mobility. A gas mas cuts visibility. And last I checked, masks aren't bulletproof. Neither are knees and arms.
So anyone, absolutely anyone, with passable vision and reflexes, a loaded weapon, and the will to use it, could have drastically altered things.
Except not only did the theatre post "No CCW" signs, but it was also banned THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE CITY OF AURORA, CO.
And there were APD officers AT the cineplex, before and during the incident.
This @$$clown spent weeks of time and thousands of dollars preparing for this moment.
The ONLY thing that stops this kind of crap in the moment is a faceful of lead going the other way.
Let's poll the 70+ dead and wounded, and see if they'd like a Glock of their own on their hip for the next go around...
Regards,
-Aesop
The shooter had more planned but you know how plans sometimes go wrong. He had a diversion ready and should have waited for it to be sprung to start his shooting. Yes I am glad it didn't work for him. For the 12 victims, just one CC weapon would have diverted him and reduced the carnage.
AM... Excellent post!
Good discussion here in the comments section :)
Like Mr. Fowler, I am from Iowa. Also like Mr. Fowler, I carry and I generally ignore the signs, maintaining the same philosophy as Mr. Fowler. I'd rather be asked to leave than to be unprotected. (My granddaughter's school and the Courthouse are two places that are obviously different situations, right or wrong. You won't be asked to leave those places. You will be arrested.)
"Legally" carrying has it's risks, too, as Erik Scott found out in Las Vegas.
Anyway, the point I would like to make here is that even though the theater was dark, even though some form of "gas" had been released in the theater, even though Holmes was wearing "body armor" and a protective mask, even though he appears to have planned this attack as well as he could, within the confines of his limited experience, he didn't plan to die. Return fire from someone in the theater would have caused his basic survival instincts to take over and he would have sought cover. Return fire would have been a game changer that he hadn't planned for.
I guarantee you that the first time you are shot at your brain will take over and you will seek cover, just like the targets in the theater did. He would have exited out the door that he entered through and the game would have been over. He would have got in his car and drove away.
If he had planned to die that night he wouldn't have quietly surrendered to the cops outside the theater.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Outstanding post. I've been preaching this for years (just like I tried to warn about a 9-11 happening) and got/get the same response as I did about a 9-11... glazed eyeballs and three steps back from me.
And when the shit hits the fan, it's always "us" that's gotta go in and pull "them" outta the 4-holer.
Semper Fi.
wondering what effect a 200 lumen led light in his face would have had in a dark theatre.
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