Grim's Hall has a piece analyzing the mass shooting problem. "An armed citizenry can sometimes stop these attacks, whereas a disarmed citizenry is much more vulnerable.
Carrying a gun is kind of a pain, really, and the odds that something
like this shooting will come up are small enough that most people may
not think it's worth the hassle. However, a former Marine who happened
to take his pistol to the movies that night could have stopped the
attack earlier. This is in fact the best defense to an attack in
progress, since it is an unpredictable factor from the point of view of
the killer. He can avoid the police, but he can't be sure about the
concealed weapons in the audience.
There's a second reason that is less obvious. The kind of mind that
chooses this path is capable of worse. Even Timothy McVeigh, far from
the smartest man in the world, could concoct a huge bomb. This fellow
appears to have been brilliant: there's no limit to what kind of harm
he could have created if he had chosen that route.
This is to
say that the easy availability of firearms, and the glamour they are
endowed with culturally, acts as a kind of brake on the harm done by
mass killers. Firearms are less deadly than bombs, they take longer to
do their work, and you have to be right there operating them in person.
That exposes you to being stopped mid-act by armed citizens, and
potentially even to the police arriving (although that is unlikely,
since 'longer than a bomb' is still only 'a few minutes' rather than
'instantly'). You are available to be stopped before the harm is
completed. You're easier to catch afterwards. Finally, a single person
with a firearm can only kill so many people because of weight limits on
how much ammunition he can carry.
For all these reasons, the best response is to encourage the carrying of arms by citizens."
http://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2012/07/an-analysis-of-mass-shooting-problem.html
2 comments:
An excellent newsletter today on guns/violence/self defense from a Christian perspective: http://www.centralseminary.edu/resources/nick-of-time
Trinka,
I agree that it is an excellent article. Here are my favorite points made by the author:
"Christians should allow no naïve utopianism to stand unchallenged."
"People have no obligation to permit themselves to be struck down by predators and evil men. On the contrary, they have a right to defend their lives, limbs, and property. They also have a duty (when it is within their power) to defend the innocent."
"Sometimes the just exercise of violence is the only way to end unjust violence."
"one of the worst ways of exposing people to violence is to herd them into zones in which they are publicly labeled as defenseless victims. This is precisely what happened at the Century 16 Theater. The state of Colorado allows its citizens to carry the means of defense, but both Century 16 and its parent company, Cinemark Century Theaters, disallow it. The predator (a bright guy from all accounts) did not plan to shoot up a police station. He planned his assault for a location filled with disarmed, defenseless victims. If the Century 16 Theater had permitted the necessary means of defense, the result would have been much the same as if the shooting had occurred in a police station. The death toll could have remained as low as two: the first victim and the perpetrator. Century 16 and Cinemark bear part of the responsibility for this catastrophe."
"To understand this point, one need only consider the disparity between Colorado’s three recent shooting sprees. The Columbine shooting and the Cinemark shooting both occurred in disarmed-victim zones, and in each episode the death toll was staggering. The other shooting spree (the one that began at YWAM and ended at New Life Church), however, was cut short when a church lady, Jean Assam, applied the necessary means of defense to the shooter. This is the spree that fewer people remember, probably because it hardly began before it ended."
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