While tackling a shooter the caveman with sudden and miraculous martial arts skills is probably thinking “I wish I had a goddamned gun right now!”

If you think pulling a gun on a shooter can get you killed, try tackling or punching one some time (or for that matter, just stand there and do nothing at all). And not everyone flips out on adrenaline when gunfire erupts, and even if the rush obliterates one’s fine motor skills (which it will in most cases) then that’s what the training was for.

Buying a gun but not doing any training with it is what gets people killed (sometimes with their own gun), yet people do this all the time and think they’re ready to defend themselves. Those same people probably wouldn’t go buy a motorcycle and try to ride it in rush hour traffic for the first time if they’ve never ridden a motorcycle before (they go practice somewhere safe under the guidance of someone with experience first!), so why do so many people skip training and practice with firearms, I wonder? And FWIW, tactical pistol training is a lot easier to master than empty-hand martial arts (why pistols have been called “the great equalizer” and all that).

And while teachers slinging lead in classrooms isn’t an ideal solution, there are ways to make it “safer,” such as by mandating Glaser or equivalent safety ammo as well as a basic course in tactical use of firearms, which can help a lot more than most people who lack such training seem to think.

So-called “safety” rounds are still lethal, but only to the primary target they hit; they won’t pass through a body and kill an unintended target standing behind the intended target (and they shatter passing through a thin layer of drywall, too so misses won’t hit people in the next room, either).

I am even willing to admit that it will possibly make *less* difference, given the likely low levels of carry, compared to improving how we as a society handle the mentally ill.

But it has and will make *some* difference, unlike any gun control scheme I have heard suggested during the last week.

The thing is, you don’t have to be an action hero, because the crazy guy with the AR isn’t an action movie villain. He’s a deranged kid who wants to be infamous. In this sort of mass shooting, one of his worst fears is being injured and captured to stand trial for his crimes. Why do you believe it is so incredibly easy for a killer to become superman with a rifle but impossible for a normal person to be even competent?

You have to have the courage to fight instead of run – something which we saw even in unarmed teachers here – and enough practice to hit a human sized target at 20 yards – skill that anyone can acquire with basic practice.

That’s *not* even including the number of ex-military and ex-cops we have working as school teachers, if you insist on formal training.

The libertarian party put out a press release with a short list of a few mass killings stopped by an armed civilian:

http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/halt-the-massacre-of-innocent-children-by-ending-prohibition-on-self-defense-in

There are dozens more. As the list notes, there was one in Aurora just months before the ‘Batman’ killer. And the shooting last week in Oregon was at least influenced by an armed civilian who didn’t have to fire a shot.

Do you realize that the cops responding to the call aren’t usually gun guys? That they do a couple hours of training a year to make basic qualifications that most “gun nuts” would pass in their sleep?

I don’t think every teacher should be armed, or that everyone should carry a weapon. Everyone has to look at him or herself and decide if they are up to the responsibility. But we shouldn’t prevent the people who are willing and able to fight these events from trying.

It “rarely happens” because it isn’t reported on the news, because nearly every attempted mass killing that happened near an armed civilian was stopped before it met the definition of mass killing. Even with an AR, murdering that many people takes time, and it’s a lot harder to aim when you’re having to duck for cover.

Studies on defensive gun use:
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#crime

This isn’t a scientific study, but it provides a longer list of spree killers stopped by armed civilians:

http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/07/31/auditing-shooting-rampage-statistics/

I’m not trying to convince you to carry a gun, but *please* educate yourself on self defense before claiming that “pretty much no one can be trusted to take a calm and accurate shot.” Plenty of people have managed it. In any case, there is almost zero chance that a CCW holder will have *less* training than the murderer he or she is trying to stop. The requirements for successful armed defense are completely different from the requirements to excel on a high school rifle team.

I’m fond of guns; I was on a rifle team in high school, even.  I also realize that in a mass shooting, pretty much no one can be trusted to take a calm and accurate shot, especially of a moving target (often a moving target with body armor on).  Where does this “civilian gunslinger hero” myth even come from?  It rarely if ever happens IRL. 

When civilians stop murderers, it’s usually the caveman way: a flying tackle, or a punch, or some other movement that works largely on instinct.  It’s not with a goddamn concealed handgun.

Prohibition is no solution for drugs and alcohol, and it is no solution for gun crime.

Anyway, I’m not really sure if gun control laws will accomplish what proponents hope. While I don’t know of any current studies, as far back as the early 90s Wright & Rossi estimated that only one-fifth of prisoners got their guns from licensed gun dealers. I can’t imagine that number has changed much (probably has increased). Given the large stock of outstanding guns, I can’t imagine anything but hugely authoritarian gun seizures and control would be that effective. For that matter, most of the city guns bans don’t seem to have been particularly effective. Maybe stringent gun control could reduce mass-shooting violence like the type just seen in CT, but I really don’t know. I also think it’s worth mentioning that Switzerland has low violence and they have a strong “gun culture” and literally give away semiautomatic rifles. So there is a lot more going on in the US then simply access to guns. I think we can go a long way towards explaining why violence in the US is broadly higher, primarily due to our aggressive “war on drugs” and continued disenfranchisement, educationally and socially, of black Americans. But I don’t know why mass violence would be more frequent here. 

There was an armed civilian at the Oregon mall shooting. They didn’t end up firing because they knew they would hit civilians if they missed, but after seeing that armed resistance was imminent, the spree killer shot himself rather than risk being injured and detained. There are many other more explicit examples of this phenomenon.Self defense advocates have been pushing these solutions for years, but we generally consider it tacky to jump out immediately after a tragedy like this to link it to our political solutions.

As an aside, it’s incredibly sloppy to be happy citing a simple correlation as support for gun control. How many ‘studies’ have you fisked here because they claimed a simple correlation as evidence? Multiple studies have found little to no impact on overall crime or violence rates from gun control or gun rights legislation. The overwhelming consensus is that within the framework of US law and culture the amount of restrictions on gun ownership is not the controlling variable.