Some thoughts on the "If someone else had a gun" argument re: Aurora

[cthulu2016]

40. Incredibly stupid argument

This seems to be a religious dogma among some, and it suggests a brittle worldview wherein gun control is conceptually negated if there is one instance where any privately owned gun could ever be used to any good purpose.

Why else would people continue to make this asinine argument?

Oh no, if someone in the audience had a gun it would have been even worse. That's gibberish.

The shooter had enough ammo to casually kill 100 people. There was nothing to stop him. For the 100 people in the front part of the theater escape was impossible. (All 12 fatalities were people in the aisles trying to escape.)

Had the shooter's main gun not jammed the death toll here would have been much higher.

Did the shooter's gun jam because nobody in the audience had a gun?

So this guy in the front of the theater is casually killing everyone. The optimal situation is, of course, for people to take a number waiting to get shot until the police arrive.

The police arrive. What then? The shooter is still in the theater shooting everyone (unless his gun jamming and his decision to leave is attributable to nobody being armed)

And the police take him out... because the police carry magic guns that don't face your body armor objections.

The conservative worldview is based on freakish worst-case scenarios. If every trip to the theater was like this one then it would be an excellent idea for the audience to be armed.

But 99.9999% of the time everyone being armed would be a menace. An armed audience is only useful in one bizarre instance.

Liberals know that governance is not about optimizing society for that one bizarre instance. Not every day is 9/11 and we cannot live as if it is.

But to take the step off the intellectual cliff of saying that a civilian weapon could not possibly play a useful role in a freakish 0.00001% circumstance is as bad as the gun nut fantasies.

Let's pause the action halfway through this incident... dozens of people have been hit by buckshot. Dozens of people have been hit by bullets. Everyone who hasn't already escaped cannot. The people in the aisles are being mowed down.

Time stops and a guy in the 10th row says, "I have a gun on me. Since we are all endangered by flying lead I think we should have a vote... should I empty my gun at the shooter, hoping to hit him in the head, or should I stay in my seat? It's dark and I am not Annie Oakley."

How would the audience vote?

The "no armed person can ever do anything ever" fantasy is a perverted dis-empowerment fantasy as childish as the gun-nut empowerment fantasies.

And it is unnecessary. The net benefit of people not all packing heat is much greater than the utility of packing heat in a bizarre 0.00001% instance.

If you get a gun for self defense it is likelier that some member of your household will die from that gun than that a burglar will.

Fact.

But to then say that a gun cannot, conceptually, categorically, play a useful role in any burglary is delusional.

I have never owned a gun or even fired a gun. I wouldn't cry too hard if they were all banned.

But that doesn't mean I am required to believe nonsense like the OP. It makes us all look bad.