Tom Tomorrow: What We REALLY Need Is...

[Daemonaquila]

21. I'm really tired of this meme. It's BS.

Someone brings up mass shootings stopped by an armed civilian. Anti-gun folks, with only emotion to base their argument on, deny that such a thing has ever occurred. Rinse, lather, repeat. I have no respect for arguments based on false assertions. If you don't know, don't insist that something has never happened. Go do some research.

For the record, here are SEVERAL examples of when this has happened, by no means complete:

Appalachian Law School, 2002:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/hi_christy.htm
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/01/16/law.school.shooting/

Pearl High School, 1997:
http://www.holology.com/shooting2.html
http://articles.cnn.com/1997-10-02/us/9710_02_miss.shooting.folo_1_mary-woodham-pearl-high-school-trench-coat?_s=PM:US

Parker Middle School, 1998:
http://articles.cnn.com/1998-04-25/us/9804_25_school.shooting.pm_1_count-of-criminal-homicide-weapon-and-surrender-west-paducah?_s=PM:US

All that being said, this is a silly argument. Could anyone have stopped the Aurora shooter if they were armed? Extremely unlikely. He was armored to the hilt, it was dark, access would have been difficult due to running people and layout of seats, and the scene was incredibly chaotic. The likelihood of a person who hasn't had military or law enforcement training doing anything at all successful is pretty much nil. No responsible gun owner would have started firing a handgun in that kind of situation - they just would've killed more people. Similarly, other massacres would be very difficult to stop unless the perpetrator was already running, out of ammo, not shooting/moving in a crowd of people, etc. The examples above show that it's possible when you have an inexperienced, relatively unprepared shooter who doesn't want to die, with more open surroundings. While it happens, the number of shootings where an armed civilian could successfully intervene are small and would remain just about as small if more people were armed. The fact is, FBI statistics show that about 167 people per year die in mass killings (defined by 4+ murders by any means, many of which do not occur in spree killings). Having a massive, emotional gun control debate either to ban guns, much more heavily regulate guns, or arm everyone, when the number of incidents and people killed yearly by spree killers is so small, is pretty ridiculous. There are much more important things to worry about, such as what we can do as a society to end extreme violence (which may or may not involve guns), decrease gangs and gang violence, etc. The ZOMG!!!! LEGISLATE TO STOP SPREE KILLERS!!!! push is such a red herring.