Friendly fire shootings show why arming everyone won’t solve gun violence

[Euromutt]

17. Has anyone actually claimed "arming everyone will solve gun violence"?

Because if not, you're jousting at a straw man.

Let's get this out of the way: the latest shooting at the Empire State Building wouldn't have been a "mass shooting" if it weren't for the deplorable performance of the NYPD. But as other posters have pointed out, the NYPD has a fucking awful record on firearms use; the department is evidently unwilling to invest in training its officers properly, and seeks to compensate for inadequate training with user-unfriendly measures on equipment. This is not representative of police departments in general, and it certainly isn't representative of private citizens who go armed in public.

All the more so since private citizens know that they--not being agents of the state--don't have the legal protections a police officer does if he shoots someone he shouldn't have.

The argument is that would-be mass shooters might (might) be deterred by the possibility of facing a target capable of fighting back, and even if not, the casualty numbers might (might) be reduced if a prospective victim were capable of fighting back and cutting short the shooter's rampage. There's no certainty because there's not enough data, except to determine that so-called "gun free zones" have proven ineffective in preventing mass shootings.