This is really an impressively bad article:
Republican of Texas, recently suggested that if this incident had occurred in his state, where many citizens carry concealed weapons, the crazed shooter could have been quickly terminated. I wonder if the congressman considered the confusion and terror that occurs in a real-life firefight?
Then they cut to their “expert”:
I spent over 30 years as a police officer in the Chicago area, and I was required to carry a weapon both on and off duty….I’ve faced people with guns many times and arrested violent, armed offenders for such crimes as robbery and homicide. Although my gun often left its holster on those occasions, I am grateful that I never had to shoot anyone. I never lost sight of the responsibility of carrying a weapon. Despite what many people think, it’s not something to be taken lightly.
Well here we have a great example of places where guns are completely BANNED and carry isn’t allowed! Sounds like a lovely place for a vacation. We should make America ALL like Chicago!
The last shooting incident I was involved in happened at 3 in the morning on Dec. 26, 2010, my last Christmas before I retired. We responded to a report of two men arguing, one threatening to shoot the other. My radio blared, “Shots fired! Man with a gun.” When I reached one man, running in the darkness between two houses, he had already been shot by another officer. When the officer had ordered the man to stop and identify himself, the man had pointed a pistol at him. The officer ducked behind his car door and fired half the bullets in his Glock 21 before finally hitting the offender once in the left buttock. We eventually found the shooter’s silver semiautomatic deep in a snowdrift.
Why would you need a “hi-capacity” magazine!!! You think you’re going to war? Note this was one officer and one attacker. Turn the attackers from one to two (and who doesn’t have a buddy?) and suddenly our arguments are looking awful good!
llinois is the only state that does not allow ordinary citizens to carry concealed firearms. A few years back, I was visiting my father at the laundromat where he worked, when one of the regulars, who knew I was a cop, asked if I was “strapped.” When I said yes, he complained that he should have the right to carry a gun, too, since he was “a law-abiding citizen.” I’d heard this knucklehead spout off about minorities on numerous occasions and didn’t think he was a good candidate to be packing a weapon in public, though in many states, he could have been. The Trayvon Martin case shows the consequences of an untrained person with a gun. Police officers must go through psychological screening and a lot of training before they’re allowed to carry a weapon, and even then problems sometimes arise.
Nice Strawman! First, yeah the people who are law-abiding who want guns MUST be racist! (BTW who knows how true this account is), and then notice that this cop knows what everybody else is struggling with, he KNOWS that George Zimmerman is a murderer and totally incompetent. Man we should put ONE Chicago cop in every police station, because those dumb shits in Sanford PD spent weeks collecting forensic evidence, and interviewing Zimmerman and his neighbors, and they couldn’t find any evidence that it was a bad shoot. Of course the MEDIA did a lot of bad things like claiming that Zimmerman was a white man, and eluding to an elaborate foot chase where a scared little boy (supplying pictures that were likely a decade old), and claiming that Zimmerman was not injured. Of course all these lies did what they were intended to, and whipping up racial hatred, forcing an obviously political far-reaching charge and all sorts of changes of bail.
The suddenness and confusion of that moment points out the folly of the politician’s belief that an armed civilian could have easily taken out James Holmes. Imagine the scene: speakers blasting, larger-than-life heroes and villains on the screen, and suddenly real gunshots, a man in a gas mask firing one of three weapons — a shotgun, handgun and rifle, with extended magazines for extra ammo capacity — into the panicking crowd. Even a highly trained, armed police officer would have been caught off guard. Try adding a bunch of untrained, armed civilians into the mix — this type of intervention could have made things much worse.
12 people are dead, over 50 people were injured….I’m gonna call bullshit on that. Even if the defender accidentally shoots two innocent people dead, and maybe draws fire to himself…do you really think you can do that math, or are you justifying your bias?
Oh and this is sweet!
Michael A. Black, a retired police officer, is the author of “I Am Not a Cop,” with Richard Belzer, and the forthcoming book “Sacrificial Offerings.”
This Richard Belzer:
I’m still looking for the News Story that will tell me how many Cops went IN to the Theater and engaged the Goblin. After all, the Aurora Police Chief said his LEO’s were on the scene within 90 seconds.
Still looking.
Nothing yet.
Fuck You, Strawman. ONE CHP holder with a J-Frame in there who wasn’t initially Killed could have greatly lessoned the Carnage, while the Cops were busy “Securing the Perimeter and Waiting for Back Up.”
I believe the “on-scene” time was measured from the first 911 call, not from the first shot.
“I’d heard this knucklehead spout off about minorities on numerous occasions and didn’t think he was a good candidate to be packing a weapon in public, though in many states, he could have been.”
How /dare/ racists have the same rights as regular people! The police should be able to pick and choose who gets to be protected by the Bill of Rights.
And many states… you mean at least 41. Yeah those backwards fringe states where the police can’t deny a permit to those dangerous “a law-abiding citizen[s].”
Gotta love that the NYT uses scare quotes there. They really do buy into the whole “the proles need a strong but loving hand to keep them in line
BTW here’s a profile page of the Author.
http://www.authorsden.com/michaelablack
I wonder if he’s ever been accused of being a racist himself after arresting somebody who was a different color than him.
Of course it doesn’t count for HIM! Just other people!
I also like when they say you should only be allowed to have single shot weapons. So, we have to have both perfect aim and somehow hit any additional attackers with the same bullet?
The control freaks tell us that only police are trained well enough to use their handguns effectively, and yet this retired cop tells us a story about a fellow officer who needs seven rounds to hit a bad guy once in the butt? It’s clear to me that this vaunted training, like their screening, needs a second look.
And by “Second Look” they need to go out to the range on Police qualification day and see the drills tested and the scores achieved.
I was having a beer with my neighbor a few days before he had to do his final qualification at the Police academy. He mentioned he was a little nervous. He told me the drills, which were VERY easy. I have also been shooting with this guy.
I told him he could probably pass the qual with 3 beers in him.
Passing was a 70, he got a 90. Easy as pie!
There’s also that the cops /don’t/ get much handgun training.
For most all departmetns, the anual minimum to qualify is pathetic.
Though what the antis mean by “training” is that they have a spiffy uniform and a shiny badge from the local Baron.
Anyone who voluntarily associates with Richard Belzer is disqualified to talk about anything but life in a delusional state.
As I posted somewhere else, nothing would have prevented a concealed weapons holder from simply walking up behind the shooter and shooting him in the head. Even if he was wearing body armor, which I hear he wasn’t, he could have still been shot in the head, under the arm (he must have had his arms raised if he was pointing a long gun, in the back of the leg, (there’s an artery there), in the ear (there’s no protection there), or simply just tackled.
The antis somehow believe that to shoot someone, you must be several yards from the target. This shooter walked past several people that he didn’t shoot, so it was possible to make a close range shoot and end the massacre.
That is a VERY good point. Many antis seem to be talking like marksmanship is a major component of defensive shootings, but indeed most defensive shootings are often at contact-range to what firearms instructors often describe as “Conversational Distance”. Also of the Mass shootings where the forensic data has been released (We still have a lot of unknowns on the Aurora shooting), but Loughner in Arizona was at VERY close range before he engaged, and Cho at Virgina Tech shot almost all his victims inside of a few feet of range. Ranges I don’t even practice at because it offers almost no challenges.
Police often have to deal with much longer ranges as they come rolling up on the attacker with lights and sirens…but even then most of their shootings are traffic stops where a person in the car starts shooting as the officer approaches the window .
Another thing to take from this is that unlike the Arizona crowd, nobody rushed the guy, even an unarmed crowd can engage an attacker VERY effectively.
Also a big unanswered question is if Holmes had much opportunity to practice with his firearms. We know he was denied a membership to a local range, and that most of the towns in the area don’t allow discharge of firearms outside of gun ranges, and there’s talk that his AR jammed soon after he started shooting.
Fortunately, I have my own private range, where I get to practice, at will, close quarters shooting. I have three targets set up a few feet apart. From 21 feet, I can draw, shoot one target once, the other two double taps, and then shoot the first one again, without aiming, within two or three seconds. My center mass shots are usually pretty good, always on target and somewhere in the chest. Head shots are fair, usually on target, but sometimes in the corner of the eye, sometimes forehead, sometimes mouth. I shot a target in the ear once, but I got my point across. I’m also fortunate to have grown up shooting.
The anti-rights bigots claim that the DGUs should be left up to the “trained” police, what they fail to realize, is that people that take up shooting as a hobby have more experience than law enforcement. A couple of years ago, I worked with a federal agent that would shoot his weapon only when he had to qualify. We’re very good friends and I’ve invited him over to shoot several times and he always declined. He just wasn’t into shooting as a sport or hobby. When I first got into Peace Officering, (back when revolvers were issued) there was a deputy who’s bullets where stuck in his revolver. The range officer had to knock them out because they were corroded. These are just a couple of reasons that I would prefer not to have to depend on police to defend my life.
I’m surprised that no one rushed him, too. Although no one knows exactly what they’ll do in a similar situation, consensus around my parts of the country is “why the hell didn’t someone jump him from behind and beat him to death the the blunt end of his own rifle?”
This is less of a lesson on why only cops should be able to carry guns to protect themselves, and more of how to get published in the NY Times. Spout the party line and you’ll get column inches.
Compare what Officer Black thinks to what the Austin, TX cop told my wife when he pulled her over for a missing car sticker shortly after we moved down here (from Chicago). Cop: “You have a concealed handgun license yet?” My wife: “No”. Cop: “You should.”