Shot in the Dark

The Good Ol’ Guy With A Gun

One of the few bits of “good” news from the Sutherland Springs mcaassacre is that it was ended by a Good Guy with a Gun.

Details are coming out now – Stephen Willeford responded to the shooting with his AR15, fired a shot that apparently found a gap in Kelley’s body army, and seized the initiative:

Willeford is being hailed as a hero. His actions may well have stopped further bloodshed. Willeford is not a member of the church where the shooting took place, but he his daughter called him and told him there was a man in body armor shooting up the church

Willeford grabbed a rifle and answered the call. He found Kelley (above) outside of the church and shot him. The surprise caused Kelley to drop his rifle, and the shooter then ran to his own SUV and fled the scene.
Johnnie Langendorff was also responding. Langendorff picked up Willeford and the two gave chase. They followed Kelley in a high speed chase and eventually caused Kelley to lose control and run off the road. There, police say Kelley shot himself in the head.

This is, of course, exactly what law enforcement now knows about spree killers; resist them with lethal force, and they usually run, give up, kill themselves, or – as in this case – all three.

Just as we said.

 

 

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Mitch Berg

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71 responses to “The Good Ol’ Guy With A Gun”

  1. Penigma Avatar
    Penigma

    No, Mitch, this one case doesn’t prove crap. It’s one case.

    There were people in the theatre in Aurora, CO with guns, did they stop that shooter? No.

    There may well have been people in this church with guns, did they stop him? No.

    Were the shooters in Paris stopped by the armed police who were on sight? NO.

    In fact, there are FAR more examples of shooters stopped by someone without a gun than with. The FBI data says muggers are stopped FAR more often by unarmed people by simply shouting than those who are armed.

    There was a copy on duty at Pulse, did he stop the shooter, No.

    You have ONE example, anecdote proves nothing. Find me 100 more examples. If it were so effective, it’d be easy for you to show it.

    The truth is much more harsh and deadly. There are roughly 80 firearm deaths for EVER legal use of a firearm resulting in a death in the US.

    Yet, the US has NO higher incidence of mental illness than other similar nations and the US has NO lower rate of imprisonment of felons than other similar nations (we’re taking the “bad guys” off the streets). Other countries air our TV shows and our movies, so it’s not that we have a violent culture. They have gangs, they have criminals and their crime rates aren’t appreciably lower (outside homicides).

    So, gosh, I wonder what IS the common feature… well, no, I don’t and it’s obvious.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

    You see, THAT, Mitch is actual journalism. The report’s authors did real research, they didn’t just fly off with anecdote. The summary, we have easy access to guns. More guns does not equate to lower crime or lower rates of gun violence, in fact, it’s the exact opposite. States with more restrictive gun laws have lower incidence of murder and of gun crimes, not higher. They have lower incidence of accidental shootings as well… go figure. It’s not the guns themselves most likely, either, it’s the attitude that guns are a solution, they aren’t. This jackass in Texas thought the solution to his problem was to go to his in-laws church and shoot their family. Once he got there, seemingly, he just didn’t care. The guy in Vegas, who knows, but clearly he thought going out with a “bang” no pun intended, was his path to history, and clearly he had an image that picking up a gun was the way down that path.

    Guns aren’t a solution, and what you’re promulgating here by suggesting they are isn’t just a lie, it’s a damned lie because it attempts to convince people to make guns more accessible, carry them more, use them more, when the evidence is overwhelming they are causal, not corrective, to violence.

    P.S. Chicago, unlike our dullard President claims, isn’t an example of what doesn’t work, instead it’s and example of what happens when you balkanize gang interests (not on purpose obviously) and have easy access to guns 2′ away in Gary, IN or in Oak Park, IL. Chicago isn’t an island, and people buy guns illegally and take them into Chicago and sell them. Tell me, Mitch, why doesn’t NYC, which also has some pretty restrictive laws have the same issues of violence as does Chicago? Do they have fewer criminals in Brooklyn (Bed-Sty), than south Chicago. NO! Do they have fewer people with mental health issues, No.

    You right-wingers and your absurd arguments are just baffling. This guy WASN’T stopped by a “good guy with a gun”, he was shot by one, but he was essentially done shooting (apparently) and 24 people were already dead, with 12 more injured, two of whom later died. Trump’s claim that the “good guy” saved hundreds of lives is asinine, and yet another asinine obfuscation by the right. There’s no evidence he intended to do anything other than leave. Am I glad the other citizen shot him, honestly yes, but do I think it made much of a difference, no. There were 26 people fatally shot or wounded. Very likely he stopped NOTHING and even if he did, for every one of these examples, there are 50 where the way the shooter was stopped was by something OTHER than a “good guy with a gun.” Most of the time the shooter simply kills him/herself.

  2. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Pen,

    I’m not sure if I’ll ever get through everything you got wrong in your comment. But here goes:

    There were people in the theatre in Aurora, CO with guns, did they stop that shooter? No.

    Got a cite on that? It was a “gun free zone” – Holmes chose that theatre specifically for that reason. And I’ve seen no credible cites that anyone was armed.

    And even if there were? Shooting back in a crowded theater would be exceptionally difficult. It’s a self-defense nightmare situation.

    But please produce that cite.

  3. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next:

    There may well have been people in this church with guns, did they stop him? No.

    May have?

    MAY HAVE?

    And let’s be serious for a moment, here; being armed is no absolute guarantee that you can deal with a shooter. Especially in a crowd; one thing carry permit training teaches you is that you don’t get a break for shooting the wrong person by mistake with a missed shot, even if people are dying all around you.

  4. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    A la avante:

    Were the shooters in Paris stopped by the armed police who were on sight? NO.

    What police were on site, Pen? Got a cite on that?

    The only accounts I’ve seen showed that the first cops on scene got driven back by the fully automatic rifle fire (but wait – assault rifles are banned in France! What the…?)

    Seriously? The psychology of terrorists is different than spree killers. They behave differently when coming under fire.

    We’ll come back to that.

  5. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next:

    In fact, there are FAR more examples of shooters stopped by someone without a gun than with. The FBI data says muggers are stopped FAR more often by unarmed people by simply shouting than those who are armed.

    You’re comparing apples and container ships, Pen.

    Again, please provide a cite to this figure you claim. Before you do, though – the FBI’s self-defense numbers are extremely conservative; they go entirely from police reports .

    And…muggers? Muggers and spree killers are completely different. Their psychology and motivations are completely, as in almost 180 degrees, different; muggers want a quick score with no resistance; spree killers want immortality. Trying to compare the two is just wrong.

  6. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next:

    There was a copy on duty at Pulse, did he stop the shooter, No.

    First: There are no guarantees.

    Second: This speaks to the idea that Mateen was a terrorist, not a common spree killer. Their motivations are different, again. Terrorists – like the two in San Bernardino, or the Mumbai gunmen – are not the same thing, and behave differently.

  7. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Onward and upward:

    You have ONE example, anecdote proves nothing. Find me 100 more examples. If it were so effective, it’d be easy for you to show it.

    Well, there aren’t 100 examples, because it’s hard to find 100 spree killings, and most of them happen where people aren’t, and can’t be, legally armed for their own self-defense.

    I’ve got 15-20, so far, though. Read them. In fact, I should find a way to ensure you’ve read and understand them all before you comment again, just to avoid wasting more time.

    So read up. Then we’ll talk..

  8. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Vorwaerts!

    The truth is much more harsh and deadly. There are roughly 80 firearm deaths for EVER legal use of a firearm resulting in a death in the US.

    Where on earth did you get that specific number? Because I challenge it. In Minnesota in 2015 – the last year with complete numbers – there were 82 murders, against 9 justifiable homicides. That’s from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s crime report for that year.

    So that’s a couple of cites, now, I’d like you go provide (and if you want the BCA report, I’ll get it for you; fair is fair).

    YThey have gangs, they have criminals and their crime rates aren’t appreciably lower (outside homicides).

    They have smaller, more homogenous populations. They don’t have long recent histories of slavery (of blacks) and near-indentured serfdom (of “white trash”) – and where they do (Russia), crime rates are much, much higher than the US, including gun crime.

    So, gosh, I wonder what IS the common feature… well, no, I don’t and it’s obvious..

    And completely wrong.

    Many nations have higher murder rates than we do. Minnesota has more carry permits per capita than Texas, and (if you leave out North Minneapolis) half the murder rate of Norway.

    And the parts of this country with the most guns in the hands of the law-abiding have the lowest gun crime rates.

    No – as I showed a couple years ago, the real correlation is between violence and…in this series of posts (in which I showed my math),, if you left out our fifty largest cities, and the states of the old Confederacy, the US would have a murder rate comparable to Europe.

    Sorry, Pen. Swing and a miss.

  9. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

    You see, THAT, Mitch is actual journalism. The report’s authors did real research, they didn’t just fly off with anecdote

    Wrong again, Pen.

    The NYTimes is comparing apples and oranges, yet again. “Mass Shootings” is a vague term that involves any shooting with 4+ victims, regardless of motive. It includes drug gang executions, gang turf shootouts, brawls where shooting breaks out, even a few cases of self-defense where multiple criminals get hit. Seriously – check it out: they include the Scarsella shooting outside the 4th Precinct, and a shooting where a someone shot several robbers in justifiable self-defense with an AR15.

    The Times, like gun control groups, focuses on “Mass Shootings” because there are more of them, making for scarier figures.

    Spree killings or rampage kiillings – episodes like Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Newtown, Columbine and the like, where the sole motive is going out in a blaze of glory – are a subset. A small subset.

    So it’s “journalism”; it’s also dishonest reporting, intended to obfuscate.

  10. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Onward:

    The summary, we have easy access to guns. More guns does not equate to lower crime or lower rates of gun violence, in fact, it’s the exact opposite. States with more restrictive gun laws have lower incidence of murder and of gun crimes, not higher.

    That particular story has been debunked to death.

    They get to that figure by including per capita suicides. And in rural America, among older males, guns are the preferred form of suicide.

    But it’s exceptionally dishonest to lump suicide in with robbery, murder and other crimes..

    They have lower incidence of accidental shootings as well

    For exactly the same reason people in Florida have fewer skiiing accidents.

    go figure. It’s not the guns themselves most likely, either, it’s the attitude that guns are a solution, they aren’t.

    “Most likely”? So we’re into Pen’s opinion now.

    Just making it clear.

  11. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next:

    This jackass in Texas thought the solution to his problem was to go to his in-laws church and shoot their family. Once he got there, seemingly, he just didn’t care. The guy in Vegas, who knows, but clearly he thought going out with a “bang” no pun intended, was his path to history, and clearly he had an image that picking up a gun was the way down that path.

    Y’know, Pen, for the first time in this looooong thread, you got close to the truth.

    If you retain nothing else from this thread, please absorb this.

    After Columbine, the FBI did a big study on spree killers. They tend to be narcissistic personalities who plan their crimes for a long, long time, to an obsessive level of detail. And when they are planning, and especially carrying out, their attacks, they do it in a fugure state – a state of reverie. This is different from muggers, robbers, gang bangers and terrorists.

    And they – the Eff Bee Freaking I – determined that the best way to stop that fugue state once it started was to resist with lethal force (which in a practical sense means a gun). Such resistance tended (not 100%, but a very high correlation) to snap them out of their reverie. They tend to either give up, or to kill themselves (or, in Kelley’s case, both).

    So when you say “he just kiilled himself” – that’s the point! That is the goal! Mission accomplished!

    Guns aren’t a solution, and what you’re promulgating here by suggesting they are isn’t just a lie, it’s a damned lie because it attempts to convince people to make guns more accessible, carry them more, use them more, when the evidence is overwhelming they are causal, not corrective, to violence.

    Pen, the statistics refute every word in that sentence.

  12. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    OK, we’re not done picking on Pen. First of all, Hammond and East Chicago are between Chicago and Gary, so it’s not as simple as walking across the street. Hammond and East Chicago also don’t have the murder problem of either their neighbor to the east, nor their neighbor to the west.

    Regarding why Gotham has fewer murders than does Chicago, it is as if Pen has forgotten something liberals have been whining about for decades; Gotham has an extremely large police force per capita and extremely aggressive policing.

    It is as if putting criminals in jail where they belong helps. Maybe Chicago ought to try it, starting with Rahm and the Aldermen. Wasting millions on “the bean” while ignoring the need to put criminals in jail is itself a crime.

  13. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Moreover, regarding this atrocity, the big contributing factor is that the Department of Defense is not submitting many criminal records to the background check system. Hence he could simply go to a gun shop and buy what he wanted instead of going to Gary and finding a gangbanger willing to part with his .25 Lorcin. As we know, this criminal failure by the Air Force had its results.

  14. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Finally, Pen?

    You say I”m using an “anecdote”. No, not really. I’m reporting the facts of what happened during and after the shooting

    Is it your contention they didn’t happen? Sound off.

  15. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    There are many limits to individual agency in any civilized society of laws. My contention is that allowing individuals to purchase firearms for the purpose of self defense carries with it costs that far outweigh the benefits of armed self-defense, whether or not you consider those benefits righteous and heroic, as you do, or generally causing more harm than good, as I do. Self defense enhanced by firearms, even when regarded as heroic, does very little to counter crime and violence, and has never stopped a mass killing, as shown once again yesterday. But allowing individuals to purchase firearms for the purpose of self defense has led to a plague of gun deaths, including mass killings, spousal killings, gang killings, armed robberies gone wrong, suicides, and children and adults shooting themselves and their family members by accident. It’s simply not worth it, not for all of the heroic armed individual agency in the world. Go exercise all of the individual agency you want — just do it without a gun. Most of the world’s true heroes were not armed.

  16. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Emery, weigh “outweighs the benefits” in light of the fact that all of the major genocides in the 20th century occurred after gun confiscation. No less than 65 million murders are linked to gun control. So many corpses that the counts can really only be guessed, especially those in China. Some firm numbers are about 12 million by Nazi Germany, a million by the Ottoman Turks against the Armenians, two million by Pol Pot, about 5-10 million by Lenin, about twenty million by Stalin, and God knows how may by Mao during collectivization and the Cultural Revolution–definitely in the tens of millions, really.

    At the current rate of murders in the U.S., that’s about 4000 years’ worth.

    Also worth noting is that no less than the Clinton DOJ found something like 1.7 million defensive uses of guns annually. ANNUALLY. That’s about 120x the murder rate overall, Emery.

    And finally, let’s consider whose screw-up led to the atrocity in Texas; the U.S. Air Force failed to put the perp’s name on the no buy list. So if you’re going to tell me that we can trust the government to do its job and protect us, I am going to tell you that you are out of your (redacted) mind.

    Not gonna throw away what my armed heroes gave to us on your “factually challenged” screeds that come up whenever some jackass commits an atrocity. Sorry.

  17. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    “Self defense enhanced by firearms, even when regarded as heroic, does very little to counter crime and violence, and has never stopped a mass killing, as shown once again yesterday.”

    See that little puddle on the floor? That’s my brains dribbling out to escape the intense, concentrated stupidity of someone citing failure to prove a negative as proof of the need for gun control.

    If a woman with a firearm killed a perp as he was entering a church, for example, then he could not complete his plan to kill dozens of people inside so there would be no “mass killing” as defined by the FBI. See Jeanne Assam, for example.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/11/when_jeanne_assams_gun_stepped_a_church_massacre.html

  18. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Self defense enhanced by firearms, even when regarded as heroic, does very little to counter crime and violence, and has never stopped a mass killing, as shown once again yesterday.

    On top of what Joe and Bubba said? You’re wrong.

    I’ve documented a number of attempted mass shootings stopped by good guys and gals with guns. .

    Now, you have a point, in the sense that if someone is killed before they can kill dozens of people, then it wasn’t a mass shooting.

    But on that link above are quite a number of episodes where people killed 1-3 people before being stopped – and hundreds of rounds were found on their persons afterward. Perhaps they didn’t intend to use them all on other people, right?

    The whole “nobody has stopped a mass shooting” is a chanting point. No more.

  19. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    And Lott showed long ago that the threat of being shot by a citizen lowered violent crime.

  20. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Next time you see a robbery, run to your vehicle and call the police. Leave you gun in the glove compartment. There’s never a good reason to turn a robbery into a homicide. If you don’t believe me, ask the police whether they want you running into a robbery in progress with a loaded gun. They’ll tell you no, because they’ve seen it end in tragedy. Why in the world would you risk your life to stop a robbery? If you don’t care about your life, are there not others who do? I understand that your gun is a useful tool. It’s just not useful enough to justify all of the harm that allowing you (and everyone else) to buy it does to the rest of society.

  21. MacArthur Wheeler Avatar
    MacArthur Wheeler

    “Next time you see a robbery, run to your vehicle and call the police. “

    what a clueless buffoon!

  22. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    So, let me see if I have this straight. Mentally deranged soy boy is shooting up the church. The congregation doesn’t have anything more lethal to fight back with than hymnals.

    He’s shot a lot of people, but he’s not done.

    Guy from across the street sees what soy boy is up to, grabs his rifle and engages.

    Soy boy stops shooting at the unarmed congregation, and being a soy boy he is incapable of engaging a target that is returning fire, so he is hit twice.

    Soy boy drops his rifle and runs away like a frightened school girl. He’s pursued, and bleeding out, so he calls his daddy to squirt tears and say bye, stops and puts a round into his soy brainpan.

    How is that not stopping a mass shooting? The only reason Soy Boy managed to kill anyone is the neighbor didn’t happen to have his trusty rifle in his hands before the shooting started.

    Looking at the facts, it is clear that Emery and Teh Peeved have been pantsed….yes, again.

  23. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    “It’s just not useful enough to justify all of the harm that allowing you (and everyone else) to buy it does to the rest of society.”

    So long as you live in America, you are bound to acknowledge the rights enumerated in our Constitution, you mewling fuck.

    If you don’t like it you can:
    A) Leave (my favorite choice for you and your ilk)

    B) Convince enough of your ilk to call a Constitutional convention and recind the 2nd amendment. I suggest you start by forcing the DNC to put that in the platform…please do it right away (#EunochsDemand)

    C) μολὼν λαβέ. American men and women will be waiting; bring your lunch.

  24. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    allowing you

    Damn, that frosts me.

  25. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    My contention is that allowing individuals to purchase firearms for the purpose of self defense carries with it costs that far outweigh the benefits of armed self-defense

    The benefit of an armed self-defense is that you have an opportunity to save your own life. So based on your own words, you content that your own human life is not worth saving? That the life of a perp is more valuable than your own? Wow. Just wow. How immoral. How depraved. How INHUMAN! Wow! And there we thought you could not reach for bigger depths. We were wrong.

  26. Loren Avatar
    Loren

    Emery finally says something correct. As a permit holder, I am not a policeman. If I see a robbery in progress, I am going to back away and try not to draw the attention of the armed robber, while getting my hand close to, but not drawing my weapon.

    If Emery had ever taken a permit to carry class, he would learn that is what is taught. My permit allows me to carry to defend myself, and potentially others, from death or gross bodily harm. It does not make me a law enforcer.

    Now if the armed robber shoots his victim, the calculus is changed a bit, the threat of death or gross bodily harm to myself or others is more obvious, but I, and most other permit holders, are still going to be very cautious to involve ourselves. Unless that weapon starts pointing at me, or those with me. Then the robber changed the calculus again.

  27. Penigma Avatar
    Penigma

    Mitch, you’ve attempted to make several points, most of which I think are flawed.

    First, the shooter was not STOPPED by a “good guy with a gun”, he was shot by one, but he’d already done the killing he apparently intended. Now, you can argue he could have gone off somewhere else, that’s true, but there aren’t facts that support he intended to do so. I don’t have to prove he wasn’t going to do so, you have to show he was. Without that proof, he wasn’t stopped by the civilian, he was confronted after the fact.

    The FAR more important point, though, is this. I don’t object at all to that civilian having a firearm to confront this killer. That’s entirely within the 2nd Amendment’s purpose (as now interpreted under Heller/McDonald), but I wonder, did the civilian/hero need to shoot 30 times without reloading to shoot the perpetrator? NO. Do you know what kind of weapon he had? I don’t, but I’ll guess that he was likely to be JUST as effective with a 30 caliber deer rifle with a scope as an AR-15, and likely more so because of the opportunity for greater accuracy. A higher caliber true rifle round was going to penetrate that ballistic vest far more so than would have say, an AK-47. In short, he didn’t need an assault rifle with a 30 round clip, a deer rifle was plenty and probably better suited to the situation. Yes, .223 cal/5.56mm would also penetrate a ballistic vest but the point is about assault rifles and the by far most common assault rifle in the world is the AK47. Had that guy had an AK47, it is likely the shot to the abdomen that caused the perp to drop his weapon would not have disabled him. So, no assault rifle needed.

    Further, the shooter, by contrast, would almost certainly NEVER have killed as many as he did without having a weapon which didn’t need to reload often. He was ENABLED by the assault rifle.

    The point is, you’ve changed the subject to something that isn’t in dispute really. No one is saying people shoultdn’t be allowed to carry or own firearms, they are saying assault rifles are needless and not protected by the constitution.

    People like JPA are simply dead wrong when they make asinine arguments about the 1:100,000,000,000 chance that someone some place may need an assault rifle justifies the love-fest we have with them and thereby leads us to the easy access for the deranged and easy ability to kill they represent.

    You guys are losing this argument but you’re not bright enough to see it. The vast majority of Americans do not see any reason for you to need an AR15 or an AK47 with a 30 round magazine – and you don’t have anything other than anecdote and fear-mongering, meaning you have no evidence, to justify this need in a way that outweighs the harm they cause.

  28. Loren Avatar
    Loren

    Mitch, thank you for taking the time to do that excellent series of responses to the peev.

  29. Penigma Avatar
    Penigma

    Just read the hero/civilian used an AR-15. Doesn’t change the point. He apparently KNEW that the ballistic vest would offer the shooter protection and supposedly waited to shoot him in the side. If he’d had a higher, higher power cailbre rifle round, he would not have had to wait. So, in fact, the assault rifle was an INFERIOR weapon, not superior. I also read someone describe an AR 15 as an “extraordinarily accurate” rifle. NO, no it is not. It is not even an above average rifle in accuracy. That’s one reason it’s not used as a sniper weapon by any of the best sniper teams in the world. It’s a moderately accurate weapon for a shorter barreled assault rifle. Stupid comment by that author and, while I’m glad the guy was able to stop the shooter from leaving – the fact is, had the civilian had a hunting rifle with a .303 round or 30-06 round, he could have shot him in the center of his chest and been virtually certain of penetrating that ballistic vest. Once again, AR 15, as a self-defense weapon, is an inferior choice.

  30. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Emery, we tried “run and call the police” in the 1960s and 1970s. The nationwide homicide rate tripled. Then Florida decided to allow first women to carry, and then the law abiding population as a whole. Not surprisingly, criminals got the hint; when they pulled a gun, they had reason to believe they’d end up having one pointed at them from a direction they didn’t expect. Combine that with actually locking up thugs for long periods of time or executing them, and (surprise!) the supply of criminals was greatly reduced.

    Sorry, Emery, but “make a call and wait for the police to collect evidence while the EMTs remove the bodies” has been tried and found wanting, no matter how much horse manure you’re reading from the Brady Campaign and like-mindless organizations.

  31. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    OK, Pen, exactly how do you know the make and model of the vest the deceased was wearing, and whether it would stop a standard hunting round? Worth noting is that if the vest had any similarities to military body armor, it was indeed designed to stop a 7.62mm round at close range, since that’s what the AK-47 fires. At about 2350’/s and 122 grains in the bullet, that’s pretty darned close to a round from a deer rifle.

    There is also the reality that firing a few extra rounds makes the target flinch, even if he’s not hit, and the recoil of a .303 or 30.06 makes the shooter flinch, which is in general badness.

    So thanks for sharing your ignorance and willfully lying about the perp’s body armor, but we’ll thank you not to be a manure spreader.

  32. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    One other thought for Pen; while the M-16 and AR-15 platforms are not sniper rifles because the light round doesn’t go as far as a larger round, they are, within their limitations, very good and accurate rifles suitable both for stopping animal varmints like prairie dogs at significant range, not to mention human varmints like the one stopped on Sunday.

    Maybe, Pen, stop reading stuff from the Brady Campaign and start reading one of the NRA’s magazines? You know, commentary on guns by people who actually, you know, use them?

  33. Scott Hughes Avatar
    Scott Hughes

    Pen, you obviously have no knowledge of ballistics. A 5.56/.223 bullet fired from a AR-15 at a distance of 60 yards (the approximate distance of the shots that Willeford made) is extremely accurate and lethal whether from a carbine length 16″ barrel or 20″ rifle barrel. A decent shooter can easily put multiple shots from a magazine in the 10x ring at 100yds and even longer.

    Leave it to Emery to compare the situation of a spree killer to that of a robber.

  34. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    but he’d already done the killing he apparently intended.

    And you know this how? And the “good guy with the gun” knew this HOW at THAT PRECISE MOMENT IN TIME?

    I am afraid it is you who is mired in asininity. What happened to “saving just one life?” liberal mantra? According to you it does not apply if it is your OWN life. You (libturds of the same mindset) truly are suicidal.

    A typical bullet proof vest will not stop a 5.7×28 round. I very much doubt it would stop a 5.56×45 round with a lot more oomph behind it.

    Oh, and your knowledge of hunting rifle applications is nothing less than laughable and are ripe for ridicule, mockery and can be dismissed off hand. What you are suggesting is that “good guy with a gun” had a chance to establish a position and wait for the perp to walk into a shot. And we (including YOU) know that this was a CQB-type engagement with rapidly moving target for which a hunting rifle is completely and utterly useless.

    AR not accurate? Tell that to the Vegas shooter, you idiot!

    Oh, and .303? Enfield round from WW1? C’mon, hunters, raise your hands who use Enfield, or any hunting rifle in a .303 (7.7mm)? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

    Penny, when will you stop spreading manure around? When will you stop spouting garbage about stuff you know nothing about. Completely, and utterly nothing as is evidenced by your own words. You have been p0wned and discredited time and time again, yet you keep coming back for punishment. You personify the definition of an “insanity” as coined by Einstein.

  35. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Data show, firearms are rarely used in self-defense — especially relative to the rate at which they’re used in criminal homicides or suicides.

  36. Penigma Avatar
    Penigma

    No Bubba, No, You don’t get to make this about something it isn’t.

    https://www.safeguardarmor.com/support/body-armor-protection-levels/

    Do you SERIOUSLY think he was wearing inch thick, hard body armor? The papers have said he was wearing a ballistic vest, not the kind of body armor which would stop that type of round. Go do your own research before you one, make an absurd suggestion AND before you obfuscate the issue into something it isn’t. There’s absolutely no suggestion he was, and I suspect you KNOW better, but rather than admit you’ve lost the point, you want to dissemble and make the argument about whether I know what he was wearing.

    I don’t need to go find out, I know far more than you suspect about body armor and the chance he was wearing inch think hard armor is the same chance that you can spit through the eye of a needle. That’s the kind of armor you wear when you’re defusing a bomb, dude. It’s not what the police strap on, nor is it nearly any chance what he was wearing.

    So Bike, go find me a reasonably worn ballistic vest which stops a 30-06 round. They don’t exist. I’m not ignorant, you’re being a sophist or you’re showing your ignorance.

    And Bubba, while I concur that simply throwing lead may make the target flinch, it ALSO has the bad effect of having rounds travel where you don’t want them, you know, it’s called having a clear firing area. But thanks for showing your ignorance. And, while it’s true a bigger rifle has more recoil, again, make a GOOD shot with the FIRST shot, and you are going to be fine. People who know much about actual armed conflict will tell you taking your time and aiming is FAR more effective than just spraying lead, but again, thanks for willfully showing your ignorance and I’ll thank you not to be yet another manure spreader.

    Last but not least, it’s about the SHOOTER here. That’s the subject Mitch wants to stay away from because the facts are, had this guy needed to stop to reload a. VERY likely the death toll is lower and b. VERY likely he could have been stopped sooner and c. He didn’t need that weapon for his “self-defense”. The fiction is that need for assault weapons outweighs the negatives. Mitch knows (I’m guessing) that they don’t outweigh those negatives. He also knows McDonald established reasonable limits are constitutional. So rather than deal with the reality that this shooter simply shouldn’t have had an AR 15, didn’t need an AR-15, he wants to make the conversation about the fact that a lawfully armed citizen had an impact. No one is arguing he shouldn’t have been allowed to be armed (the hero here). That’s a straw man (typical for Mitch). The argument is that assault rifles aren’t needed and promote a culture that thinks big “scary looking” guns solves things. They don’t. The hero here would have been more effective armed with a Remington hunting rifle AND more likely to not cause unwanted casualties.

    But thanks for being a manure spreader, BB

  37. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Whose data, Emery? Again, no less than the Clinton DOJ found something around a million uses per year. I think what you’re doing is citing Brady Campaign (or related) misinformation which count only times where the criminal was shot and killed–as if it doesn’t count when a criminal backs down when confronted with lethal force.

    Name your source, Emery, and prepare to have it shredded. Either that, or admit that you’re just spouting off BS.

  38. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Data show, firearms are rarely used in self-defense

    What data?

    Because even the FBI and DOJ recognize the value of self defense these days.

  39. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next time you see a robbery, run to your vehicle and call the police. Leave you gun in the glove compartment.

    Emery? That’s one of the first things they teach you in carry permit class. You’re not a junior cop.

    ask the police whether they want you running into a robbery in progress with a loaded gun. They’ll tell you no, because they’ve seen it end in tragedy.

    The cops’ feelings are irrelevant against the fact that it’s a terrible idea legally. The criteria for using lethal force in self defense don’t really allow for running to the incident – not in Minnesota, anyway.

    Strawman.

  40. Scott Hughes Avatar
    Scott Hughes

    Emery, “Data show…Data show…Data show…”

    Please cite your assertions or give it a rest!

  41. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Pen,

    First, the shooter was not STOPPED by a “good guy with a gun”, he was shot by one, but he’d already done the killing he apparently intended…but there aren’t facts that support he intended to do so.

    And you don’t have the facts to ‘prove’ anything about his motive. You’re not a mind reader.

    I don’t have to prove he wasn’t going to do so, you have to show he was.

    Actually, no. I (and the Good Guy) don’t have to prove any such thing – because Kelley was armed. The law requires a lot of things to justify self-defense, but mind-reading isn’t one of them; someone is armed, and has just spent seven minutes butchering people? His future motives are meaningless. Trying to parse what he might have done is meaningless; he was holding a gun.

    If someone was walking out of a charnel house of his own making, carrying a smoking, hot gun,and your kids were across the street, would you try to parse his intent? I bet not.

    The law, and basic morality, doesn’t require it of the hero, and it doesn’t require it of us.

  42. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    I was waiting for this one>

    The FAR more important point, though, is this. I don’t object at all to that civilian having a firearm to confront this killer. That’s entirely within the 2nd Amendment’s purpose (as now interpreted under Heller/McDonald), but I wonder, did the civilian/hero need to shoot 30 times without reloading to shoot the perpetrator? NO.?

    Do we know how many shots he fired? We know he scored two hits. If he went two for two – well, that’d be one cool customer, wouldn’t it?

    Could he predict what he was going to use in advance? In the words of the sage, “NO”.

    Who are you – who are, all due respect, monday morning quarterbacking someone who just had to fight for his own life and very possibly the lives of other people – to tell the hero what he “needed?”

    If he’d missed? If a firefight had broken out?

    The whole point of large magazines is to not run out of ammo before your opponent runs out of attack.

    This, he apparently did.

    Do you know what kind of weapon he had? I don’t, but I’ll guess that he was likely to be JUST as effective with a 30 caliber deer rifle with a scope as an AR-15, and likely more so because of the opportunity for greater accuracy.

    Which explains why cops around the country – who engage in life or death fights in high-stress conditions like last Sunday’s somewhat regularly – have switched from their 18 shot Glocks and 30 shot “Patrol Rifles” to five-shot level-actions Winchesters and six-shot revolvers in recent years, doesn’t it?

  43. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    A higher caliber true rifle round was going to penetrate that ballistic vest far more so than would have say, an AK-47.

    Well, I suppose if he’d left the house that morning thinking “I bet I”m going to run into a spree killer in body armor today”, that’d have been a good catch.

    Do you think that was likely?

    Or is this some really absurd Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on here?

  44. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next:

    Further, the shooter, by contrast, would almost certainly NEVER have killed as many as he did without having a weapon which didn’t need to reload often. He was ENABLED by the assault rifle.

    Nonsense.

    The cops say he was shooting for a grand total of seven minutes.

    He killed four people a minute, give or take, during that time, against an (apparently) unarmed set of victims.

    Think you could manage four shots a minute with a break-action shotgun? A lever-action rifle? A revolver? A pistol with some extra ten round magazines?

    Magazine size was utterly irrelevant – to Kelley.

  45. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next:

    The point is, you’ve changed the subject to something that isn’t in dispute really.

    Well, no, Pen – my subject is “a good guy with a gun is the hero”. That’s the subject. Your comments have hauled us through several other subjects.

    No one is saying people shoultdn’t be allowed to carry or own firearms,

    Lots of people are suggesting exactly that. Some of them are in Congress.

    They’re wrong on both counts.

  46. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Next:

    People like JPA are simply dead wrong when they make asinine arguments about the 1:100,000,000,000 chance that someone some place may need an assault rifle justifies the love-fest we have with them and thereby leads us to the easy access for the deranged and easy ability to kill they represent.

    It’s a lot more than one in a hundred billion, thanks.

    And “assault weapons” are used, statistically, less often in murders than any other class of weapon.

    Attacking them and their owners isn’t about public safety. It’s about social conformity. If it weren’t, the left would spend some effort dealing with the murders that actually happen – black and brown people in Chicago, Newark and Saint Louis.

    Oddly, still nothing about them.

    Hmm.

  47. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Finally,

    You guys are losing this argument but you’re not bright enough to see it. The vast majority of Americans do not see any reason for you to need an AR15 or an AK47 with a 30 round magazine – and you don’t have anything other than anecdote and fear-mongering, meaning you have no evidence, to justify this need in a way that outweighs the harm they cause.

    We’re losing the argument?

    That would explain why gun control advocates are doing so well at the polls, outside of “progressive” cesspools on the coast.

    Voila.

  48. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    No one is saying people shoultdn’t be allowed to carry or own firearms

    Waittaminute, what happened to the mention of the (always ill defined) common sense gun control laws that (still) haven’t been passed?

  49. Penigma Avatar
    Penigma

    BTW BB/Mitch, given this guy had on a ballistic vest, exactly what good would it have done for John Doe in the church to have a concealed pistol?

    Short answer, if he shot him in the vest/chest. none. So, apparently, what we need now is for people to walk around with deer rifles.

    Again and again you guys miss the point. This isn’t about (AT ALL) the right of someone to arm themselves. it’s about the fact that this guy shouldn’t have had an assault rifle, FIRST because he shouldn’t have been allowed to buy one, he was ineligible – and it’s you rightwing nuts who want the scant laws we have done away with which would have stopped him – and second because he has no need for one to defend himself. Period. The laws banning these weapons will someday come along, until then, we’ll continue to see nut jobs (whom you don’t want to have prevented from buying) continue to massacre innocent people. They may even don ballistic vests to make it even less likely lard-asses who happen to have their 9mm conceal-carry pistol with a 2″ barrel from stopping them.

    So, please, carry around your deer rifle. it won’t make you look paranoid. Not at all.

  50. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Please cite your assertions or give it a rest!

    That will never happen. EVER. eTASS will just continue to double down, providing further proof that he is an embodiment of an Einstein’s insanity axiom. That, plus fabrication of lies and dissemination of lies created by his masters is in his blood. He had proven it time and time again and is stoically unapologetic about it every time he gets caught in a whopper. Spreading lies and misinformation is eTASS-BFL-SPM’s primary directive. His raison d’etre.

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