End Results

Joe Doakes from Como Park has a question that’s occurred to me as well:

I don’t have time today to look this up, maybe some of your readers do?

I’m getting the feeling the media is under-reporting a crucial element in the shooting stories: what stopped the killer?

Is it correct the most recent school shooter stopped killing when he was confronted by a cop with a gun? The cop didn’t shoot him, the kid killed himself, but the cop with the gun was the motivator? You ran the story about the CCW guy in the shopping mall – same result.

Mother Jones magazine claims armed citizens only stopped mass murders 1.6% of the time. Slate Magazine on-line points out some of that is how you count it (it’s not a “mass murder” until there are already four dead) other studies disagree.

Here’s the question: regardless of WHO was holding the gun that stopped the killing, is it correct that the killing continued until SOMEONE with a gun confronted the killer?

The NRA’s Armed Citizen column is devoted to proving from real-life experience that the mere presence of a gun in the hands of a good citizen can prevent crime, without a shot being fired. Are they right?

If so, wouldn’t more good guys holding guns be better?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

That one occurred to me when discussing the Portland shooting on December 11.  As we reported earlier this week, a man with a rifle started shooting at the Clackamas Mall in Portland.  He fired over sixty shots, and miraculously killed “only” two people.  At some point, his AR15 jammed – reports vary, and it may or may not have been well before the time he was confronted by an armed citizen with a carry permit and a handgun.  He apparently fled, and shortly thereafter shot himself.

But notwithstanding the fact that he fired sixty shots, and could have fired a lot more, just watch; it won’t be called a “mass shooting”, because “only” two died.

Because he was deterred by a citizen with a gun.  That the left will studiously avoid calling a hero for ending a mass shooting because it won’t be shown as a mass shooting in the stats.  Because the citizen prompted it to end before it became a mass shooting.

It’s a Catch 22, although in this case, it beats the alternative.

At any rate, there’s a list of mass shootings, and would-be mass shootings, that’ve been stopped by citizens – not police – with guns:

Eugene Volokh also has a list with a few more as well as a few repeats from my list.

Now, if you look at most of these incidents, most of them aren’t “mass shootings”  – because most of them were stopped before they topped that magic “four dead” threshold.

Which is what we want.  Right?

21 thoughts on “End Results

  1. Guns deter violence? C’mon, boys, that idea will never fly with the low information voters. Don’t throw facts at the stupid, it only confuses them. Throw cash. That, they understand.

  2. Laws used to prevent blacks from using public places like restrooms or sitting in the front seats on a bus or eating at a lunch counter in Democrat ol’ South. Multiple acts of civil disobedience coordinated by and/or practiced by Republican Dr Martin Luther King, Jr led to the exposure and ultimate downfall of these laws. Maybe it’s time – if it isn’t already happening – for acts of civil disobedience to be carried out by people who have trained and are deemed proficient with their firearm to conceal carry right past the signs and be ready to use their training to end the victimization of people who duck and cover as instructed by the current law.

  3. Nancy Lanza is grateful she had all those guns to keep her safe. Oh wait, Angryclown meant “dead.” Nancy Lanza’s dead.

  4. For angryclown there are no solutions unless they work 100% of the time, no matter the circumstance.

  5. If you’d like to see what competent, decisive, effective leadership looks like, observe and dream of the day Minnesota can lay claim to the likes of Nikki Haley:

    “Connecticut has one of strongest gun control measures in the country. But look at their mental health system … That’s what we all need to be talking about, the mental health side of things. Not necessarily guns,”

    “You know, anybody can get a gun. Anybody can get a gun. And when bad people get guns they are going to do what they want to do. No amount of gun control can stop someone from getting a gun when they want to get it. What we can do is control mental health in a way that we treat people that don’t know how to treat themselves.”

    http://www.thestate.com/2012/12/20/2563451/health-insurance-mental-health.html

  6. Say, AssClown?

    “Pull; BLAM!”

    Remember that? Good times, right, douchbag?

    Now STFU and go sit by your dish.

  7. DemoncRATS only call it mass shooting if a lot of people die. because you cannot easily politicize a “few-people shot” shooting. Ergo, DemoncRATS want as many people to die as possible to spread their gospel. DemoncRATS, why do you hate people so much?

  8. Perhaps the foiled terrorist plot in Killeen TX could be counted, too. In July 2011, AWOL soldier Naser Abdo hoped to attack Ft. Hood using expolsives for reasons peratining to his faith.

    He tried buyingh his supplies at Guns Galore. The gun shop clerk found Abdos behavior suspicious so he delyed Abdo until the police could arrive. Abdo was taken into custody and the tragedy was thwarted. Very little was mentioned about the source of the info. which deterred the tragedy.

  9. There is a gun made by a company called FN Herstal, which is a Belgian company, and the gun is called the FN 5.7. And 5.7 refers to the caliber of the gun. It was specifically designed for use by counter-terrorism teams because it fires a very small but very high-velocity bullet that will penetrate body armor.

    When FN first manufactured this gun, they recognized how dangerous it would be on a civilian market and they claimed they would never sell it to civilians, that it would only be for police and counter-terrorism units. In fact, it’s become a very popular gun on the American civilian market and is exported to Mexico.

    Major Nidal Hasan is accused of using the FN 5.7 in the Fort Hood shooting. The gun is again an example; it’s almost the perfect example of a semi-automatic in a handgun. It’s high-capacity.. It’s very easy to fire. It has almost no recoil and it’s capable of penetrating body armor. So when Major Nidal Hasan went on his rampage at Fort Hood he was able to quickly run up a shocking body count of dead and injured with one handgun.

  10. Emery,

    I’m not sure what you think you’re doing, lecturing people on this forum – most of whom are shooters to one degree or another – about shooting and guns. But knock yourself out.

    The FN 5.7mm round isn’t anything funky and spooky hocus-pocus; like the 4.6mm cartridge in the Heckler and Koch MP7 (the new fave among federal law-enforcement types, and according to one report the weapon that killed Bin Laden), it’s basically a tiny little rifle round giving rifle-style performance (at short range) in a package small enough to fit into a small submachine gun or a large pistol. They both take the notion of the “intermediate round” used in actual “assault rifles” like the AR15/M16 and the AK47 to the small extreme; they merely scale down rifle performance (and power and range) to a very small package.

  11. Emery, the flip side of the Fort Hood tragedy is that none of those attacked were armed. Just like every other mass killing I can think of.

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  15. Mitch:

    Am I blind or where was the battlestar Galatica reference coming from?

    Walter Hanson
    Minneapolis, MN

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