I value a soldier's experience for explaining what would be necessary to survive as a soldier, but I think there is something very different between the skills a police officer would need to safely/effectively patrol an area - and the particular dangers of doing so - and what a private citizen would need to be able to do to successfully react to a mass shooting, and that both of those are very different from what a soldier would need.
That said, I absolutely agree with ihuitl that most successful defensive firearm use - probably the vast majority of defensive firearm use - takes place in the defender's home, and that only the tiniest fraction of successful defensive firearm use involves random street violence.
That still doesn't change that I think reactions to incidents like this are mirrors of what the people reacting already thought - Suzanna Hupp was convinced, by the Luby's massacre, that Texas needed to issue concealed-carry licenses unless there was a reason not to do so, but someone else might have been convinced that that would have made things worse. I see incidents like this and think "California's gun laws are not helping anything by being so restrictive", other people will see it as "California's gun laws would have helped if they were more restrictive," and the best predictor of who will think what is what that person thought last week or last month.
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fpb
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Date: 2011-10-13 09:41 pm (UTC)That said, I absolutely agree with
That still doesn't change that I think reactions to incidents like this are mirrors of what the people reacting already thought - Suzanna Hupp was convinced, by the Luby's massacre, that Texas needed to issue concealed-carry licenses unless there was a reason not to do so, but someone else might have been convinced that that would have made things worse. I see incidents like this and think "California's gun laws are not helping anything by being so restrictive", other people will see it as "California's gun laws would have helped if they were more restrictive," and the best predictor of who will think what is what that person thought last week or last month.