If only someone else were armed, he could have been stopped.

[tk2kewl]

For the record: twice in little more than a year, and within a couple of miles of my idyllic suburban neighborhood on Long Island, well trained law enforcement officers, in much less chaotic circumstances than Aurora, shot and killed the wrong guy.

So can we put this bullshit meme to bed already.

MTA Cop who shot fellow cop Geoffrey Breitkopf in friendly fire incident said to be inconsolable
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03-13/news/29142968_1_police-commissioner-lawrence-mulvey-cop-friendly-fire-incident

Fed Agent, Robber Shot Dead at Seaford Pharmacy
http://www.longislandpress.com/2011/12/31/police-investigate-robbery-report-at-seaford-pharmacy/

[SharonAnn]

1. With all his bullet-proof armor?

[tk2kewl]

2. in the drugstore incident the federal agent was off duty and buying medicine for his dad

in the other incident the dead officer was an undercover and may not have been wearing a vest.

the point is even under more controlled circumstances it's not easy even for trained law enforcers to figure out who they should shoot at.

[Tejas]

4. Very tragic incident, read about it when it happened.

[Lizzie Poppet]

39. About that sort of body armor:

You may be operating under the misconception that ballistic armor of that type allows a person to shrug off hits from bullets. Unless the rounds fired are comparatively low-powered, that's not the case. That sort of armor stops bullet penetration, but does little to ameliorate bullet impact. A hit from any round from about 9mm on up is still going to hurt...a]lot. Body armor like that allows you to survive being shot, but it doesn't allow you to continue with what you were doing, unimpeded.

That said, I don't think this was a case in which it's likely another armed person could have successfully intervened unless they happened to be sitting very close to where Holmes entered (and weren't hit before they realized what was happening). With all that chaos, the tear gas, poor lighting, and the probability other people would be in the way, a responsible shooter wouldn't have opened fire at all.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

52. Not clear at this point his vest was actually armor

CNN posted some of his purchases. The vest purchased was not Kevlar and out have stopped a bullet any better that denim. Then again he could have bought another vest and been wearing that one instead. Police chief said it was armor, further confusing things. Not sure we know how well armored he actually was

[Tejas]

3. So, disarm cops?

What is your point?

[tk2kewl]

5. the point is that if well trained law enforcement officials cannot always distinguish

between the good guys and the bad guys how do the people espousing to the above referenced meme expect less qualified individuals to draw their weapons and not kill the wrong people.

[lapislzi]

6. Stop it.

Stop repeating the falsehood that an armed person in a dark cinema with tear gas and chaos going on all around could have accurately and without additional casualties "taken down" a gunman wearing body armor.

It is a canard, and your disingenuousness is insulting.

[Tejas]

8. Holmes was not wearing body armor.

A $200 airsoft vest is not "body armor".

[lapislzi]

9. Again, you are being 110% disingenuous

More gunfire would NOT have ameliorated this situation. Yeah, that's it. We need more people firing their weapons into the chaos. That's definitely going to help.

[Tejas]

10. So, an armed police officer would have been USELESS?

[lapislzi]

11. Quite likely.

Would you, could you, be sure you could take the guy down with all that going on? Really sure? Because, unless you are, you become part of the problem.

This kind of speculation is definitely USELESS.

[Tejas]

14. "Officer, do NOT shoot at the man that is shooting and killing everyone"

[lapislzi]

15. Your position is untenable, and you know it.

If YOU were a police officer and armed, could you be sure that you could hit the man (and ONLY that man and nobody else) shooting and killing everyone? Really? When it's dark and there's tear gas and people screaming and bullets flying?

Really?

If you say yes I will not believe you. You are making a foolish and insupportable point for the sake of...what, I don't know. You're wrong.

[Tejas]

17. So the officer should turn and run?

[lapislzi]

20. The officer should use his best judgment

and his training. Analyze the situation to the best of his ability under the circumstances and respond in a manner that will not endanger more lives and hopefully save some. Although I am not a police officer, I cannot imagine that firing my weapon would be helpful in that situation, unless I was standing next to the guy shooting.

And, kindly stop putting words in my mouth. That's really nasty and I don't like it. If you need to hide behind a straw man like that, you don't have much of an argument.

[Plucketeer]

34. What would be interesting to know

is IF anyone else in that theater was "packing". It IS Colorado - and this WAS a late night event. I'd wager that it's a fair call to think someone else had a gun on them. But for an untrained person to boldly perform as if in an old west shootout - with THEIR life at stake - it's also a fair call to visualize them cutting out instead of standing up.
WAS anyone else packing? Hah! Who would admit to that with the body count aftermath? WHO would say:"Yeah, I had a gun on me, but I figured I'd have a better chance in running than playing Wyatt Earp." We'll never know.

[Aerows]

46. He's likely under the impression

that if HE was there, everything would be alright, and he could be the champion that shot the dude before he had time to kill everyone.

We all know that is bs, and that he'd likely be as freaked out as everyone else, what with tear gas going off, but leave him to his fantasies of being a hero. After George Zimmerman, I'm as nervous of these would-be "heroes" as I am of criminals.

[YoungDemCA]

35. Strawman alert!

No one is saying to disarm cops.

[Tejas]

40. OP argues against the worth of an armed LEO, did you have a point?

[ProfessorGAC]

48. That's Not What Was Argued, And I Think You Know That

You're just being obstinate in the hope of making a point.
GAC

[Aerows]

49. Are you a LEO?

If you aren't, then you really shouldn't be going down this road of "logic", because it makes you look silly.

[krhines]

7. Agree 100%

Anyone who says different is living in fantasy land.

[skip fox]

12. And let's not forget the Giffords' incident where a young man with a concealed weapon

almost shot one of the men who had wrestled away the gun of the attacker.

To his credit, he admitted the same on national television

<snip>

"I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready," he explained on Fox and Friends. "I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. "And that's who I at first thought was the shooter," Zamudio recalled. "I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!'"
But the man with the gun wasn't the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. "Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess," the interviewer pointed out.

<snip>

from this DU thread:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021011810

(edited to add information)

[soccer1]

13. Dead is dead......

doesn't really matter if you're accidentally killed by a person trying to shoot the shooter or the shooter himself. In some situations maybe that would be a viable option....but not in a crowded, smoke filled theater with people running around. Also, I wonder if there would be legal liability for a person who shot someone while trying to take down the shooter.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[cthulu2016]

16. You have no point

The question, vis-a-vis Aurora, is net deaths and net injuries.

If somebody killed or disabled the shooter while also shooting an innocent person ho would you tally that?

Let's say the shooter killed nine people and someone in the audience killed one person. Is that worse than the shooter killing twelve people?

I am pro-gun control and I am sick of seeing my side of the argument represented by this sort of foolishness.

Say an off-duty cop with his gun wanted to see the Batman movie, and happened to be at this show. By your lights that would be a bad thing?

How far do you want to take this nonsensical line of argument?

[tk2kewl]

22. And supposing the good guy with a gun shoots an innocent and is then killed by the shooter.

we can make up shit all day long but we wont be safer until there are less guns not more.

[cthulu2016]

37. I am pro gun control

To me, playing tit-for-tat with pro-gun arguments is not helpful.

Some pro-gun arguments are true, but irrelevant.

Sorry to be so touchy, but I have spent the last few days having to agree with the pro-gun posters on some things because the anti-gun arguments being employed were so over-the-top.

Of course it would have been useful for somebody to have shot "the joker" and it is not impossible that someone could have.

That doesn't reduce the goodness of gun control one bit. (Saying gun control is bad because we need to defend ourselves against all these armed nuts who can get guns anywhere is a terrible argument.)

[Tejas]

18. So instead of stand and defend innocents, a LEO should turn and run?

[lapislzi]

21. Straw man. Again.

You really don't have much to offer, do you?

[Tejas]

23. OP offers 'what' argument based on 'what'?

Speaking of straw.

[lapislzi]

24. And this has what exactly to do with the points I made?

Which you have oh-so-adroitly managed to avoid addressing.

I'm done with you.

[Tejas]

25. #18 is the 800# gorilla.

[lapislzi]

50. What?

You're not even making sense.

[sabrina 1]

32. Why do you keep making stuff up? I did not see anyone say an LEO should turn and run other than

you.

Saying the LEO might not be able to stop a suspect in the dark, armed to the teeth, wearing protective clothing and firing off rounds in seconds, dealing with tear-gas and people who are in a panic, is not the same as saying 'the LEO should turn and run.

And how do you know there were no people in the theater carrying weapons? Those shootings happened so fast that there was not much time for anyone to react.

Too bad he was able to buy them so easily and that there was no red flag raised by someone buying over 6,000 rounds of ammunition, enough to start a war.

[coalition_unwilling]

44. If I were young and single and an LEO inside that theater when the shit started to

hit the fan, I'd like to think that I would have tried to charge the shooter and put my body between him and other people in the theater. But that's a story I tell myself when I'm in full-on Walter Mitty mode. Not sure the real 'I' would perform so heroically.

[NickB79]

19. With all the smoke and confusion, it could have been a disaster

Had someone with a CCW started shooting. Well, MORE of a disaster, that is.

For the record, I actually have used a firearm in self-defense, and even I would have just ducked and run in this situation.

[Tejas]

26. You know this for a fact....how?

Just "because"?

[NickB79]

27. I never stated it was a fact

I used the word "could" in my statement, not "would".

I'm going by my past experiences to come to that conclusion. You are free to come to your own.

[Tejas]

30. My apologies!

[NickB79]

33. No problem! nt

[Lint Head]

28. Reagan was surrounded by Secret Service and was shot.

[Tejas]

31. But if there had been a total ban on guns,

nobody could have shot him.

[DesMoinesDem]

29. You think the potential accidental shooting of an innocent person

is worse than the deliberate shooting of 70 people?

[tk2kewl]

38. yes that is what i said

[DesMoinesDem]

43. You said if someone else was armed they might accidentally shoot an innocent person.

Much better to just let a mad man shoot 70 people. Don't want to risk someone accidentally getting shot by someone fighting back. Who knows if he could even identify the mass murderer. After all, it would be very hard to pick out the guy in a gas mask.

[Lizzie Poppet]

36. It's simply not possible to know.

It's simply not possible to know if an armed person in the theater could have stopped Holmes. My personal take is that given the conditions, the odds are against it. Poor lighting, erupting chaos, tear gas, the probability that there would be no clear line of fire that didn't recklessly endanger others...it all adds up to a situation in which a responsible gun owner would not elect to fire. But the point is, it's impossible to know for certain, either way.

[coalition_unwilling]

41. After I suggested that people watch the firefight from "Platoon," I was instructed

in no uncertain terms by a gun-loving self-described Vietnam Vet that 'firefights' are not the same as 'self-defense shootings' which, apparently acc. to Gun Lover, are clean, sanitary affairs.

That DUer has not yet made an appearance on this thread (yet).

[HooptieWagon]

45. I don't think many are saying that, at least here on DU.

I think even the CCW people realize the theatre was dark, filled with tear gas, and had people scrambling for cover or running for the exits. Furthermore, the shooter was wearing full body armor that likely would have stopped any handgun round. More than likely, people attempting to return fire would have shot innocents or each other, or been shot by police had they entered during shooting. Just my opinion.

[ewagner]

47. I'm curious..

does anybody know the answer to these questions?

How many CC permits are there in Colorado?

Do they require CC permits in CO?

Statistically, in a theatre filled with 1200 people, what are the odds that at least ONE of the people in that theatre was an armed CC holder?

Has anybody come forward to say that they were in that theatre or an adjacent theatre with a gun on them?

I really don't know the answers to these questions...

[HockeyMom]

51. Long Island is NOT Colorado, or Texas, Florida, etc.

I lived on LI for over 25 years. I remember there was a Jewelry Store robbed, customers held hostage, and the owner shot dead. Were the people in the area screaming to be ARMED themselves for "protection"? Not at all. They wanted more POLICE protection. Why not? END gun control and protect YOURSELF. Gun owners in other areas just cannot understand that there are areas in this country who don't WANT to own guns themselves.

I don't know what the answer is other than just not living in a state that doesn't match YOUR OWN philosophy. They don't want THEIR guns taken away, and other don't want to OWN guns themselves. I don't think each will ever understand each other; unless the gun owners themselves are victims of violence and their guns did them no good at all.