General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why good guys with guns are not the answer. Illustration. [View all]wiggs
(7,814 posts)carrying. An incident occurs. A gun comes out and someone is shot and wounded. In the next instant, with adrenaline running through everyone's veins, more guns come out looking for bad guys to shoot. But the problem is that no one saw who shot whom...no one can tell who is a bad guy and who isn't. They can't even tell who is reaching for a cell phone and who is reaching for a gun. Everyone is yelling, threatening, running, pointing guns. Someone yells to calm things down but two nervous, scared new gun owners accidentally squeeze off two rounds hitting nothing. Then it's on. A guy with dark glasses and black rain coat gets shot just because he looks the part. The initial shooter thinks everyone is shooting at him and shoots the closest person with a gun...the buddy of the guy hit shoots the shooter and then gets shot by two others. A third shooter misses but hits a bystander and three others shoot him. Mall guards arrive and shoot those three. But the anarchist/survivalist buddy of one of them empties his guns on the three guards hitting one but missing badly enough to wound half a dozen before he's jumped.
Highly trained police officers make mistakes...shooting people when the victim moves the wrong way, when the officer is threatened or scared, when the officer thinks there's a gun but there isn't, when it's dark and unclear what's going on....it's going to happen even with training and experience. So when more people carry in more uncontrolled situations and when they don't have a fraction of the experience of trained officers it should be expected that there will be tragedies far exceeding what normally would have occurred.