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November 4th, 2017, 08:32 AM #1
Police (and antis) say people pulling out guns delayed the capture of Walmart shooter
I say nice to hear there were so many people prepared and able to defend themselves if the scumbag came after them or their family. Antis can criticize all they want, but those gun owners would have been able to do more than pray, shield their love ones with their body and hope for the best.
Are more guns helpful? In Wal-Mart shooting, armed shoppers hinder police investigation
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...103-story.html
Most shoppers crouched behind checkout counters or bolted toward the back exit. But as a gunman fired inside a Wal-Mart store in a Denver suburb, some patrons took a more defensive approach: They grabbed their own guns.
They were the proverbial “good guys with guns” that gun rights advocates say have the power to stop mass shootings.
But police in Thornton, Colo., said that in this case the well-intentioned gun carriers set the stage for chaos, stalling efforts to capture the suspect in the Wednesday night shooting that killed three people.
None of the armed civilians fired their weapons, and the suspect managed to flee the store.
Police began combing through store security camera footage to identify him and determined whether he had an accomplice.
“Once the building was safe…. we started reviewing that [surveillance video] as quickly as we could,” Victor Avila, a spokesman for the Thornton Police Department, told reporters.
But the videos showed several people in the store with their guns drawn. That forced detectives to watch more video, following the armed shoppers throughout the store in an effort to distinguish the good guys from the bad guy, Avila said.
Investigators went “back to ground zero” several times as they struggled to pinpoint the suspect, he said.
Five hours after the shooting, police identified 47-year-old Scott Ostrem as the gunman. He was arrested Thursday morning.
The assessment by police that armed civilians hampered their investigation is being embraced by gun control advocates, who argue that more guns on the scene of a shooting add up to more problems.
“Especially civilians with weapons — it does nothing but possibly cause more chaos and harm,” said Tom Sullivan, who became a gun control advocate after his 27-year-old son, Alex, was killed along with 11 other people by a gunman who opened fire inside a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012.
He said he resents suggestion that those deaths could have been prevented if more movie-goers had been armed.
On the other side of the debate, Dudley Brown, president of the National Assn. for Gun Rights, said the conclusions by police in the Wal-Mart shooting are misguided.
“This is a part of the job of police — to investigate what happened, not highlight that patrons were legally armed,” he said. “In that situation, what are people supposed to do? Lay down on the floor and draw chalk marks around themselves?
“I’d rather be armed with a gun and not need it, than to be not armed and be in a situation where one is needed,” he said.
The National Rifle Assn. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gun rights advocates point to cases such as that of a Chicago Uber driver who in 2015 shot and wounded a gunman who opened fire on a crowd.
But studies suggest such cases are rare.
In a 2014 FBI report, researchers examined more than 100 shootings between 2000 and 2012 and found that civilians stopped about 1 in 6 active shooters — usually by tackling the gunman, not shooting him.
Maria Haberfeld, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said using a gun for self-defense should be a last resort.
“If their life is in immediate danger and they cannot run or hide, then they can move into the fighting mode and use their weapons,” she said.
Bystanders shouldn’t pull their weapons unless they’re members of law enforcement, or used to be, she said, because without training they can’t properly assess the situation and could end up causing more deaths.
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November 4th, 2017, 09:32 AM #2
Re: Police (and antis) say people pulling out guns delayed the capture of Walmart sho
What a misleading crock of shit.
It reads like armed citizens caused confusion for police who responded on scene - that they could figure out who the bad guy was because there were "so many guns drawn".
Shit - what if the suspect was Asian and there were 15 Asians in the store at the time - or what if the suspect was reported to be wearing a white sweatshirt and there were 20 people in the store wearing white sweatshirts?
Would they announce that those people "delayed" the capture of the bad guy?
Watch your video and do you job - and don't bitch because it's not an easy job.I called to check my ZIP CODE!....DY-NO-MITE!!!
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November 4th, 2017, 10:02 AM #3Senior Member
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Re: Police (and antis) say people pulling out guns delayed the capture of Walmart sho
“In that situation, what are people supposed to do? Lay down on the floor and draw chalk marks around themselves?“
Yup. Yup exactly what they want actually, I believe.
Good for the armed citizens that could protect themselves.
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November 4th, 2017, 10:13 AM #4
Re: Police (and antis) say people pulling out guns delayed the capture of Walmart sho
Considering the LA Times normal hyper anti-gun posture, the article was surprisingly modest in tone. So the armed civilians were in the store. They were cleared after a review of store video footage. The perp had fled the scene before police arrived. I wonder if the perp saw there were others with guns on the scene which caused him to flee?
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November 4th, 2017, 10:26 AM #5
Re: Police (and antis) say people pulling out guns delayed the capture of Walmart sho
“Once the building was safe…. we started reviewing that [surveillance video] as quickly as we could,”“back to ground zero”
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November 4th, 2017, 10:31 AM #6Grand Member
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Re: Police (and antis) say people pulling out guns delayed the capture of Walmart sho
If the police had trouble determining who the shooter was, simply because a review of security footage showed that multiple people were armed, then the police simply suck at their job.
How about this?
Anyone drawing after initial gunfire and/or assuming a defensive posture is probably not a suspect.
Anyone handling their firearm prior to the initial shooting is a possible suspect.
Anyone actually shooting unarmed people is a probable suspect.
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November 4th, 2017, 10:41 AM #7
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November 4th, 2017, 10:43 AM #8
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November 4th, 2017, 10:51 AM #9
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November 4th, 2017, 11:01 AM #10
Re: Police (and antis) say people pulling out guns delayed the capture of Walmart sho
I don't much care whether my defending myself AT THE TIME makes it harder for cops who review the security tapes AFTER THE CRISIS IS OVER.
It's a legitimate point that we should have some protocols for distinguishing the good guys from the bad. One of those is that the bad guys tend to shoot at cops when they finally arrive, the good guys obey police commands and don't shoot at them.
I can see a problem if you have a dozen armed customers in a Walmart, and they hear shots. They converge on the sound and start shooting at any armed person they see. That's stupid. Don't do that. Shoot at people who are pointing guns at random unarmed people, not at "anyone except yourself who's holding a gun".
It's also stupid to demand that everyone be a victim because it will be easier for police to toe-tag the bodies that way, later.
Unilateral slaughter is easy to follow on the video. People fighting back and saving themselves and saving their loved ones and saving strangers and stopping the slaughter, is a messy business. Deal with it.Attorney Phil Kline, AKA gunlawyer001@gmail.com
Ce sac n'est pas un jouet.
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