Immediately after a gun tragedy like Aurora Colorado or here in Oak Creek Wisconsin, the proponents of concealed carry begin their litany chant of IF ONLY! If only state legislatures didn’t permit property owners to restrict arms on their property. If only that venue hadn’t posted a no arms sign at the door. If only some concealed carry self styled citizen hero had been on site. Well…then we have the Empire State Building shooting occur and we see that when reality strikes and a real gunman attacks in public the results aren’t quite so clean as they would like you to believe.
Carrying a handgun, a man hunts down and murders a former co-worker and heads off down the street into the New York crowd. In a sad but fairly obvious suicide by cop, when confronted by two New York police officers, the gunman raised his handgun and pointed it at the police. Although the gun was loaded and in working order, he never fired a shot. At that point the veteran officers, in fear for their lives and the safety of those around them, opened fire on the gunman. Between the two officers they fired a total of sixteen shots. Depending on the report, nine or ten hit the gunman and killed him. Nine innocent bystanders were injured…by pass through bullets, errant shots, richochets or shrapnel.
From Saturday’s New York Times:
From about eight feet away, the officers confronted Mr. Johnson and when he pulled out his gun, they opened fire, shooting a total of 16 rounds. Mr. Johnson was killed and nine bystanders were wounded, perhaps all by police bullets.
These were veteran police officers…New York’s finest…men who had trained for exactly situations like this…men who had fired hundreds if not thousands of rounds from their hand guns…yet in the heat of the situation they fired sixteen shots and MISSED the target with at least six of them…from eight feet away.
So, we are supposed to believe that self styled citizen heroes, with their concealed carry permits earned in a one hour class that doesn’t even require that a handgun is fired, if faced with a similar situation to the Empire State Building or the movie theater or the temple can channel their inner John Wayne and reach a better result?
Not a damn chance in hell!
Great job. You got right to the heart of the massive stupidity in WIGOP’s unregulated conceal and carry.
But what if they have four hours of training somewhere???
Better yet, assume there’s two, three, four white-hatted citizens a-packin’ in that moment of confusion where the one Bad Guy pulls out a gun in a crowd. The four white-hats don’t know each other. They just know that someone yelled “He’s got a gun!” Unless the firing has started, who shoots who, and why? Better yet, once the firing does start, how does the slowest-to-draw white-hat decide what to do? What if there were two Bad Guys?
One hour class? I had Hunter Safety in ’75 when I was twelve, and that counts, right?
That is one of the most crowded areas in NYC. Tourists line up for the Empire State building. I have been to the area many times. The police had no choice but to shoot. Some of the shots did bounce off planters and such. I would hate to see any passerby pull a gun. They would have no idea who was the good guy and who wasn’t.
Why fire 16 shots? That seems a little trigger happy to me. I can’t believe this was the way they were trained to use their weapon in a crowded street. However, this is the same police force that put 40 rounds into a guy armed with a wallet, so who knows? Don’t mess with the NYPD.