Mass shooting on campus in Oregon

I've been looking everywhere for the article I read this week and can't find it but it was essentially interviews with a number of trained law enforcement professionals talking about the level and amount of training - ongoing throughout their careers - required to deal with active shooter situations and trying to make good judgement calls while the adrenaline is pumping.

 

Makes you think law enforcement would be better off without guns.

 

Or it refutes the notion that gun-free zones are safe since only bad guys will have guns.

 

This might work:
Combat Vets Destroy the NRA’s Heroic Gunslinger Fantasy

 

From BDC's link:

Not pulling a weapon is often the wisest course of action in active-shooter situations. While a number of conservatives declared that Oregon’s Umpqua Community College, the scene of a mass shooting last week, was a gun-free zone, the truth is that several concealed carry holders were present, and they wisely decided to leave their guns holstered. Veteran John Parker later explained to MSNBC, “We could have opened ourselves up to be potential targets ourselves, and not knowing where SWAT was… if we had our guns ready to shoot, they could think that we were bad guys.”

 

By "present," they mean in the rooms where people were killed, right?

 

Good story, thanks for the link.

 

From the MSNBC interview with Parker:

“Luckily we made the choice not to get involved,” he explained. “We were quite a distance away from the building where this was happening. And we could have opened ourselves up to be potential targets ourselves, and not knowing where SWAT was, their response time, they wouldn’t know who we were. And if we had our guns ready to shoot, they could think that we were bad guys.”

Parker noted that he was hustled into a classroom with other students by a professor who asked if anyone was armed. He said he raised his hand and said he would attempt to protect his fellow students if they came under attack.

 

I know that people will ridicule this point (unless, of course, a Democrat said it), but as people become more familiar with how such things happen, standing by is not an option. It's not a lot different than a plane full of people no longer standing by while two guys with box cutters plan on flying the plane into a building.

 

That's the one! Thank you.

 

If you would read the above link, you might find out that even trained military and LEOs very well could freeze up in dangerous situations they are unfamiliar with. I'd really like to think I would do the same as Dr. Carson, but until I'm in that situation I have no idea how my mind/body will react.

 

From my link above:

Stephen Benson knows what it’s like when bullets start flying. The former Navy SEAL saw extensive combat during his three tours in Vietnam. Later, while recovering from the wounds that earned him his third Purple Heart, he also trained elite troops at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California.

“In chaotic situations, the first thing you know is that the shit has hit the fan and you don’t know where the fan is,” says Benson. “And unless it’s constantly drilled into you, it’s very hard to maintain discipline in those situations. You’re immediately hit with a massive thump of adrenaline. Your mouth begins to taste like copper. You can hear the blood moving in your system. You can even experience a kind of time-warp. And the problem with that kind of state is that conscious thought shuts down because you’ve been taken over by your nervous system, and your nervous system is saying, ‘holy shit, things just got really bad.’”