Mass Shootings and CCWEach time there is a mass shooting, and frequently enough in between, we in the CCW community hear a lot of discussion about how CCW holders should act in an “active shooter” scenario. Hypothetical scenarios abound and are discussed ad nauseum. For those who are new to CCW, a mass shooting in the news may be a case of first impression, and a lot of the same questions and concerns continually arise. Politically, there is also fierce debate over whether or not concealed handguns are an effective means to prevent attacks like this, due in no small part to the mainstream “good guys with guns” rhetoric put forth by organizations like the NRA. As with most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle of the extremes, especially because of the completely unpredictable nature of attacks like this. Despite the apparent frequency, they are still statistical anomalies, with no two seeming to be very much alike in terms of motivation and plan. This post will attempt to distill the major points of all facets of this discussion, and hopefully with the feedback of the community in the comments, be added to the FAQ.Concealed Carry/Self-Defense during a mass shootingDespite the “good guys with guns” rhetoric that the pro-gun side of the debate often promulgates (including, I’m sure, many of our own number – I’ve used the argument when convenient), strategically, it is very often unwise for a CCWer to engage an active shooter. As we have seen, these attacks vary wildly in their scope and approach. Some could be easily prevented by armed resistance (in hindsight at least), whereas many others could not. Further, the introduction of another gun into the chaos could sometimes cause more problems than it could potentially solve. Below is a list of the major concerns that need to be taken into account for CCW in a mass shooting scenario:Disparity of ForceIn many attacks, at least the high-profile ones (the headlining mass shootings, not the “any gun crime with 4 or more victims injured” one use to inflate the numbers), the perpetrator is not concerned with concealment and is often armed with a high-capacity long gun. Because of this, the usefulness of engaging with a handgun, especially the compact handguns most commonly carried, is very limited. The shooter will have much greater range, accuracy, and firepower, even in relatively untrained hands, than the concealed carrier. In the most recent Vegas shooting, for example, there is absolutely no way that anyone with any handgun could have effectively returned fire. Likely your only chance at being effective would be if the shooter began his rampage very near you (but not by shooting you first) or if you set an ambush. However, even if that were the case, there are still the following concerns that likely make engaging the shooter ill-advised.Threat IdentificationMass shootings are, by their very nature, extremely chaotic. When bullets start flying and crowds start panicking, figuring out where the shots are even coming from can be a challenge. As we’ve seen in victim and eyewitness reports from these events, most people have no clue what is happening, where the shots are coming from, or even how many shooters are involved. Even someone with heightened situational awareness (as we should all have) are likely to have a hard time accurately identifying where the threat is with any level of speed. And if you can’t figure it out immediately, trying to do so instead of trying to escape might just make you that much more likely to get shot trying to be the hero.There is also the very real danger of multiple threats. In the previous (2014) Las Vegas shooting, we saw exactly how this can go down. The concealed carrier identified a shooter and (perhaps foolishly, but that is a separate discussion) issued verbal commands. However, he did not notice that there was a second shooter, and tragically lost his life. So in any potential mass shooting scenario, there could only be one shooter, but there could also be a dozen shooters (such as terrorist attacks). There is no way to know. Even if you hang back for a while from a position of safety and have the benefit of time to assess the scenario (losing valuable escape opportunities, most likely), there could always be another shooter that has yet to spring his attack, perhaps specifically waiting to reveal himself until law enforcement/security responses arrive.Mistaken Threat Identification/Law Enforcement ConfusionSimilar to the previous point, and as is very often discussed, there is no way for you to easily know who is who. If you see someone with a gun drawn, he may be the shooter, or he may be another CCW holder like yourself. In the chaos, it may be nearly impossible to tell depending on the circumstances, at least without a delay in action that could be costly. Shooting the wrong person makes you a murderer, too, in addition to likely giving away your position (and the fact that you are armed) to the real shooter. You would essentially have to watch the situation carefully for long enough to determine if the person with the gun appears to be shooting unarmed civilians, and hoping that you don’t end up being one of those civilians shot for hanging back and trying to assess the scenario instead of escaping.Also, when law enforcement or security forces do arrive, there are highly likely to shoot anyone with a gun for the same reasons. You never know when they will arrive exactly, so if you’re running around the scene with a gun in your hand, you’re very likely to be mistaken for an attacker, and you’ll be lucky if they issue verbal commands before wasting you. So even if you are able to determine the facts of the situation, that is no guarantee that law enforcement, security, or other CCWers won’t mistake you for a shooter.Collateral DamageMass shooters specifically attack target-rich environments, which to a carrier is a “bystander-rich” environment. Even if you are able to deal with the above concerns, the chance of hitting an innocent person is going to be extremely high. Even if you put all your rounds on target, which is not likely in this level of chaos, there is still a good chance of bullets exiting the attacker and potentially hitting someone else.Practical/Tactical Limitations and How You Should ActIn light of all these problems discussed above, we can see that there are very limited circumstances in which a CCW holder could intervene effectively and safely during a mass shooting scenario. Not impossible, but definitely among the most difficult situations for a concealed handgun to make a difference. If the stars align and you are able to successfully intervene, no one would fault you for doing so. But no one would blame you for getting to safety, either.Accordingly, the most sensible course of action is the same for an armed person as is encouraged for anyone else: Run, Hide, Fight, in that order. Your first priority should be to just get out of there as fast as humanly possible. If you are able to do so, great, you’re alive. That’s a great outcome and you shouldn’t second guess it. If you can’t run because the danger is between you and an exit, you should try to hide. Barricade yourself in a room or something, evade detection as much as possible. Whatever is best in the circumstances. You can hide until the shooter is stopped by law enforcement or until a path to safety opens up, in which case you go back to step one – Run. However, if running isn’t possible and the attacker finds your hiding place, you will have to fight. At this point, a concealed handgun actually becomes relevant. It is much easier to fight with a gun than whatever heavy object is nearby, and if you’ve done the hiding well, the attacker should be a much closer range if you are forced to fight.So, in short, Run, Hide, Fight, in that order of priority. Only if you make it to Fight should you really consider using your CCW in a mass shooter situation, and you should never go looking for Fight.The Political SidePolitically speaking, we all like to believe that more concealed carriers would help prevent mass shootings. However, when it comes to mass shootings, especially like the one in Vegas, these arguments are just about as weak as the gun control arguments. There is no way that a concealed handgun would have prevented the Vegas shooting, and as discussed above, many mass shootings would be difficult, if not impossible, to prevent with a concealed handgun without significant risk to your own safety and to the safety of bystanders.We can say that good guys with guns would reduce the damage of some of these attacks, but gun control advocates also say that restrictions on semi-auto/high capacity/whatever would reduce some of the damage, too. That argument is just as valid/impossible to prove as the “good guys with guns” argument. While we know that a committed attacker can get these guns illegally, modify his existing guns illegally, or just build a bomb and skip the guns entirely, strict gun control would possibly reduce the carnage of some attacks, at least the highly impulsive ones. Of course, there is no way to measure this one way or the other. Even if a shooting or bombing happened after strict gun control was enacted, they could always say the same thing we say – you can’t stop a determined attacker. They’d just say “well there could have been more shootings without the gun control!” Similarly, even if a CCW holder stopped a mass shooting, gun control advocates could call it a fluke, or point to however many he was able to kill with his big scary AR-15 as “still too many” in spite of the fact that he may have been stopped before his rampage was over.That also brings up an important point on the problem with the very rhetoric itself of the “good guys with guns” as a hedge against mass shootings argument: The more correct this argument is, the less correct it will appear. If a mass shooting is stopped in its tracks, it isn’t a mass shooting, and won’t likely get reported as such. A CCW holder stopping a shooting will get some news, sure, but absent the big body count, it will never get near the attention that attacks that aren’t stopped will get. And if the CCW holder stops the shooting very effectively, early enough in the rampage, there would not even be any way to tell if it was even going to be a rampage in the first place, or if the shooter was just killing certain people as an ordinary murder (which happens a lot more than mass shootings anyway). For “good guys with guns” to appear to work well enough to convince its opponents of the soundness of the idea, the bad guys would have to kill enough people to show that it was a bona fide rampage, but not so many that the CCW intervention was just too little, too late.Lastly, the “good guys with guns” argument is also not internally consistent with a lot of the other arguments we make against gun control. Namely, the “you can’t stop a determined attacker with legal hurdles” and “if no guns, they will just use bombs or trucks.” A CCW can’t be used against a bomb, and would almost certainly not help much against a speeding truck. Inconsistent arguing weakens all the arguments made, so it is best to stick to one story.The sad reality of things like this, the thing that no one really wants to face, is that there really isn’t anything that can be done to stop these types of attacks. There also isn’t a way to measure if any specific policy is even effective just due to the statistical problems. People want to do something, but mass attacks are more similar to natural disasters than crimes. They can always happen, and in many different ways.The most cogent argument from the pro-gun side is that gun control would, at best and by its proponents own admission, only potentially reduce the frequency and lethality of these mass attacks. There is no way to really measure if slightly increased reload times from smaller magazines or slightly reduced rate of fire would change the body count (these restrictions might just encourage better aim). If a gun ban means that more would-be attackers choose to build bombs instead of a more impulsive shooting attack, the body count could actually be higher. Even the Nice truck attack killed more than the Vegas shooting. Even if we concede for the sake of argument that strict gun control could diminish the frequency and deadliness of mass attacks to a degree, there is no way to measure (or even philosophically agree) whether those reductions are worth the sacrifices to our freedom. People would lose access to an effective means of self-defense, which is a cost to such a policy (the subjective value of which depends on your opinion on guns, of course). It would also create a greater disparity of power between the state and the citizens. While people may disagree on how effective civilian resistance against a tyrannical regime would be, or whether such a regime is even possible in a first-world society, it is still a potential and unmeasurable cost. We’ve seen this with things like the patriot act and domestic spying – everyone wanted to “do something” in the wake of 9/11, and now most regret it in the long run.While you cannot put a value on human life, and the “if it saves one life” argument is compelling, the same could be said for literally any other freedom. Unhealthy food is among the worst killers, but strict food control doesn’t sit well with most. People are willing to trade safety for liberty there, even though this value judgment is completely subjective, and a truly “rational” person would only choose the healthiest options. People make calculated risks for their own freedom to live as they please. Traffic deaths could be reduced by orders of magnitude if the speed limit on all streets was 20 miles per hour, but people value the simple convenience of getting places faster over the value of human lives in that situation.At the end of the day, public policy should be based on the mundane and measurable, not the extreme outliers. Mass shootings are particularly horrific, but statistically insignificant, and a much lower threat to anyone’s safety than just getting in your car or cleaning your gutters. Gun policy, whether pro or anti, should focus on the normal, not the abnormal. Expansion of CCW rights should be based on what works about it, and on the millions of guns that are not used every day, not the few guns used wrongly every so often.Please if I’ve left out any important points that are always discussed on this topic, reply with them in the comments, and I will add/edit if appropriate. I look forward to some good discussion. via /r/CCW http://ift.tt/2hTOdWt
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