Anti-Gun Vox Spews Silly Logic
Vox recently published an article in response to the Dayton shooting titled “Police “neutralized” the Dayton shooter in 30 seconds. He still shot 14 people.” The subtitle is “The timeline is some of the strongest evidence yet that the “good guy with a gun” myth is just that.” With that statement they showed that they have no understanding of what self protection means.
Instead of researching facts the author chooses to rely on feelings stating “the mass shooting that took place early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, is the latest illustration that some guns are bigger problems than others” Well he is right but not in the way that he thinks. In this situation a handgun would have been just as deadly. In fact according to the FBI handguns kill roughly 20 times more people each year than rifles. The ability to fire one shot a second really isn’t that remarkable and that handguns/shotguns, both of which are quite clearly constitutionally protected, are capable of the same. Clearly the author is targeting the rifle because it once again makes for good rhetoric.
President Trump and the NRA have stated that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Well that is accurate. But the Vox author states:
“But it appears officers in Dayton responded to the shooting on Sunday morning as quickly and effectively as possible. The gunman was still able to use a legally purchased firearm, high-capacity magazines, and some at-home modifications to shoot upward of a person per second. Tragically, the Dayton shooting isn’t the only recent mass shooting illustrating that the “good guy with a gun” myth is just that.”
No one ever says that a fire extinguisher is ineffective because there was still a fire. No the point is that it contains the fire and stops it from doing more damage. The same is true of a good guy with a gun. If the police had not responded as quickly as they had then the shooter would not have stopped until he ran out of bullets. We saw this play out with the Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand. The shooter had no resistance and continued shooting unopposed.
The article ends with:
“Good guy with a gun” arguments might be more plausible in a world where people didn’t have the ability to legally obtain weapons that allow them to shoot more than a person per second. But in the real world, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear: As long as would-be mass shooters can obtain high-powered weapons, “good guys with guns” can’t possibly act quickly enough to intervene before it’s too late.”
Well again I go back to the fire extinguisher, you don’t preemptively spray your stove to put out a fire that hasn’t started. You use it when the fire has started and you don’t want it to get out of control. Now there is the possibility that both the Dayton and El Paso shooting could have been stopped if a citizen had been carrying a gun. However the El Paso Walmart was a gun free zone and citizens were unable to carry there. Sure the Dayton shooting was on a street where people were in line for a club, Ned Peppers, which is a gun free zone.
If there had been a licensed, trained individual with a gun then the odds are that both shootings would have been stopped sooner. We will never know but perhaps the shooter would have been seen and stopped before they even started shooting.