Good Guy with a Gun

[Dînadan]

The idea that Switzerland doesn't have gun control is a myth. From the library of Congress:

Switzerland has a comprehensive gun-control regime that is governed by federal law and implemented by the cantons. This regime may be somewhat less restrictive than that of other European countries, yet since 2008 it has complied with European Union requirements. The Swiss Weapons Act requires an acquisition license for handguns and a carrying license for the carrying of any permitted firearm for defensive purposes. Exceptions exist for hunters. Automatic weapons are banned.

So while those laws may not be as restrictive as in surrounding countries, the idea that Switzerland is some sort of gun utopia is incorrect..

Also isn’t gun ownership in Switzerland in part tied in with mandatory military service?

[Antiboyscout]

At least in the case of California, if you check into a mental health facility you are banned from purchasing a gun ever again.

[Wild_Kraken]

The only shooting in recent memory with a legal firearm was the Las Vegas shooting. Typically, the guns are illegal black market or stolen. In the case of the Church shooter, he was able to buy a gun because the air force failed to inform the FBI that he was dishonorably discharged and was banned from purchasing them.

You must not have a very good memory. From the New York Times:

A vast majority of guns used in 18 recent mass shootings were bought legally and with a federal background check. At least nine gunmen had criminal histories or documented mental health problems that did not prevent them from obtaining their weapons.

Full article here.

Also isn’t gun ownership in Switzerland in part tied in with mandatory military service?

From what I've read on the subject, yes. From Vox:

Laws let militiamen in the country (where all able-bodied men are required to serve in the military, except for conscientious objectors) keep their issued personal weapons in their homes, and Swiss statutes and traditions respect the right to bear arms.

Full article here.

Switzerland is an interesting example because when examined it actually would appear to corroborate the "More guns/easy access to guns = bad" argument. While they don't appear to have mass shootings as much as in the United States, they're not unheard of (see the Zug Massacre), and they do have a higher gun homicide rate than other similar countries with less gun ownership and more restrictive gun control. Another thing that makes Switzerland not really all that great an example of is that they really don't own that many guns per person compared to the US. It's slightly over half what we have, so it can't even really be said that their gun culture is anywhere as big/entrenched/influential as it is in the US.

[Admiral X]

Except the actual way to solve the problem is to have stricter gun control.

FBI data shows otherwise. It's been shown that areas with stricter gun control either have no real difference in violent crime rates in areas that don't, or actually have higher rates. It's also been shown that the overall violent crime rates for the US have been declining since the 1970s.

You know, the people of Australia aren't telepathic, and yet they don't have these sorts of massive and random gun shootings. Same with pretty much every country in Europe and Japan and many others. So obviously there is a solution that doesn't require precognition.

They aren't the US.

The idea that a mass shooter will be deterred by the possibility of there maybe being someone with a gun in the area is extremely unlikely, since it's self evident that mass shooters don't care about their own survival. Very rarely is a mass shooter taken into custody because the last person they kill is often themselves.

Except that in every situation where there has been an armed civilian there, they've either run off or surrendered when confronted.

Additionally, this sort of analysis of a situation, plotting out the likelihood that someone in the area is concealed carry, isn't something that a mentally disturbed person is going to do anyway. Do you think Adam Lanza was doing serious cost benefit analysis and charting various ways he could maximized the number of children he could murder?

If someone isn't deterred by the possibility, that's when having someone there who is armed would come in real handy.

Additionally additionally, if this already weak deterrence fails, then all of the same problems that I pointed out before still exist. There's no guarantee that GoodGunGuy will be there, that GoodGunGuy isn't incapacitated in the initial moments, that GoodGunGuy will know how to solve the problem, etc. etc.

Nothing you've brought to the table has shown any of that. In contrast we've seen that these shootings tend to take place in "gun-free" zones and that in cases where there is an armed person present, the shooter will usually either run off or surrender.

You are assuming that these sorts of random mass shootings are just a natural and immutable part of the human experience.

No more so than fires, but I still keep an extinguisher handy in my home, and you'll typically find them in most other buildings, too.

The idea that the average citizen being armed will somehow save them from aggression from the government is a fallacy, and not supported by historical evidence.

So again, we have the "well, you won't have a chance anyway, so let's just make sure" argument. Makes no sense at all. One need only look at Iraq and Afghanistan to see how much an armed civilian resistance can hamper even a high-tech professional military like ours. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I or anyone advocates standing up against the government on their own, which of course is nonsense. The idea is very much in line with the often miss-attributed "a rifle behind every blade of grass."

America is an extremely homogeneous country.

Which is why we all agree on so much and get along with each other so well, right? No we're not.

Perhaps not in terms of climate, but in terms of culture, yes. You can travel from one end of America to the other without ever hearing a language other than English, for example.

I don't have to go far to hear Spanish, Norwegian, German, or Swedish - and that's just within my own fly-over country state. Even among the English speakers there are plenty of different dialects. Hell, just heading to the South made me feel like a stranger in a strange land.

But that's really not the issue here. As demonstrated with my Vinyl chloride example, there are some policies that don't care about a country's culture in order to work or not. Gun control is one such policy self-evidently, because two radically different nations in terms of culture, Japan and Australia, both have strict gun control and both lack the sort of mass shootings America has.

Japan has a very different culture from ours which is much more collectivist in nature. They are all about people playing a certain role within society and have generally kept the common people from being armed going back to feudal times. Much of Europe was the same way. Australia started out as a penal colony. They never had much of a problem with mass shootings even before their "buy-back" program, which I'll note did little to their homicide rate. There are some similarities between us because of the origins as holdings of the British Empire, but our origins and history since then has been vastly different. Australia also has internet censorship akin to China, so they are hardly a county that should be emulated in any case.

[Admiral X]

Switzerland is an interesting example because when examined it actually would appear to corroborate the "More guns/easy access to guns = bad" argument. While they don't appear to have mass shootings as much as in the United States, they're not unheard of (see the Zug Massacre), and they do have a higher gun homicide rate than other similar countries with less gun ownership and more restrictive gun control. Another thing that makes Switzerland not really all that great an example of is that they really don't own that many guns per person compared to the US. It's slightly over half what we have, so it can't even really be said that their gun culture is anywhere as big/entrenched/influential as it is in the US.

I note you focus exclusively on violence committed with firearms rather than overall violent crime. That says a lot in and of itself.

[Wild_Kraken]

FBI data shows otherwise. It's been shown that areas with stricter gun control either have no real difference in violent crime rates in areas that don't, or actually have higher rates. It's also been shown that the overall violent crime rates for the US have been declining since the 1970s.

The problem with gun control in America is that it's largely up to the states/counties/cities/etc. to set policies, and this undermines the overall effect. Take Chicago as an example. The common refrain is that it has one of/the highest gun homicide rates in the country, but also some of the strictest gun control, therefore gun control doesn't work. But what's actually happening is that people just travel a few miles outside of Chicago, to where there is lax gun control, and then bring their guns back in. If there was one unified gun control policy for the entire country, this wouldn't happen, and you would see gun control working just fine.

Second point, while it is true that overall the rate of violent crime has been declining the rate of mass shootings has been more or less consistent since the 1990s, but they've also been getting deadlier over time.

Except that in every situation where there has been an armed civilian there, they've either run off or surrendered when confronted.

Really? Every situation? So like:

Shopping mall shooting in Tacoma, Washington
As a rampage unfolded in 2005, a civilian with a concealed-carry permit named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with his handgun. The shooter pumped several bullets into McKown, wounding six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.

or

Courthouse shooting in Tyler, Texas
In 2005, a civilian named Mark Wilson, who was a firearms instructor, fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47.

Hey, it's almost like in the real world it's exactly how I said, that just being an armed civilian wouldn't guarantee effective action against a mass shooter. Also, it should be pointed out the numerous cases that are touted as "armed civilians" stopping a shooter are either outright fabrications or inaccurate distortions to push a narrative. Like:

Appalachian School of Law shooting in Grundy, Virginia
Gun rights die-hards frequently credit the end of a rampage at the law school in 2002 to armed “students” who intervened. They conveniently ignore that those students also happened to be current and former law enforcement officers, and that the killer, according to police investigators, was out of ammunition by the time they got to him.

Good job stopping the shooter after he could no longer shoot!

New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado
In 2007 a gunman killed two people and wounded three others before being shot himself; the pro-gun crowd likes to refer to the woman who took him out in the parking lot as a “church member.” Never mind that she was a security officer for the church and a former cop, and that the church had put its security team on high alert earlier that day due to another church shooting nearby.

The idea that GoodGunGuys stop or deter mass shootings is a myth~ Some articles about it here and here.

Nothing you've brought to the table has shown any of that. In contrast we've seen that these shootings tend to take place in "gun-free" zones and that in cases where there is an armed person present, the shooter will usually either run off or surrender.

As per my above points, armed civilians don't stop mass shootings or make them less likely to occur. As for the much touted "gun-free" zones canard, to completely smash that we'd simply need to find examples of mass shootings in places that unambiguously were not gun free zones. Ah yes, there was the 2014 Fort Hood shooting. That took place of course in that most strict of gun-free zone, a United States military base. In fact, mass shootings on military bases isn't as uncommon as your "muh gun-free zones" narrative would imply.

Here's a decent-ish list of such incidents.

No more so than fires, but I still keep an extinguisher handy in my home, and you'll typically find them in most other buildings, too.

Except as a society, we generally do everything in our power to minimize the risk of fires starting. We regulate certain flammable materials, create building codes for things like insulation and proper wiring, sprinkler systems, things of that nature. In a very real sense we practice what could be called "fire control". It's understood by hopefully everyone, that you can't manage fires just with your handheld fire extinguisher. There's no guarantee that those will be used in time to stop the fire from spreading and becoming too big to manage. You need prevention to minimize risk.

I don't know why you chose to use fires as a metaphor. It's so bad, because it obviously refutes your entire point. It's like, yeah, we should treat mass shootings and gun violence like fires and take every precaution to prevent them from starting in the first place.

So again, we have the "well, you won't have a chance anyway, so let's just make sure" argument. Makes no sense at all. One need only look at Iraq and Afghanistan to see how much an armed civilian resistance can hamper even a high-tech professional military like ours. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I or anyone advocates standing up against the government on their own, which of course is nonsense. The idea is very much in line with the often miss-attributed "a rifle behind every blade of grass."

I can think of some historical examples where armed groups in North America came into conflict with the United States government over certain government policies, and it didn't go particularly well for those groups. So just having multiple armed people isn't a guarantee of success against the government. All the talk of "we need guns in case we have to fight the government" is so much nonsense. It's a romantic fantasy with no basis in reality and so isn't a good enough justification to not implement stricter gun control.

Which is why we all agree on so much and get along with each other so well, right? No we're not.

I'm beginning to think you don't understand what's meant by homogeneous if you think "people having disagreements" is at all what's meant when there's talk of a country being homogeneous or not.

Japan has a very different culture from ours which is much more collectivist in nature. They are all about people playing a certain role within society and have generally kept the common people from being armed going back to feudal times. Much of Europe was the same way.

What was I getting at with the whole culture point? It's that culture isn't some immutable things. Cultures can and do change over time, and for a variety of reasons. Just gradual shifts, or natural disasters, or even just arbitrary impositions. To keep using Japan as an example, for hundreds of years they had no culture of democracy. After WW2, America basically foisted functioning democracy on Japan after their first attempt failed. And lo and behold, Japan now has a culture of democracy. Japan used to be extremely militaristic, now not so much.

Cultures change and adapt to new situations, and indeed to survive they must. And so appealing to culture as a defense against common sense policies that have been shown to work in multiple other countries that themselves have different cultures from each other, is crap.

Australia started out as a penal colony. They never had much of a problem with mass shootings even before their "buy-back" program,

Considering that you're apparently okay with a world where random mass shootings can kill increasingly high numbers of people, I wonder what exactly you would consider "much of a problem with mass shootings" to be.

Australia also has internet censorship akin to China, so they are hardly a county that should be emulated in any case.

Ah yes, because if you take one policy from a country you must therefore take all policies, even if they're completely unrelated. That's how it goes, it's a slippery slope, don't you know? If we start by enacting gun control it'll end with a pie shop on every corner and all the Burger Kings renamed to Hungry Jacks

[Admiral X]

The problem with gun control in America is that it's largely up to the states/counties/cities/etc. to set policies, and this undermines the overall effect. Take Chicago as an example. The common refrain is that it has one of/the highest gun homicide rates in the country, but also some of the strictest gun control, therefore gun control doesn't work. But what's actually happening is that people just travel a few miles outside of Chicago, to where there is lax gun control, and then bring their guns back in. If there was one unified gun control policy for the entire country, this wouldn't happen, and you would see gun control working just fine.

And even if you did a total ban, there would still be the black market, and people would even be able to make their own. The point is, though, that in these places with such strict control, just having the firearm is illegal, yet this hardly keeps criminals from having them. The only people it disarms are the honest ones who consider themselves to be law-abiding citizens.

Really? Every situation? So like:

Okay, almost every time. The recent shooting at that church in Tennessee is a good example. Even the deadlier one in Texas had the shooter drop his gun and run off after being confronted by an armed civilian. There are also plenty of cases where robberies and other violent crimes have been stopped by armed civilians, at times without even firing a shot. The fact some people do get killed anyway doesn't change that fact.

Shopping mall shooting in Tacoma, Washington
As a rampage unfolded in 2005, a civilian with a concealed-carry permit named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with his handgun. The shooter pumped several bullets into McKown, wounding six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.

Appalachian School of Law shooting in Grundy, Virginia
Gun rights die-hards frequently credit the end of a rampage at the law school in 2002 to armed “students” who intervened. They conveniently ignore that those students also happened to be current and former law enforcement officers, and that the killer, according to police investigators, was out of ammunition by the time they got to him.

Them being current off-duty or former law enforcement is irrelevant. They were not there as officers, they were there as students, and as students they were initially unarmed, and had to run to their vehicles to retrieve their firearms. And the part you're leaving out is that he only shot six people, killing three, and that as his first victims were a Dean and an instructor, he probably had a some kind of a beef with them.

Good job stopping the shooter after he could no longer shoot!

Yeah, too bad no one in the building was armed or they might've been able to save a few people.

New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado
In 2007 a gunman killed two people and wounded three others before being shot himself; the pro-gun crowd likes to refer to the woman who took him out in the parking lot as a “church member.” Never mind that she was a security officer for the church and a former cop, and that the church had put its security team on high alert earlier that day due to another church shooting nearby.

Which is still an example of an armed person at the scene being able to stop a mass shooting. A security guard is not a police officer, and it would have made no difference if it had simply been any civilian who was armed.

As per my above points, armed civilians don't stop mass shootings or make them less likely to occur.

Plenty of evidence, including some of your own examples, say otherwise.

As for the much touted "gun-free" zones canard, to completely smash that we'd simply need to find examples of mass shootings in places that unambiguously were not gun free zones. Ah yes, there was the 2014 Fort Hood shooting. That took place of course in that most strict of gun-free zone, a United States military base. In fact, mass shootings on military bases isn't as uncommon as your "muh gun-free zones" narrative would imply.

Military bases actually are "gun-free" zones. Only the MPs/SFs are allowed to be armed while on base. Did you not know this?

No more so than fires, but I still keep an extinguisher handy in my home, and you'll typically find them in most other buildings, too.

Except as a society, we generally do everything in our power to minimize the risk of fires starting.

And yet fires still happen, and people are still encouraged to own fire extinguishers, and public buildings are required to have them, rather than telling people that they don't need them and that all we need is the fire department.

I don't know why you chose to use fires as a metaphor. It's so bad, because it obviously refutes your entire point. It's like, yeah, we should treat mass shootings and gun violence like fires and take every precaution to prevent them from starting in the first place.

Probably because we have entirely different ideas for how to prevent them.

I can think of some historical examples where armed groups in North America came into conflict with the United States government over certain government policies, and it didn't go particularly well for those groups.

Which doesn't mean much. I can also come up with examples where the second amendment was put to good effect. Such as the Battle of Athens, which incidentally involved corrupt law enforcement which was accused of predatory policing and police brutality (some things seem to never change). And say what you will about the Bundy group (I do think they were in the wrong), the government did treat them with kid gloves, especially when you compare what happened at the various Occupy protests. This comes to mind:

So just having multiple armed people isn't a guarantee of success against the government. All the talk of "we need guns in case we have to fight the government" is so much nonsense. It's a romantic fantasy with no basis in reality and so isn't a good enough justification to not implement stricter gun control.

And yet the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have still been a thorn in our military's side. Hell, the Soviets had all kinds of trouble with Afghanistan, and while we did help to arm them, you have to realize that we were arming them with stuff like surplus Lee-Enfields.

Plus, like I said, the argument that "you wouldn't have a chance anyway, so let's make sure" has never been a very compelling one.

I'm beginning to think you don't understand what's meant by homogeneous if you think "people having disagreements" is at all what's meant when there's talk of a country being homogeneous or not.

Yes, I do in fact have a scientific background, and in fact hold a degree in mechanical engineering, so I am quite familiar with the term. I'm simply illustrating how wrong you are to assign that term to the US when simple observation shows that this is not the case.

What was I getting at with the whole culture point? It's that culture isn't some immutable things. Cultures can and do change over time, and for a variety of reasons. Just gradual shifts, or natural disasters, or even just arbitrary impositions. To keep using Japan as an example, for hundreds of years they had no culture of democracy. After WW2, America basically foisted functioning democracy on Japan after their first attempt failed. And lo and behold, Japan now has a culture of democracy. Japan used to be extremely militaristic, now not so much.

Well, kind of. But what I said about them is also true and illustrates one of the main differences between our countries. Another is that Japan is almost entirely made up of ethnically Japanese people and is no where near the kind of melting pot the US is. You also seem to be neglecting the effect history has on the present.

Considering that you're apparently okay with a world where random mass shootings can kill increasingly high numbers of people, I wonder what exactly you would consider "much of a problem with mass shootings" to be.

I never said I was okay with mass shootings. In fact I've been advocating a way to prevent them or at least limit the casualties by allowing people to defend themselves.

Ah yes, because if you take one policy from a country you must therefore take all policies, even if they're completely unrelated. That's how it goes, it's a slippery slope, don't you know?

I'm just illustrating another difference between our countries and that they are hardly a nation we want to emulate. As for slippery slopes, for as much as you try to brush off that argument, all the numerous attempts to undermine the second amendment, including the "Fast and Furious" scandal, show that it is certainly not for lack of trying on the part of the anti- camp.

[Wild_Kraken]

And even if you did a total ban, there would still be the black market, and people would even be able to make their own. The point is, though, that in these places with such strict control, just having the firearm is illegal, yet this hardly keeps criminals from having them. The only people it disarms are the honest ones who consider themselves to be law-abiding citizens.

This is a myth. Black markets exist everywhere there's an illegal item to sell. So why don't we see people in Europe/Australia/Japan/etc. go to their black markets and buy high powered guns with which to commit mass shootings at the same rate as in America? It's because it's not feasible for the average person to purchase weapons from the black market. And since black market sales are themselves often broken up by law enforcement, there's no guarantee that the person who tried to buy would even be successful.

Okay, almost every time. The recent shooting at that church in Tennessee is a good example. Even the deadlier one in Texas had the shooter drop his gun and run off after being confronted by an armed civilian. There are also plenty of cases where robberies and other violent crimes have been stopped by armed civilians, at times without even firing a shot. The fact some people do get killed anyway doesn't change that fact.

This goes back to what I said a few posts ago about how GoodGunGuys are only ever reactionary. The Texas shooter was stopped by an armed civilian after he had already killed twenty six people. It doesn't particularly matter that in some hypothetical future where the shooter wasn't stopped he may have killed 10 or 100 or 1000 more people. What matters is the people who were already killed. It's absolutely unacceptable that as a society we allow for the conditions that make it possible for those 26 people to have died in the first place.

Them being current off-duty or former law enforcement is irrelevant. They were not there as officers, they were there as students, and as students they were initially unarmed, and had to run to their vehicles to retrieve their firearms. And the part you're leaving out is that he only shot six people, killing three, and that as his first victims were a Dean and an instructor, he probably had a some kind of a beef with them.

It absolutely matters that they were off-duty/former law enforcement because the whole premise of Good Guy with Gun working is that the person with the gun is essentially some rando. That is, someone without law enforcement training would be just as effective and capable of stopping a mass shooter as the police. This is also why your point about the security guard at the church is garbage as well. A security guard is not a random civilian Good Guy with a Gun, but someone who has at least some training in security.

The solution you've been proposing hasn't been "hire more cops" or "place security guards everywhere", so examples of cops and security guards essentially doing their job is sufficient enough to argue against your narrative.

Military bases actually are "gun-free" zones. Only the MPs/SFs are allowed to be armed while on base. Did you not know this?

"Military bases actually are "gun-free" zones. Only the people who are armed are allowed to be armed. Did you not know this?" Seriously, what are you even arguing at this point? The significance of the military base thing, is that on a military base there is within a rounding error a 100% chance that someone there is armed. Such as the military police as you so smugly pointed out in an attempted gotcha. It doesn't matter that not everyone is armed on a military base, just that any potential shooter can be reasonably certain that armed men exist. So, if your "people will be deterred if they don't know if someone has a gun" thing was at all effective, we would expect it to be 100% effective if the shooter was certain that there was someone with a gun in the area. But since the presence of armed people on military bases doesn't stop people from committing mass shootings there, it means the presence of guns doesn't deter mass shootings, which means more concealed carry will not work to prevent mass shootings.

But what's the point of arguing anymore? You're not engaging in this discussion from a place of good faith. There's no statistic I could show you, no fact or example or counter example that could ever sway your position on this, as indeed I've tried by actually linking to outside articles and sources. Your only refrain has been either appeal to American Exceptionalism, that we're just too different to implement policies that work in the rest of the world, or you appeal to some hypothetical future civil war. And that boils down to, it's okay for dozens and dozens and dozens of people to die so you can cling to your fantasy of being like the Taliban.

[Mindworm]

https://thinkprogress.org/the-walmart-s ... 33af8cb92/

Another mass shooting, this time in a walmart. Turns out the shooter appears to be a very angry white Christian man who hates latinos. Lots of good guys armed with guns totally failed to stop him, and in fact made things worse.

The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is with common-sense gun regulations.

What if the bad guy with a gun is the US Government?

You're boned. There's no amount of imitation AK-47s or M-16s will stop the US army.

Better to use the Sam Vimes strategy.

[LittleRaven]

You're boned. There's no amount of imitation AK-47s or M-16s will stop the US army.

Depends on your definition of victory. On the one hand...an AR-15 will do jack all against an Apache. You cannot hope to defeat the US army in open battle, no matter how many of them you have. On the other hand, the Middle East has shown us that the US Army, with all of its firepower, cannot hold society together if a significant portion of the population has AR-15s and the will to burn everything to the ground.

But I suspect this is fairly academic to the actual gun control debate, which is much more about culture than practicality.