Blood and bulletsFollow

Ouch.

Glad you're okay though, brosiden. But seriously, ouch.

Glad you're okay. Am I reading correctly that no one (besides the shooter) was killed, just "J" wounded but stable? Thank heavens for slight good fortune.

I often wonder who among the people I know here on the internets will be the first to die in a good ol' American killing spree. I feel like it's inevitable, what with how they seem to happen CONSTANTLY. I'll probably die from anxiety related illness firstbefore I turn 35.

Edited, Mar 5th 2016 5:57pm by Kuwoobie

I realize that. It doesn't stop me from feeling incredibly paranoid though.

Glad to hear you're okay, that... puts a ****** day at work into perspective fairly fast.

And then the paranoia can be justified. It's for the best when people's expectations are in line with reality, one way or another.

If you would go ahead and inject a barbiturate, a paralytic, and a potassium solution, that would be great.

Hey new obviously biased study on stuff...
Summary Article

TL;DR = It looks more gun restrictions mean less gun deaths, but sample size is small enough it's hard to be too confident in the data.

The shooter died anyway. He just ran around shooting at someone for 10 minutes or so until the cops arrived and killed him. It was plain dumb luck that neither the person he was focused on, nor any of the bystanders, was shot and/or killed before they got there. Had just one person with a concealed weapon been in the crowd, that time would have been reduced significantly and the risk of injury or death to others would have been similarly reduced.

Most shots fired in an altercation miss their target. So we could have just had 30+ shots fired instead of 14 (13 of which missed). In an environment that included "two dozen other potential targets in the area (including children)".

That would have been much better, fo' shore. Strangely, the one guy here who was at the event doesn't seem to wish that there were more guns floating around and more bullets whizzing by.

But not necessarily "less (fewer - sic) deaths", right? Fewer blue cars on the road will quite obviously result in fewer accidents involving blue cars, but no rational person would argue that driving a blue car increases the odds of an accident occurring based on that statistic alone. Yet this exact example of ridiculously bad logic is one of the most repeated arguments for increased gun regulation.

There is zero correlation in the US between rates of gun ownership in an area and the homicide rates in that area. None at all. Isn't that the more important stat? There isn't even much of a correlation between gun ownership rates by nation and the resulting homicide rates. It's just such a weak weak argument to make. Let me repost this page (yes, cross thread shenanigans abound!). Scroll down to the bottom where it has some graphs showing just how weak any correlation between increased gun regulations and actual resulting homicide rates are.

Yeah yeah. 60-90 seconds. You get that unless the police were actually parked in the same lot at the time the first shot occurred (or maybe happened to be driving by), there's no way that they arrived just 60-90 seconds later. Assuming your account was accurate and the shooter really did ambush the two men, with no warning, and immediately shot one of them and began chasing the other, I'm having a hard time accepting that the total time from start to finish was so short.

Um... And in any case, that's somewhat irrelevant. The shooter chased someone around a parking lot shooting at him. Whatever time frame was involved it was "enough" for him to chase the other guy around the parking lot, around a shed, and into another parking lot, shooting what appears to be the entire load his weapon could hold (unless he reloaded, which you didn't mention). More than enough time for one person to have intervened and fired one shot to end the entire thing prior to the police arriving, and reducing the risk to others in the area.

Edited, Mar 8th 2016 4:48pm by gbaji

Which is perhaps a great argument that we need to enforce the existing laws rather than create new ones. According to my quick search of SD gun laws, a 48 hour waiting period is mandatory for handgun purchases. So if only 20 minutes passed between him walking in the store and walking out with a pistol, then either someone broke the law, or you're neglecting to mention that he first went to the store at least 48 hours earlier to make the purchase, and maybe it just took 20 minutes in the store to pick it up (which is not the same thing as what you implied).

I'll also point out that folks planning to use a firearm to murder some people aren't likely to obey any gun control laws anyway.

Because people often misremember or misreport events they've seen. Also:



Were you physically present and witnessing the whole thing from start to finish? Or just piecing things together afterwards? In which case, you'll have to forgive me when I don't take your time line as absolute fact. Doubly so when it presents a nearly impossibly fast response time by the police. If an officer happened to be standing outside the station right when the first shot rang out, and immediately figured out what direction it was coming from, and immediately set out at a sprint it's theoretically possible that he could arrive on scene 90 seconds after that first shot. Maybe. If he takes the time to, oh I don't know, call for backup, maybe get into his car first (so as to have cover in a shooting situation), or any of a number of activities that cops tend to do prior to rushing headlong into a fire fight, it would take much longer.

I'll acknowledge under the circumstances that it wasn't 10 minutes, but I find 60-90 seconds for "the police" (as opposed to maybe one out of breath officer) to arrive on scene and take control of the situation to be incredibly unlikely.

And, as I mentioned earlier, regardless of how long it took, that's some amount more time it would take an officer to arrive on scene, that would not have been required if someone was already there. How long does it take to run two blocks? How long does it take to *not* run two blocks. At the end of the day, it was enough time for the shooter to fire 14 shots before the police arrived and ended it.




Yup. Didn't prevent the shooter from carrying one, did it? See how those laws only restrict everyone except the bad guy? No one was allowed to carry weapons at Columbine, or the Aurora theater, or Sandy Hook either. There's a pattern here I'd really like you to notice.



Two blocks, but whatever. Look. My mom used to live one block away from a fire station (or was it two?). That never made her think "Well, I guess I don't need to bother with fire safety, I'll just call the fire department if I light my kitchen on fire".



I'm not second guessing you. I'm questioning the details of an account of a shooting incident, which, by your own admission, you constructed after the fact. I have no clue how much you personally witnessed, since you never once said "I saw this directly with my own two eyes".


And, once again, the issue we're arguing over isn't really that relevant anyway. I tossed out "10 minutes or so", without really thinking about the actual time, because it doesn't really matter. It was "enough time" for the shooter to empty a magazine of .45 ammo at his target. It's also "enough time" for someone in close proximity to have pulled out a concealed weapon and responded well before all 14 shots were fired. That's all that really matters, right?

I honestly wasn't trying to make any point about the specific time of the event. Just relative reaction to it. A random person in a crowd is always going to be able to respond to such an event faster than police. Even if the police are just a couple blocks away, this is always going to be true. Frankly, in this shooting it was pure luck that more people didn't die. Statistically, you can't rely on that. Statistically, your best odds of surviving close proximity to a shooting event like this is if someone else in the crowd is armed. Whether that person is an off duty LEO, or a civilian with a CC permit really doesn't matter much in that case. The longer it takes for on duty officers to arrive, the worse the odds for everyone in proximity to the shooting becomes.