That's one of the mantras of those opposing gun control. Today's NY Times has op-eds debunking that mantra. Both a police officer and an
infantry officer assert that it's highly unlikely that the average gun holder will actually be able to use his gun in an emergency.
The police officer lays out the scene in Aurora: "speakers blasting, larger-than-life heroes and
villains on the screen, and suddenly real gunshots, a man in a gas mask
firing one of three weapons — a shotgun, handgun and rifle, with
extended magazines for extra ammo capacity — into the panicking crowd.
Even a highly trained, armed police officer would have been caught off
guard. Try adding a bunch of untrained, armed civilians into the mix —
this type of intervention could have made things much worse."
The infantry officer reminds us that since 2005, "there isn’t a
single example of a concerned bystander with a concealed-carry permit
who stopped a mass shooting". He recognizes that there "will always be violent loners. If they don’t kill with guns,
they’ll find some other way to do it. Semiautomatic weapons, however,
are what enable them to shoot dozens of people in a movie theater. Is
someone’s right to buy an assault rifle worth having to carry a weapon
yourself, every moment you’re outside your home, for the rest of your
life?"
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