And So It Begins...

The second-guessing and accusations have begun in the shootings in Aurora. But Russell Pearce is blaming the victims, accusing them of cowardice.


Pearce is the former Arizona state senator who authored the controversial Arizona immigration law. He was recently booted out of office in a recall election. He posted the following on Facebook in response to the shootings in Colorado:

Had someone been prepared and armed they could have stopped this "bad" man from most of this tragedy. He was two and three feet away from folks, I understand he had to stop and reload. Where were the men of flight 93???? Someone should have stopped this man. Someone could have stopped this man. Lives were lost because of a bad man, not because he had a weapon, but because noone was prepared to stop it. Had they been prepared to save their lives or lives of others, lives would have been saved.

It is a delusion that someone armed with a concealed handgun could have stopped James Holmes. The events in Aurora were nothing like Flight 93, and more closely resemble the North Hollywood Shootout. In that incident two bank robbers in body armor and armed with AR-15s modified for full automatic fire held off police for half an hour. The cops had to wait for SWAT teams with rifles to show up because their handguns couldn't penetrate the robbers' armor.

Like the North Hollywood robbers, Holmes had a plan. He entered the darkened theater from an exit door he had propped open after scouting out the theater and the people inside. According to reports, he was wearing body armor, including a ballistic helmet, groin protection, and a gas mask. He announced himself as the Joker, making many think it was some sort of pre-arranged stunt. (He had even died his hair orange, though as all true Batman fans know, the Joker's hair is green.)

Holmes threw gas canisters into the audience and fired an assault rifle that had a 100-round drum. He shot babies and their mothers, children, teenaged girls, young men, even members of the military. When the AR-15 jammed he switched to .40 caliber Glocks. Anyone who got up to flee was shot.

After 90 seconds it was over. Holmes left the theater. He was apprehended because one of the officers on the scene noticed that Holmes' armor didn't match theirs.

Now look at the difficulties facing the audience. First, it was dark. Then there was the gas, obscuring their vision and making them tear up. Before charging off after Holmes, people had to make sure their children and girlfriends were safe. Then there were rows and rows of seats between them and Holmes, filled with screaming men, women and children ducking for cover. The floor was slick with blood. 

Now let's say that some of those in the audience had concealed weapons. Hitting Holmes in the dark, smoke-filled auditorium while blinking back tears would be next to impossible. Most of the shots fired at Holmes would miss. Where would those rounds go?

It would literally be a circular firing squad. If 10 people had 17-round clips in their Glock 9 mm pistols, that would be 170 more bullets flying around that movie theater. There would have been dozens more casualties.

Even if their aim were true, Holmes was wearing body armor. Like the cops facing the North Hollywood robbers, Holmes' armor would have stopped their handgun bullets. But after shooting at Holmes they would have his attention. He would return fire, hitting either them or their friends around them.

On Flight 93 things were nothing like Aurora. The heroes of 9/11 had plenty of time, in comparison to the 90 seconds the theater patrons had. The hijackers took over the cockpit at 9:31, leaving the passengers free in the cabin. Many of them made phone calls and they learned that planes had already been flown into the World Trade Center. Unlike the audience in the theater, the passengers on Flight 93 knew exactly what the terrorists had in mind. They even took a vote about whether they should storm the cabin, which they did at 9:57. The plane crashed at 10:03.

Aurora is the perfect example of why concealed handguns offer no protection. Trained cops armed with handguns were helpless against armored robbers during the North Hollywood shootout in broad daylight. What hope could the audience in the dark, gas-filled theater have against the similarly armored Holmes?

The bad guys will always have the upper hand. They have all the time in the world to plan their attack, stockpile their weapons, prepare their defenses, pick their location, find the holes in security, surveil their victims. To question the bravery of the victims in the theater and to claim that handguns would have stopped anything is the height of foolishness.

As a result of a few attacks by foreign terrorists millions of travelers must suffer long lines at airports, waste billions of hours at airports, take our shoes off, face restrictions on bringing liquids on planes, submit to intrusive body searches and repeated exposure to X-ray scans, and on and on. Republicans like Pearce are willing to disenfranchise millions of voters by requiring photo IDs to stop a few instances of voter fraud. Republicans like Pearce want to empower the police to stop anyone on the street and harass them for their papers.

Is it so unreasonable to ask gun owners to accept the same sorts of minor inconveniences that everyone else has to endure to reduce the number of people killed by our own domestic terrorists?