Contributors

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Chattanooga Good Guys Had Guns After All

The conservative meme is that five men died in Chattanooga because big bad government wouldn't let them have guns. However, the FBI reports that some service personnel in the Chattanooga shooting were armed:
A Navy officer and a Marine fired their sidearms hoping to kill or subdue the gunman who murdered five service members last week in Chattanooga, Tennessee, according to multiple military officials familiar with internal reporting on the tragedy.

It remains unclear whether either hit Muhammad Abdulazeez, who was shot and killed on July 16 after he gunned down four Marines and a sailor at the Navy Operational Support Center in Chattanooga. It's also unclear why they were armed, as it is against Defense Department policy for anyone other than military police or law enforcement to carry weapons on federal property.
Other independent news outlets have the same account, including the Chattanooga paper and U.S. News and World Reports. Yet gun nuts around the country have been insisting that if only the service members had guns everyone would be saved, and some of these kooks have been standing "guard" at recruiting centers against the advice of the Pentagon.

In fact, the shooter was being chased by cops with guns, some of the victims had guns, and people died anyway. This proves, for the thousand and first time, that guns are not armor: they do not protect you from bullets.

Abdulazeez attacked two military facilities: no one was killed at the recruiting center where the gunman shot up the windows with a Kalashnikov. Then he drove to the Navy support center, while the cops were chasing him, and killed five guys:
According to FBI Special Agent in Charge Ed Reinhold, who spoke at a press conference July 22, Abdulazeez plowed his rented car through the gates, and with Chattanooga Police chasing close behind, the gunman got out of the car and stormed into the building. Abdulazeez wore a vest with extra ammunition and carried an assault rifle and a handgun. An additional gun was found in his vehicle.

A service member inside the building saw Abdulazeez approaching and fired at hi[m], Reinhold said. The investigator's description of this incident matches account of White's actions that day, as relayed by officials close to the investigation to Navy Times. The gunman shot back and then proceeded inside.

Once inside, he fatally wounded a sailor and "continued to shoot those he encountered," Reinhold said.

As police followed the gunshots, he then walked out the back door into a gated motor pool area, where troops tried to scramble over a fence to safety, and it was here that the four Marines were killed.

When the shooting first started, troops inside the building went room to room to rush their colleagues to safety, said Maj. Gen. Paul W. Brier, commanding general of the 4th Marine Division. Then, some rushed back into the fight.

Two guns belonging to service members were recovered at the scene, he said; shots were fired from at least one. It's unclear if the gunman was hit by one of those weapons, Reinhold said. The military will investigate whether the service members were authorized to have those weapons, he said.
This is a text-book example of how guns provide no form of "protection" in mass shootings.

The bad guys will always have the advantage: they are calm (usually described as having "dead eyes") because they're suicidal nutjobs trying to take out as many people at they can before killing themselves. They shoot first and have surprise.

The targets of shootings like the ones in Chattanooga and Lafayette are busy doing their jobs, or watching a movie. They're not expecting to be shot at. A lot of the time they're not even sure they're hearing gunfire. They're not psychologically prepared for combat mode. They are slow to react.

Most of the time, therefore, even when intended victims are armed, shooters will be able to empty their entire clip before anyone has a chance to respond -- semiautomatic weapons can easily discharge two to four rounds per second. That's a big reason why once upon a time there were laws that limited ammo capacity.

Preventing kooks from getting guns in the first place will save more lives than killing them after they've already shot ten people.
These are the simple facts. Being armed will not prevent all deaths in mass shootings. At best, it can only reduce the number of victims. By the same token, making it harder for nuts like Houser in Lafayette and Abdulazeez in Chattanooga to buy guns won't stop all killings -- but it will reduce the number of victims.

After the Chattanooga shooting everyone was screaming about self-radicalized Islamic terrorists, even though it's clear that Abdulazeez was a mentally ill drug and alcohol abuser. He was basically the same as any other loser who shoots up a mall or high school.

Contrast that with the reaction to the Lafayette theater shooting, when a right-wing white man shot up theater and killed two women. Officials could only bemoan the sorry state of mental health care in this country.

The mental health history of both these men was known before they bought their weapons: that should have made it impossible for them to buy guns legally. And when these mentally ill men attempted to buy guns it should have sent off alarm bells, bringing the FBI and local law enforcement in to evaluate their mental state.

The problem isn't mental health care as much as the sheer ease with which mentally ill Americans can buy massive amounts of firepower. One possible solution: hold gun stores culpable when crooks and kooks use the guns they sell to murder people.

Conservatives blamed "the government" for the sorry state of the mental health care system, but they made it that way.
In the wake of Lafayette conservatives blamed "the government" for the sorry state of the mental health care system, but conservatives made it that way. They constantly rail against Medicaid and the ACA, which is exactly what funds the mental health care system that they insist should stop these shootings. Then they don't want to change the gun laws to make it harder for these nuts to get hold of guns in the first place.

Conservative policies are the direct cause of these shootings: that's why there's a cluster of mass shootings in the South, where gun laws are lax and spending on mental health care is nil.

Nothing will prevent all mass shootings. Tougher gun laws will stop some. Better mental health care will stop some. Better reporting by local governments to federal databases will stop some. Tighter background checks will stop some. Holding gun sellers responsible for selling guns to crooks and kooks will stop some. Adequately funding police departments to improve their response times will stop some.

And, yes, shooting the bastards when they open fire in a public place will prevent some tiny number of additional deaths.

But if you look at the tens of thousands of deaths due to the profusion of guns -- due to suicide, domestic disputes, children getting hold of guns, stupid gun accidents (dropped weapons, cleaning "unloaded" guns), guns stolen from honest citizens' houses and then used to commit murder -- the number of lives armed civilians might save in relatively rare mass shootings would be dwarfed by the carnage caused by our gun-crazy culture.

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