Should we ban the weapons or should we allow carry weapons, so law-abiding citizens could protect themselves? After all, that movie theater was in a gun-free zone.
This is obviously different for instance in a war, where both parties are more-or-less prepared to use a gun at any given time.
Now, I've had military training (somewhat mandatory in my country), and do own a gun. But that is because I find target practice and hunting trips interesting, not because I would find any safety application to owning one.
For instance, I went motorcycling through Caucasus right after the revolution in Georgia. This was a time when gas station attendants carried Kalashnikovs and people customarily brought guns to bar, but still I would have never considered taking any weapons there, as those would have only escalated any problem situation in a bad way. And obviously in the end there were no problems. Nice and hospitable people there, and a beautiful country to visit :-)
For high-profile ones, the only example of a quasi-successful confrontation I can think of only through sheer luck avoided an innocent person being shot: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_natur...
That's not very surprising. Many police officers only practice with their weapons once a year when it's time to qualify.
The average concealed carry permit holder shoots for fun, thus practices often.
Also, your second paragraph is somewhat ambiguous, I'm not sure if you mean to imply that the incident described is the only incidence of a confrontation with a deranged shooter. That is most definitely not the case. There are many examples of this happening:
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_20457445/2-die-sho...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shoot...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Colorado_YWAM_and_New_Life...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_School_shooting
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-01-01/local/me-1021_1_publi...
In any case, if we were to follow this argument further, we would expect that many more citizens would be armed, which would likely change things. Given the inherent confusion of such a situation, I would expect we would start seeing armed citizens accidentally shooting other armed citizens because they misread the situation.
Even trained, battle seasoned soldiers make mistakes.
Many people with guns feel empowered to double down in situations they would otherwise walk away from, and the involvement of a gun adds to the opportunities for a deadly outcome. Some gun advocates argue that an armed society is a polite society. I have my doubts about that, but I don't doubt that the consequences of impoliteness would be much more extreme.
Firing a gun in those conditions, you could hit anyone -- by sheer force of numbers, you'd be far more likely to wound a hapless bystander than the shooter. Especially as he was wearing body armour.
As such, I hold that the death toll would have been considerably higher if some of the cinema-goers had been packing heat and decided to shoot back. There's no way this incident is a valid argument for more guns.
Now add more good guys with guns to this scenario.
There's no way the whole thing would've worked out better with more armed people.
Hmmm... Which person do I engage? Maybe the guy with the rifle, down in front of the screen, who is facing the audience, shooting everyone, with a clearing around him?
>Everyone was panicking
Not everyone panics in emergency situations.
>I hold that the death toll would have been considerably higher if some of the cinema-goers had been packing heat and decided to shoot back.
He shot about 60 people in about 90 seconds. Anything to trip him up would have lowered the death toll.
> Hmmm... Which person do I engage? Maybe the guy with
> the rifle, down in front of the screen, who is facing
> the audience, shooting everyone, with a clearing around
> him?
What appears to happen is that people who carry on a routine basis are more aware that they _are_ carrying and act accordingly.
It's a theater. The good guys are in stadium seating, the bad guy is in front.
It's a perfect setup for that kind of a thing - everyone is carrying a weapon, everyone keeps their seat, fires over the heads of the row in front. Problem solved.
But in reality, guys like this never pick an armed crowd of people. They never show up at the police station, never at a gun show, at an NRA convention, never at a shooting range.
I submit if everyone were armed at the theater he would have gone somewhere else.
If everyone started carrying concealed weapons, that would be another story.
Everyone drives. Yet only a small minority truly panic when something bad happens on the road. Most of us turn into a skid, slow down in wet conditions.
Any road - absent something mind-bendingly drastic, I don't see more than a small minority of people carrying daily.
(As a counterpoint to me, you could point out that he was wearing body armor, as if he were expecting resistance. I'd say it was more like he was acting out some costume in his head.)
An armed moviegoer wouldn't need to shoot the gunman to stop him. Even just firing in the air would have let the gunman know "someone else in here is armed and maybe shooting at me, I need to seek cover" and have significantly slowed him down.
(Note that "firing in the air" is of course dangerous, since the bullets will hit stuff and stuff will fall on people. However, since we're talking about a gunman purposefully targeting unarmed people, that risk is much much less than the original risk being mitigated.)
Gun laws in Australia were tightened in 1996 and again in 2002. There's an informative overview on wikipedia which might be worth a read [1]. It doesn't sound like there is much evidence for a significant drop in firearm related homicides due to the change in laws.
However, a few studies argue that there has been a drop in firearm related suicides, although some also argue that the drop in firearm suicides began before the gun control legislation was put in place. The drop in firearm related suicides apparently wasn't just a transfer into other methods of suicide either, which is positive, regardless of what led to it.
[1] http://www.questioningchristian.com/2012/07/what-if-aurora-m...
So far I've yet to read a single news story about a group of scared permit holders shooting at each other.
If you look at the crime statistics for permit holders, and the number of permits revoked you'll find that concealed carry holders are extremely unlikely to engage in the kind of behavior you assume.
The average number of people killed in a mass shooting stopped by a civilian ccw holder is much lower than those killed in a mass shooting involving police simply because of response time.
If an armed civilian is present and is able to stop it, it's usually done before the gunman kills more than a few people, and not end up on the news because of the lack of a 10+ person death toll.
That's not to say an armed civilian could stop a mass shooting in all cases, just that when they do it happens faster.
Additionally, most mass shootings take place in locations where ccw permit holders are banned from having guns.
High schools, colleges, churches, the theater in Colorado.
In fact almost every single mass shooting in recent memory has taken place in a gun free zone, and in many states there are very few places left that are gun free zones.
During the Texas Belltower sniper mass shooting, civilians returning fire saved many lives because they pinned down the sniper and prevented him from acquiring targets.
What do you think would happen if there was a credible threat of a gunman running amok in an environment like a university campus (many people but not crowded, lots of cover) where a large percentage of people is armed? Someone gets shot. Everyone draws their guns. How do they identify the killer? What happens to the first person who correctly identifies them and shoots at them?
Walking around with a gun drawn is stupid. They aren't going to go "hunting down the gunman." They know that they are a totally legitimate target for the police in that situation.