Walmart Shooting-CC Holders Hindered Police? NOT!

D

DaleA

New member
Oh boy.
In the wake of the Walmart shooting in Colorado the New York Daily News ran the following headline.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...t-shooting-delayed-shoppers-article-1.3608011

Investigation into Walmart shooting was delayed by innocent shoppers who pulled out their guns in response
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Okay...could this be a problem? I guess. But then I found the ABC News story about concealed carry folk at Walmart:

ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/latest-police-suspect-colorado-walmart-shooting-50883278

He (Thornton police spokesman Victor Avila) says the customers who pulled out guns did not slow officers' response to the crime scene.
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(I'm the one that put part of the above quote in bold.)

So which is it?

I SUSPECT that concealed carry folk are going to be pilloried from now forward every time something like this happens. The anti-gun attacks, irrational and unfounded are just so unremittingly relentless it's just depressing.
 
One story talk about the police going through store video and having to rule out the ones who pulled their guns, which did delay the INVESTIGATION of the crime in order to identify the shooter.

The second story says that customers pulling out their weapons did not delay officers RESPONDING to the crime.

There's a difference. It appears to me that you jumped to conclusions, based on your belief that anti-gun attacks, irrational and unfounded are just so unremittingly relentless.
 
AFAIK,with what has been released, the killer entered WalMart,shot the victims,then turned and left He drove away. At this point,motive unknown,or at least unreleased.

IMO,what the news reporter's opinion is? NYT reporters and gun matters equates to nothing useful.

Had the shooter stayed in the store and continued to shoot,those armed folks would have saved lives.
As it is,they did no harm.The oft-repeated prediction that gun-totin public cowboys are irresponsible,untrained,and will just shoot up the store ala "The Wild Bunch" did not occur .

That the police spent more time is a police matter the Armed Citizens have no control over.
 
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Don't you realize that he probably picked Walmart as his place for shooting innocent strangers BECAUSE he knew there would be concealed carriers present? Everyone knows that ordinary citizens carrying guns makes it more unsafe, so maybe the shooter was just trying to highlight that danger? Only because the legal concealed carriers are so poorly trained and ill equipped to defend themselves did none of them fire their weapons and create mass mayhem and chaos in the store. Its just common sense that ordinary citizens can't be trusted with guns, and that the right response to a crazy shooter in their midst is to hide and pray, or maybe throw store merchandise at the shooter, and wait for the police to come and protect them. If only Walmart had big signs that said "No Guns Allowed" then none of this would have occurred in the first place. And not only at Walmart, but other places probably inspire some to kill innocent bystanders, maybe with a truck on a bike path, as a way of showing their apprehension at the thought of people carrying those awful guns hidden under their coats or in their pockets. Just common sense.
 
Had the shooter stayed in the store and continued to shoot,those armed folks would have saved lives.
As it is,they did no harm.The oft-repeated prediction that gun-totin public cowboys are irresponsible,untrained,and will just shoot up the store ala "The Wild Bunch" did not occur .
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LOL, had the shooter stayed in the store, those armed folks would have saved lives? Well, for as long as he was in the store, they didn't bother to save any lives.

He walked into a GUNS ALLOWED ZONE where there were apparently several gun carriers present and not one of them did a single thing, not one stinking thing. Just how much longer did the gunman need to remain in the store before the good citizen gun carriers were going to start saving lives??????? How many more people did he need to kill before they reacted???????

I don't see how you can put a positive spin on how well they would have performed in saving lives when they didn't show any inclination to do anything like that at all while the opportunity to respond was occurring.

Definitely not a "Wild Bunch" as you note, but also definitely not the proclaimed pro gun crime deterrent mass shooting stopping hero types either. Pretty much, the armed people of Walmart were a NONFACTOR in this event, except to hinder the cops.

Darlene Jackson, a truck driver, said she was in the toy section of the store when she heard the gunshots. She later heard that people other than the shooter had guns, but they did not confront the killer.

“Why wouldn’t they draw their guns and shoot him?” she said.
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http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/02/shoppers-pulled-weapons-walmart-shooting/
 
And in "not so surprising" followup news: When my local paper (owned by the Boulder Camera) reprinted the Denver Post article sited by DNSpy, they retitled it to throw some shade at the CCW crowd. It's title? The scary:
Panicked people, shoppers drawing guns created chaos, delayed investigation into Thornton Walmart shooting
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When you read the actual article, though, it's apparent that:
1. No one seemed to know that anyone had drawn a gun until police saw it on camera. So the "chaos" can't be attributed to the CCW crowd.
2. None of the CCW citizens present ran about shooting wildly at all other CCW carriers as we've been told to expect by the media. (AKA: no "Blood in the streets")
3. The CCW crowd didn't act like the police officers that they weren't empowered to be. This was a disappointment to some who were not carrying....of course.

I'm an optimist:
I'd save this story as a rebuttal to all future talking points about "crazy self-appointed vigilantes with CCW weapons."
 
I've though about being a a situation like that and Have come up with never expose my gun until I'm ready to shoot. To do so only let's the shooter know where danger is coming from. Actually with stories I've read about CC guns, I'm not sure it's a good idea to be involved like that in the first place. Take yourself and family to safety is you can. Avoid a gun fight, that's what the cops are for.
 
The possibility exists that the gunman saw citizens drawing guns and that is what caused him to beat feet without doing more harm.
 
I think SOSD in post #2 pretty much hit the nail on the head.

I still believe that the anti-gun movement has found a new stick to beat us with...that concealed carry folk waste the time of police officers just by being there.
 
I'd say you are seeing a definite messaging effort from the anti-gun side here.

Since the shooter left prior to police responding (because others were armed?), you can hardly say CCWs delayed police response. As for "delaying the investigation", they arrested the shooter five hours after the incident according to this: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/20...marts-armed-innocents-hampered-police-or-not/

I'm sure it was confusing sorting out who was who; but I'm doubtful the confusion caused any significant delay to police. Which makes one wonder why this story is getting national coverage?
 
"He walked into a GUNS ALLOWED ZONE where there were apparently several gun carriers present and not one of them did a single thing, not one stinking thing. Just how much longer did the gunman need to remain in the store before the good citizen gun carriers were going to start saving lives???????"

I kind of have to think that maybe they held back due to either not having a clear shot or a fear of hitting innocent bystanders close to the active shooter. It could be none of the CCW holders was even close enough to take a decent shot. We weren't there so really don't know exactly what was of was not possible.
Paul B.
 
No Paul, we weren't there, but how many times have you seen posted on this site or others like it, "If only somebody had been there with a gun..."?

Well, there were several people there with several guns and none engaged the shooter. It is a salient observation.

There are no reports that any good guys with guns, threatened, drew on, or interacted with the shooter in any way. Nobody is being heralded as a hero for stopping the shooter in any form or fashion.
 
Did you say NYTimes ? Do some research and you'll find that during the American Civil War the NYTimes bought gatling guns to protect their offices during the Draft Law Riots ! :eek: Times do change ! :rolleyes:
 
I have been struck by the fact that armed intervention by off-duty/former LE seems to be more common than intervention by CCW holders without LE experience/backgrounds.

This does not make sense, from a pure numbers standpoint. In TX, for example, there are something like 60,000 LEOs. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the total number of off-duty LEOs and retired LEOs something like double that number. I'll use 150,000 as the number.

There are about a million license holders in TX. That's about a 6 or 7 to 1 advantage in pure numbers.

And yet when we see an armed citizen intervening in active shooting situations it seems that it's more common for them to be off duty/ex LE than for them to be a license holder without any LE background.

it seems that people without LE background/training are very unlikely to mount an armed intervention into an active shooting situation even if they're in place and armed.
 
it seems that people without LE background/training are very unlikely to mount an armed intervention into an active shooting situation even if they're in place and armed.
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My pure speculation: This may save more lives than it costs.
 
It's hard to say one way or the other.

I've seen statistics indicating that citizens (as opposed to on-duty LEOs) tend to shoot the wrong person less often than responding LEOs. That is usually attributed to the fact that the citizen is more likely to have seen the situation develop from the ground up as opposed to being thrown into the middle of an existing situation as a responding LEO is.

Another factor which I should have mentioned in my previous post is that there are a lot of license holders who don't carry and that might get the two populations (armed citizens & off-duty/retired LEOs) much closer to each other, numerically speaking.

I'm certainly not trying to push people to respond if they wouldn't otherwise, nor am I impugning those folks who choose not to mount an armed intervention. It was just something interesting that I had noticed awhile back.
 
I'm glad that whatever delay in the investigation there might have been didn't result in any harm or the suspect evading capture.

I can understand that the police might have wanted to view the camera footage carefully after the shooting but I would have thought that the shooter would have been pretty obvious. I'm not sure what the delay would have been in pursuing the shooter.

How, exactly, did people drawing their firearms delay police from pursuing the shooter? If the police delayed pursuing the shooter because they wanted to rule out accomplices, then they have flawed policy.
 
CCW holders are under no legal obligation to protect others in our state. If I was in that store and was not nearby/directly threatened by the shooter, I wouldn't necessarily try to go into "SWAT" mode and try to take out the shooter amidst a crowd of shoppers without the liability protection of being a badged public safety officer. MY gun is primarily to keep me and my family safe. Anything beyond that is at my discretion and the circumstances. I suspect that the laws in Co are similar? I haven't seen the video, but the shooter may have just entered the store, fired at several people, and left again in a matter of seconds.
 
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