General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The CDC study on guns...shut down. [View all]krispos42
(49,445 posts)...if a guy with criminal intent pulls out a gun and starts threatening people (say, in a fast-food restaurant) and is gunned down by a legally-armed citizen, neither you or I can say the guy prevented a mass murder.
If a criminal kills 5 or more people before he's gunned down, by definition he's committed mass murder and was not stopped by a legally-armed citizen. But if a criminal is gunned down before he's able to shoot, or before he's able to shoot more than a couple of people, then the armed citizen MAY have stopped a mass murder. But we'll never know, because it was stopped.
Every time a CCW permitee guns down a teenager waving a handgun in the face of a 7-Eleven store clerk or a Burger King cashier, he may have prevented a mass murder. I can't say he did, and you can't say he didn't.
I'll also note that several of the mass shootings have taken place by people who figured out the best place to do a mass killing... where people are disarmed. An awful lot of those shootings take place in schools and houses of worship (gun-free zones by law, usually) and workplaces (gun-free zones by employer decree, usually).
Finally, despite the media attention, the fact is that for the same amount of money that Sideshow Bob spend on arming up for the Colorado shooting with his AR-15 and 90-round magazine (which, incidentally, jammed), he could have bought a half-dozen pump-action, sawn-off shotguns loaded with buckshot and simply stood there, emptying gun after gun into the crowd until he had six empty shotguns and 48 empty shells on the floor. 48 buckshot shells fired into a packed crowd, at 12 pellets per shell that's nearly 600 lead balls nearly the size and weight of a 9mm bullet.