Texas is an open-carry state. Why didn't any of the 'good guys with guns' stop the WalMart massacre today?

The mythological “good guys with a gun” never do save the day, do they.

I thought you meant Southhavem. Mississippi’s Walmart Massacre.

The perp WAS stopped by someone wearing a legal firearm, but the police were also on the scene within two minutes. If these facts weren’t the case and we had no legal carrier, we might have had a bigger massacre like in El Paso.

Because that’s always been far easier said than done. Mass shootings can happen anywhere. Doesn’t matter what kind of state it is.

Anyone with half a brain knows that opening fire on a shooter is likely to make it a much bigger problem.

@Demosthenes Usually it happens in a state of chaos.

@Dutchess_lll but those of us with full brains know that taking out an active shooter ends the problem. Because shooting the perp causes them to die.

@Dutchess_lll but the NRA and right wing has been selling this “good guy with a gun” story for 20 years…

Are you telling me that was all a great big lie?

You guys and your egos @Yellowdog. You think you all have the skills of a master mechanic and the skills of a highly trained sniper.
You don’t.

@Yellowdog As all this happens in a state of chaos someone is going think the guy who shot the perp is a shooter and take him out and so on until no one is left standing or they all run out of bullets.

Carrying a gun, and knowing how to use one, are two different things. Most mass shooters have rifles, so someone with a pistol, would be outgunned anyways.

And bullets are flying around willy nilly now from more than one amature shooter

Most concealed guns, are compact. Giving them low accuracy. They also typically have a small caliber bullet. They aren’t designed for shootouts. They’re made for close range. Plus. Some of these mass killers, are wearing body armor.

I don’t even own any gooddamn freakin Gun @Dutchess_lll and if I did I’d be dangerous.

Just because it’s an “open carry state” doesn’t mean every man, woman, and child is carrying. Or that enough are carrying to have one of them in a spot to take care of business. And just because some person in the crowd is carrying doesn’t mean he or she has the nerve to go up against some shooter.

I was always under the impression that every child is packin’ heat in Texas. lol

Even if people were armed, a mass shooting is such a unique, chaotic situation that it makes the “good guys with guns” scenario a lot more difficult to carry out.

It does pay to be proficient. Just blasting away does little to remedy the situation.

Their boner knocked them off balance.

There could be any number of reasons why the “good guy with the gun” didn’t stop this guy.

1) maybe there weren’t any in the store at the time or they weren’t near the shooter. The question assumes that everyone is running around with a gun on their hip. That is not the case.
2) maybe if someone had a gun on them, it wasn’t accurate enough to allow the person to get safely close to the shooter. Typical pistols lose accuracy pretty quickly…out to about 25 yds you might be okay, beyond that, you lose accuracy. The rifle the shooter had was accurate to a much greater distance.
3) It might be that the cops reacted so quickly that any good guy with a gun didn’t have a chance or a reaction time to take out the shooter.

There are other reasons as well, but this should be a start. However it should also be noted that this is one of the few mass shootings in a place where carrying a gun is legal. Most have happened in gun-free zones.

I also came across this article:

https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/03/el-paso-hero-soldier-carried-kids-safety/

This was a good guy with a gun that was NOT in the Walmart, but was in a nearby store. He was armed. He left the area, afraid he would be mistaken for the active shooter. That would be ANOTHER reason why a good guy with a gun might not stop the shooter. However, that didn’t stop him from saving kids that were separated from their parents along the way.

@seawulf575: Those last two posts you just wrote are perfect reasons why, when the gun advocates say we’d be safer if more people carried guns, that’s not necessarily so.

@jca2 The question was why a good guy with a gun didn’t stop this shooting. I gave reasons. If you want to open the investigation or discussion into “are there any cases of a good guy with a gun stopping a violent criminal”, that will change the answers tremendously.
You make the statement that the reasons I gave are proof that the talking point of the gun advocates isn’t necessarily true. There is one point that seems to argue against that. Most shootings of this type happen in gun-free zones. Pulse nightclub, San Bernadino, Paris, Sandy Hook, Columbine, Aurora CO, Parkland, even Ft Hood….all gun-free zones. Ft Hood because it is not policy on military bases to allow normal open carry of private weapons. This shooting is rare in that TX is an open carry state and Walmart does not have a gun-free policy. AND, if you carry that logic even further, you could say that gun control laws are not the answer since MD has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation and Baltimore has one of the highest murder rates. Ditto that with CA or IL or Washington DC. We have seen repeatedly where strong gun controls do NOT equate to lower gun violence.
Let’s be honest…there may be a tie between the location being chosen and the chance of getting shot back at being low.

Also, the question and the debate assumes that people carry guns to be heroes. That isn’t the case. Some may do so, but many do so for self-protection. If you are in Walmart and someone starts shooting at the other end of the store, you may not think that having a gun means you HAVE to rush into the fray. Most gun owners DON’T want to shoot someone.

Few people actually carry. It’s a myth that every Jimbo in Texas is packing heat. If just one person stood up and returned fire then this could have ended very differently, even with a pistol. The most effective way to eliminate the threat of an active shooter is to meet them with force. That’s not a talking point it’s a fact. The “ALICE” method is some of the best training I have seen to deal with active shooters.

An even more effective way to end mass shootings is not to have them in the first place. Most countries don’t.

^^How would you accomplish this

There are already too many guns, in the US. It’s past the point of “just don’t sell them.”

Mental health, and screening social media, seems to be the only reasonable solution. And even that, wouldn’t completely stop these attacks.

Another mass shooting in Dayton last night. 9 people killed. Couldn’t even go one day without one.

Are the pro-gun folks that were too scared/too inaccurate/had too small of a gun to go up against a single live shooter the same folks who think their guns will protect them when the government comes for them?

@martianspringtime – they have been spouting bullshit for years to justify owning guns.

Then when they have a chance to show their value, they turn tail and run.

Freaking liars.

@martianspringtime While there may be some gun owners (a small minority) who think that, not all do. and anyone who thinks the government would ever come for their guns have their heads WAY too far up their butts.

The government would likely never send the jack-boot thugs house to house to take guns away. They will do it through legislation and criminalization. They will try to say something like “mental illness” is a reason for not allowing someone to own a gun, but will not actually specify what mental illness is, what is the driving factor, nor what proof is required. It could be something a simple as saying anyone that is a conservative (or a liberal) is mentally ill. Those sort of things don’t require a shoot out to grab the guns.

Yeah. Even if they wanted to go door, to door, for people’s guns, it would be a disaster. I know lots of people who would rather shoot it out with the military, than give up their weapons (not me, but those people exist.)
It would be a war…

I don’t think you go door-to-door. That won’t ever work.

I think that the approach is this (and it will take 5 years or more to work).

1) set a deadline – say 2025 – for all automatics and semi-automatics to be turned in to the authorities to be melted down. So people can have 5 years to prepare themselves for their gun separation anxiety/

2) Starting day 1 of year 5 – any use of an automatic or semi-automatic means a non-appealable $50,000 fine and an automatic 3 years in jail for the owner and/or user of the weapon.

I think that coercion is going to be more effective.

Of course, Congressional wimps will never do anything like this.

People would just hide their guns. There is no way to track who owns them. Guns have serial numbers, but the numbers only are used for store records.

A guns, for money system would have some effectiveness. But wouldn’t get but a small amount out of circulation.

Plus. Keep in mind that the “drug war” failed miserably. Long prison sentences, and fines, haven’t been a deterrent…

Who owns LEGAL guns is very much an act of public record.

Democrats aren’t as interested in the illegal ones. You can’t disarm your base and expect them to be good with it.

Most of the gun-owners in violent cities use them for protection, not crime. But they did not obtain them legally.

And @Yellowdog gives us two additional unsupported assertions.

1) how do you know what Democrats think? What gives you the right to speak for them?

2) What is your source that “most gun-owners use them for protection”. That may be true, but I am especially curious about your assertion that “they didn’t obtain them legally”.

or did you make that up?

I used to provide assistance and transportation to a lot of people in a building for the disabled when I drove a church van that went to this building several times a week. I grew especially protective of one resident, a former Easter Seals Poster Child back in the ‘70s.

When I was shot in a robbery in 2011, a lot of people in the building, all but a few of whom were minorities, told me that I needed to carry a gun and told me people who would sell me one. I don’t know, but I would suspect they were illegal.

They told me that ’(all) black people carry guns.” It is probably true that the majority do in bad neighborhoods. But they are used for protection, not crime. I do not know whether most of the ones I knew carry guns or not, but the ones I do know, they are not into criminal activity at all.

They will support reducing the amount of guns out there. That I’ll grant ya. They will be the first to organize drives to get guns off the street.

But until they start seeing their neighborhoods safe (not like LA, San Diego, Chicago, and other liberal-run cities)—unless things get a whole lot safer, they will never give up their own guns nor their means of procuring them.

If you start taking all these guns from people who feel they need them for protection, while the churches they attend are already supporting law enforcement and Trump—you will lose them as a base.

Most gun owners do have them, for personal defense. In my state, it’s perfectly legal to sell.someone a gun, without a FFL, or any background check.

I understand that someone told you, that most black people carry guns. But I find that untrue, and highly offensive.
In bad neighborhoods, most people don’t carry. They may have one, or more, in their dwelling. But the streets aren’t packed with gun toting people of color….

What is offensive about it if black people, an entire community in fact, is telling me this, and that I need to carry one? I was SHOT by two black men—does THAT offend you, that they were black? The police who arrived on the scene were black. The police officers and seargent in charge of the arrest was black. The medical staff were mostly black. The judge was black. Is that offensive? Victims to Victory, who helped me in my recovery and I still volunteer with when it isn’t as hot outside, is almost completely a black organization / ministry.

The point is not someone;s color (except in this case, where the people of color vote Democrat)—the point is that any time you take away people’s guns, they will not vote for you. And yes, I CAN purchase an illegal gun from people I know in that Section 8 apartment complex. No, I don’t own a gun, and don’t think carrying would make me any safer from crime, because I’d seldom be able to get it out when the criminal had one pointed at my kidney.

I don’t know the laws, in your state. But, if you buy it from someone who is not a legal federal firearms dealer, that doesn’t make the transaction, or the gun, illegal.

How do they do it in other countries you guys?

They aren’t allowed to have them. America owns 45% of the world’s guns.

We don’t have a gun culture here and most people feel no need to carry a gun, not even the police.

So how can we get us there?

You can’t. It’s like trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons. They already exist, in large numbers, and can be replicated with ease.

@Dutchess_lll You can fly ~~ Seriously though it is going to take a lot of time and it won’t happen in our lifetime.

Not everyone carrying, is trying to save the world. They just want to protect themselves from a crazy world. If you carry a knife, or pepper spray, are you trying to be Superman?

It’s not a crazy world. That’s the problem @MrGrimm888. It’s a crazy U.S.A..

No, @Dutchess_lll , it’s a crazy world. Watch the national news sometime…

International news

From my observations, it is a crazy world. There are just more guns, in the US.

For once, I agree with you @MrGrimm888

(well, I always agreed with you about hot weather and how it sucks… ).

Let’s come at it from this angle: If the evil people could be disarmed, the law-abiding, people-valuing and basically moral populations would have no need for them.

Of course. there’d still be bomb threats. But a lot of problems would be resolved if we didn’t have guns.

Yes. There is definitely a correlation, in why people need guns. The simple fact, is that as long as there are other people, we will be under the constant possibility of having someone try to steal from us, or kill us.
If there were no diseases, we wouldn’t need medical care. If fire was more easily contained, we wouldn’t need firefighters.

Unfortunately, these mass shootings simply make people go acquire more guns. Which increases the chances of more mass shootings…