I’ve never tried to write a blog before, but the concept of “a good guy with a gun” is so dumb that I finally had to try and be heard on this issue. First a little background. I spent slightly over six years in the U.S. Army. I spent three years and 3 months of that time in Vietnam. I can assure you that I know something about the insanity of a gun fight. I am not someone who has a degree in Psychology, or any similar field, I’m just a guy who’s been there. So, here are some of the realities as I see them.
First, the concept of training. When you join the armed services, you are given very intensive weapons training, you spend weeks at a time at the range learning to handle your weapon. Then there is tactical and other combat training. The training goes on every day, all day and you are subjected at any and all time’s day or night to meet a supposed attack. This includes being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night from a sound sleep in pitch darkness. This goes on 24/7 until you are sick and tired of doing the same things over and over and over. The whole point of this is to give you a set of conditioned reflexes. The only way you can survive combat is to be able to react to different situations instantly without thinking. In a real firefight, if you have to stop to think about what to do, you’re going to be sent home in a body bag. You can’t get that kind of training in civilian life.
Second, let’s look at possible scenarios. Let’s say a shooter enters a darkened building, such as an arena during a concert or a theater during a movie, and opens fire. You can assume that he or she has multiple weapons including an assault rifle, lots of ammo and probably a bullet proof vest. The first reaction is going to be to hit the ground, it’s a survival reflex and even the Army, at least when I was trained, teaches you to take cover first then figure out where the fire is coming from. So, GGWAG assuming he or she hasn’t already been shot, decides to be a hero and pops up with their gun in hand and starts shooting, in the dark. Since they haven’t been trained in night combat, the odds of hitting the shooter are miniscule, but every round that’s fired has a probability of hitting an innocent person who is just trying to hide. In fact, the probability is that the GGWAG will go into “spray and pray” mode and empty their entire magazine in the direction of the shooter. This can end very badly. Either the shooter nails you as soon as you stand up or, the GGWAG manages to get a few rounds off and winds up in a gunfight with the shooter, during which several innocent people are killed. Then, the SWAT team shows up, and the GGWAG, being indistinguishable from a terrorist is taken out by SWAT almost immediately. So, even if our would be hero manages to take down the terrorist, the chances are that more innocent people will have been killed or injured then would have been the case without his or her intervention, and, it is more likely than not, the GGWAG with a gun won’t survive.
But, let’s take this horrific scenario one step further. GGWAG has popped up and is exchanging fire with the shooter. Suddenly GGWAG #2 pops up, gun in hand. The shooter has dropped to the floor because GGWAG #1 is shooting at him (remember what I said earlier about dropping, I can tell you from personal experience that hearing a round zip past your head will make you hit the ground fast!) So, all he sees is GGWAG #1 standing there with a gun in his hand and opens fire. Now we have a two way gunfight going on between GGWAG #1 and GGWAG #2. Since the shooter is probably either a psychotic or a Jihadist, they are most likely not going to run, but instead, he or she will join in. Since the shooter is inflicting as much carnage as possible, the “spray and pray” mode works for him. And God help us if there’s a GGWAG #3. When SWAT bursts in they don’t know who is who so they will assume for their own safety that anyone with a gun drawn is part of the problem. At the least, anyone with a gun drawn will be arrested. At worst, if you don’t ditch your gun and put your hands in the air fast enough you’ll be shot. It is most likely that autopsies will show that some of the dead were killed by the weapons of one or more of the GGWAGs and only luck and an expensive defense team will keep them out of prison, not to mention the lawsuits filed by the families of the people that were killed “by friendly fire”. Sorry guys, the concept of “collateral damage” only works in Spy movies, not in real life. Just ask Lt. William Calley.
But, if that wasn’t horrible enough, we can make the situation much worse by moving events to a crowded street. Now, every round the GGWAG fires will probably hit someone, and not necessarily the shooter. Again, the GGWAG will probably go into spray and pray mode and hit innocent bystanders. If I may again refer to my military training, a lot of time is spent training soldiers in rate of fire discipline and I assume that is still true today. If you run out of ammo in the first couple of minutes of a firefight, nobody will give you any of theirs. It is also difficult to take the “proper” stance and carefully aim when bullets are flying your way. Again, when the police and SWAT show up, they don’t know who’s who and have to assume for their own safety that anyone with a gun is, part of the problem. Same endings as the indoor scenario.
I think that the problem is that the general public gets its ideas of a gunfight from all of the TV detective shows and westerns that we grew up with and are still watching today. Don’t get me wrong here, I have my favorites too. However, the violence is sanitized for the general public. Again I can tell you from personal experience that a man who has been shot in the head does not have a small red spot with a trickle of fake blood. It’s very ugly. We have a society that thinks that the bad guys are going to fire a thousand rounds from a 30 round magazine (at the rate of fire of modern assault rifles 600 rounds per minute – you will empty a 30 round magazine in about 2 seconds or less) and not hit anyone and the good guy is going to pop up and take him out with a single shot from a handgun at 50 yards. Sorry GGWAGs, not gonna happen. You can get no idea of the reality of combat from playing first person shooter games or from watching movies. The reality of a gunfight is total insanity, and the only way to survive it is constant training so you react instantly and correctly to the situation at hand. If you have to stop and think, you’re dead. Oh, just for the record, all of that hard and constant training doesn’t really prepare you for a real firefight either. It just gives you a set of conditioned reflexes that will help you survive, but you will never be the same.