Good guy stops bad guy with gun

[Burning Petard]

"All it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/police-man-s ... 47389.html

And then stand around waiting for the accolades with your victory trophy.

snailgate

[ex-khobar Andy]

Yes - I read that story. Tragic.

I'm not even sure that I can blame the officer who shot Hurley. He ran to the situation and with presumably limited information, saw a guy with a weapon and shot him.

It blasts a huge hole in the NRA argument that possession of a gun makes you safer, and demonstrates once again the nonsense it has always been.

I recall that at the Gaby Giffords shooting, there were a couple of guys in the crowd who were carrying but didn't get their weapons out because they knew that the first police on the scene would assume that they were the bad guys and respond accordingly.

[Long Run]

You can find any number of anecdotal stories to support one argument or another. The studies on defensive use of a gun vary widely as the CDC has noted:

Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to the design of studies. The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violenceexternal icon indicates a range of 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.

[ex-khobar Andy]

You can find any number of anecdotal stories to support one argument or another. The studies on defensive use of a gun vary widely as the CDC has noted:

Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to the design of studies. The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violenceexternal icon indicates a range of 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.

Yes, anecdotes are not evidence. But CDC is forbidden (Dickey Amendment) from doing anything which might be construed as supporting gun control. Congress also, in 1996, took from CDC's budget the exact amount ($2.6 million) they had spent on tracking gun violence in case they were under any misapprehensions about the reasons for and extent of the proscriptions.

See here for a 2015 piece which explains this. I've no doubt it's worse now unless Biden has undone some of that damage.