Sensibly Progressive has a great run down of the 20/20 special, which basically informs us that we’re all way too stupid to defend ourselves with a firearm.
UPDATE: More from VSSA:
We’re only ten minutes in to this and it is very clear that the theme of the program is that ordinary citizens are not prepared to use a firearm in self defense. They give several hours of training to three students at a small college then put them in a scenario to see how they react. Predictably, they fail.
And put them in a scenario as a trained shooter, namely a police instructor. They should have put them up against another untrained person. This is an excellent timeline from Found: One Troll:
Active shooter breaks in and Jimmy is unable to draw his sidearm from under his concealing sweatshirt. Looks like he needed more practice. Jimmy is shot and “killed†before he can draw. Jimmy did not seek concealment behind his desk. Sawyer trots out the canard that Jimmy could have been disarmed by the active shooter, his own gun used against the other students after he falls. The active shooter is a police officer and firearms instructor, trained and experienced in shooting while moving and recognizing threats. Not a realistic simulation, it seems to me.
Definitely not realistic. If a highly trained individual goes ape shit, the body count is going to be high, and even trained police officers are going to have difficulty taking him down. Also, the person playing the role of crazed shooter expected resistance. A real shooter will not be. But it does bring up an important point: you have to be better than the person you’re going up against, and what I’ve long suggested to get better is training and competition, particularly practical shooting.
Did you notice the armed student is always in the same seat, right at the front and in the center? Put that student randomly in the class and Mr. Policeman will have a hard time finding his target.
“…..and what I’ve long suggested to get better is training and competition, particularly practical shooting.”
Amen to that. Getting “several” hours of training with almost no time to digest the information and work it out in uncomfortable circumstances is a sure fire recipe for failure. This program should be a lesson for a number of reasons:
1. The mainstream media is practically alienated & disconnected from the people they report the news.
2. When it comes to the issue of firearms, the media are WILLFULLY ignorant of the proper usages of it.
3. If you are expecting support from these people- You have a better shot turning bull crap into gold. They are not your friends, nor are they your allies under any circumstances. They are an obstacle that must be overcome.
Practical shooting is the best thing that the shooter can do to “practice” his current shooting skills. IDPA and IPSC are not training, but are ways to practice under stress. I view them as crucial and fun aids to helping me develop as a shooter. Where else can you shoot prone through a barrel at steel popper?
“Did you notice the armed student is always in the same seat, right at the front and in the center? Put that student randomly in the class and Mr. Policeman will have a hard time finding his target.”
Or put more than one in the class armed! How about that from a real world scenario?
The show was inane tripe! If I am concerned enough to carry, then I am not going to hide it under a loose sweatshirt two sizes two big where I can’t even get to it. I would wear it under a suit coat or sweater vest with a shoulder holster where I could whip it out in milli-seconds. Second, I wouldn’t be sitting at the front of the room where there is no escape from the intruder and I am one of the first to be in his line of fire and with unknown people behind my back. I would be sitting at the back of the room with full view of all exits and adits and plenty of time to blast the scumbag before he even sees me. ABC and Sawyer manipulated a preconceived outcome. What a liberal fraud!
And I’m sure the ‘shooter’ wasn’t previously informed where the individual w/ the ‘gun’ would be.
They recently conducted an ‘active shooter’ drill at my Univ. They touted how good their response time was (1 min) and that they captured the shooter, had a faux news conference, etc.
The reality was that they were all sitting in a ready room, geared up, knowing when and where the ‘shooting’ was going to be.
When I was taking my TX CHL class, the instructor asked me to come up for a knife vs gun demo. He gave me a rubber knife and said we were going to pretend I was attacking him, so he could show how short a time it took for an attacker to get too close to you. The Teuller drill, I think it is called. The teacher was attempting to have me start at about 20 feet away, but I was standing next to him when he handed me the knife so I started pretending to stab him with it, immediately.
He got a bit huffy and asked me why I started stabbing him with it. I told him that I knew he was a CHL instructor and I did not want to get shot, so I was going to start stabbing right away up close. He laughed, the class laughed, and the teacher’s point was made. Just not in the way he had planned.
The only time I saw the promo for this I knew immediately, it was going to be an anti-gun screed and a smear, it had to be, it was ABC News and it was Diane Sawyer…
Do you think this will drive up the anti-gun numbers, or be ignored?
Good question Ken. Network news doesn’t have the influence it used to, and that’s a good thing. As bad as CNN often is, it’s not as bad as the major networks. I’m going to wager the impact is minimal, but we’ll see.
“I wouldn’t be sitting at the front of the room where there is no escape from the intruder and I am one of the first to be in his line of fire and with unknown people behind my back. I would be sitting at the back of the room with full view of all exits and adits and plenty of time to blast the scumbag before he even sees me.”
A friend of mine said pretty much the same thing. Of course he also said if he wouldn’t get in a whole lot of trouble he would have traded seats at the last minute. While he’s no Bob Munden or Todd Jarrett I’m fairly certain the “shooter” wouldn’t walk away clean.
Someone should use ABC’s procedure to create a video with a more realistic scenario (more people in classroom, two or three CCW carriers spaced near back of room (location unknown to shooter), relatively unskilled psycho shooter, etc) and post it on Youtube.
60 minutes did their thing.
http://gungeekrants.blogspot.com/2009/04/60-minutes-gun-piece.html
Wouldn’t it be a more realistic “experiment” if the police instuctor was the concealed carry gun owner sitting in the audience and the shooter was one of the poorly trained students? Based on the reading that I have done, most of the spree shooters have not been highly trained shooters, such as police, military, competitive shooters, NRA members or students at shooting schools. Most of the spree shooters have been mentally unstable people without formal instruction.