A Couple of Interesting Articles

[Rivington]

Um, no, fucktard. The tackle statistic is irrelevant.

Saying something false twice doesn't make it true. Be less stupid.

You wanna tackle a guy with a gun, be my guest. Go for it.

Get your ass shot.

Yes yes, people get their asses shot pulling a gun and firing back too. So do bystanders—indeed, sometimes a sufficient number of bystanders are shot to make a non-spree shooting seem like a spree shooting.

But a surprising number of physical counter-attackers don't get shot, and some that do still manage to complete their own attack. probably, as I mentioned up top, because a lot of successful tackles take place in school shooting-settings. Schools have a fair number of people who practice tackles and takedowns a lot—football players, coaches, etc.—and because school shooters tend to be rather weak and pathetic physically.

Let's see the corralary statistic of people who actually tried to close with a given shooter and ended up getting shot.

Got that one?

No, do you? If you don't—and you don't—feel free to apologize and them immediately STFU. While you're at it, give me the statistic of the number of people who are armed during a rampage shooting who don't end up using their guns. It happens, and sometimes thankfully so.

If we're using the DA list as a source, we can see that the difference between a civilian tackle and a civilian with a gun (whether they fire or not, using a very expansive definition of civilian) is small: If you compare the average of people killed in shootings stopped by armed civilians and unarmed civilians you get 1.8 and 2.6 but that’s not nearly as significant as the difference between a proactive civilian, and a cowering civilian who waits for police. If tackling really led to people getting shot as invariably as you claim we would a) expect to see fewer successful tackles than we do and b) much higher body counts in tackle-stoppages. We don't.

What we do see is this. Of the DA shootings: 14 are stopped either by police or shooter suicide. Eleven were stopped by unarmed civilians. Six were stopped by armed civilians (including security guards and off-duty cops), of which three never fire, and one who fired was shot and killed.

So, of the fourteen stopped by cops or suicide—how many shooters gunned down people who tried to tackle them? Even if it was all fourteen—and it wasn't—tackling remains surprisingly effective.

My point in actually a) digging up and b) looking at the source was to point out that one of the articles in the OP was making a claim not in evidence based on the source. If you want to take issue with that, go ahead, be exactly the sort of moron that people decry in the great rolling gun control debate: the guy who Knows What He Knows And Doesn't Need No Facts.

[Rivington]

Let's take a look at the shooters who were either stopped by police (shot or surrendered) or committed suicide:

For Howard Unruh we have an extensive description of his shootings: no reported tackle/takedown attempts. One civilian did shoot at Unruh, to no effect. Unruh kept on walking and kept on shooting.

James Huberty exchanged fire with an outmatched police officer but there are no reports of anyone in the restaurant trying to charge the man. He had over an hour in the restaurant before being taken down.

George Hennars did shoot someone who tried to tackle him-a seventy-one year-old man. There was also the man's daughter, who reached into her purse for her gun, but who had left her piece in her car. This led to her running for office and advocating for more expansive concealed carry laws. From what I've read, it seems that the elderly man's attempted tackle enabled the daughter and some others to escape.

The Columbine shooting is another for which we have an extensive breakdown of the killings: no attempts at tackling; the shooters exchanged fire with police at several points to no effect.

Mark Barton: no report of attempted tackles. He was able to walk from building to building, past the police who had been called, unnoticed by them.

Salvador Tapia: no reports of attempted tackles. Doesn't sound like there was much room for anything, as the shooting took place in "a maze of crates and 55-gallon drums. So when Tapia walked in and started shooting, police said he had effectively cornered all those inside." The police themselves had problems navigating the area.

Weise: Jeffrey May, a 16-year-old sophomore, tried to wrestle Weise inside the classroom, and stabbed him in the stomach with a pencil.[6] His diversion allowed students to flee the classroom to safety, but Weise shot May two times in the neck and once in the jaw, leaving him injured, though not fatally. Let's call this one a draw.

Virginia Tech: another extensive breakdown. No attempted tackles—no surprise as Cho was in the hallway and shooting mostly into the classroom entrances. Several people were saved by a faculty member blocking a door with his body.

Zamora: no reports of attempted tackles. First victim was a police officer. Some victims were killed while Zamora was in a vehicle, and indeed some were shot while driving their own vehicles. It is possible that someone Zamora encountered while on-foot tried to tackle him, but there's no report of it.

Stewart: old age home shooter—nobody in any shape to tackle (many were shot in bed or in wheelchairs). Nurse Jerry Avant was shot twenty-seven times, but not for closing with the shooter; he was bringing patients into a secure room and moving a couch in front of the door to blockade the room.

Jiverly Wong: no reports of tackling.

Hasan: claim above that two people were shot while charging Hasan. A third man threw a table and was shot, but survived. Hasan also managed to outshoot one civilian police officer, wounding her and removing her gun, before being shot himself by a second one.

James Holmes: no attempt at tackling-likely difficult given the theater layout and the smoke bomb.

Lanza: Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach came running into the hall, and Lanza shot them both. armed civilian stoppages that led to private citizen Mark Wilson sadly dying while trying to shoot at a rampager in body armor.

I'm seeing more successful tackles than failed tackles. I'm also seeing a number of hidden police failures in the set of shooters eventually brought down either by police or via suicide when the police show up.

[DerAuslander]

You still don't get it.

Go ahead and fucking advocate for unarmed responses against firearms.

The tackling statistic is irrelevant.

Would you rather close and tackle an unarmed gunman or take cover an return fire?

[Rivington]

You still don't get it.

No, you don't get it.

Go ahead and fucking advocate for unarmed responses against firearms.

Never did that, moron. I pointed out the simple fact that Actually Existing Rampage Shootings are often stopped by people who are unarmed. Facts are never irrelevant.

The tackling statistic is irrelevant.

Idiot repeats untruth three times.

Would you rather close and tackle an unarmed gunman or take cover an return fire?

Idiot makes third appeal to Imaginary Shooting. Idiot is so annoyed that reality doesn't conform neatly to his own beliefs that he even summons up the spectre of an "unarmed gunman" (LOL). Unarmed, unarmed, people might be unarmed! But yes, Fuckleberry, I'd love to tackle an unarmed gunman! Especially if all he is doing is pointing his finger and going "Pow! Pow!"

Your fantasy is irrelevant—is there cover, or will you be on the courthouse steps or in the vestibule of a large church, as two of the people who returned fire were? When you run for it and get shot in the back on the way, what happens? When you run for it and find that the cover is already protecting seven people who squawk and scream, "Don't shoot us!" when they see your sidearm, what happens? Or when one of them tries to tackle you, thinking you're the shooter, because you're white and bald and funny-looking like the kid from Arizona? When you hunker down and the shooter's bullets go right through your cover, as happened to the cop who first encountered Huberty, what happens? When you seek cover and end up in the line of fire of the second shooter, because Columbine shows that sometimes there is more than one, what happens?

See, anyone can play the game of Imaginary Shooting. You're just playing the simple version where you're in a good place to get to appropriate cover against a single shooter who isn't terribly overpowered. You can just as easily play the simple version where you turn a corner and are behind the guy and can jump on him, or the simple version where he bursts into a room and you're sitting behind the teacher's desk right by the door, or the simple version where you're all in one small conference sitting across from the shooter and the one in the same place where you're sitting on the left side of the shooter, and the one where you're sitting on the right side of the shooter.


There are an infinite number of Imaginary Shooting games. In reality, we're not seeing many Actually Existing Shootings where there is a lot of time and space for someone to get to cover and return fire. We are seeing a fair number of shootings where time and space and the population involved finds physical courage fruitful for saving lives, whether the people intervening are armed or not. And that's the message that should get out, because when people wait for the cops—or can sadly do nothing but wait for the cops if the local environment is against them (like in the dark, smoke-filled, packed "gun free" movie theater in the Aurora shooting) more people die.

Here's another Simple Imaginary Shooting: you forgot your gun that day, or had it relieved from you somehow. Say, in a courthouse. What do you do? Seek cover, pull out your phone, and send the Libertarian Party ten dollars via Paypal?

The only real takeaway one can get from looking at Actually Existing Rampage Shootings is that doing something is better than doing nothing. Have a gun? Go for it! Don't have one? Looks like you should probably go for it anyway, because the cops aren't going to show up in time. That this simple conclusion makes you piss your saffron panties has little to do with me, or what you imagine I advocate.

[It is Fake]

Grandma; Mom and Dad are fighting again.

[DerAuslander]

Yup.

You still don't get it.

[Rivington]

Sweet, no facts, no reasoning, no counter-logic. I win.

[DerAuslander]

Sweet, no facts, no reasoning, no counter-logic.

That's because you haven't proved me wrong.

[Rivington]

That's because you haven't proved me wrong.

Had I "proved" anything, there would be no possible recourse to facts, reasoning, or counter-logic. Stick with contemplating my sexy kung-fu dreams.

[DerAuslander]

Had I "proved" anything, there would be no possible recourse to facts, reasoning, or counter-logic. Stick with contemplating my sexy kung-fu dreams.

I would, if I wanted to read the latest Gorean novel.

[Rivington]

I would, if I wanted to read the latest Gorean novel.

Now I'm hot.

[Styygens]

The only real takeaway one can get from looking at Actually Existing Rampage Shootings is that doing something is better than doing nothing. Have a gun? Go for it! Don't have one? Looks like you should probably go for it anyway, because the cops aren't going to show up in time. That this simple conclusion makes you piss your saffron panties has little to do with me, or what you imagine I advocate.

I'm thinking this is the bottom line, which is one reason why police departments changed their tactics against active shooters.

But I'm also thinking there is merit to the point someone made earlier that unarmed responses are more effective because armed attackers often target unarmed individuals -- therefore raising the number of instances in which unarmed responses are successful.

A certain number of unarmed responses are successful due to sheer luck, and others are successful due to some tactical advantage -- such as simply surprising an over-confident attacker with audacity to mount a counter-attack, or attacking from behind, etc.

It seems you are advocating the use of a lesser tactical advantage (surprise and tackling) while DerAus is advocating responding with a greater tactical advantage (returning fire).

I'm not a military man, but I do believe there is a reason soldiers don't spend more time learning how to tackle enemy shooters than they do on the rifle range and rehearsing immediate action drills. I think it's because there's greater tactical advantage in those later tools than in rushing forward to tackle enemies and therefore a higher rate of success.

Just my $.02; I eagerly await having the holes in my thinking exposed.

[Permalost]

I'm not a military man, but I do believe there is a reason soldiers don't spend more time learning how to tackle enemy shooters than they do on the rifle range and rehearsing immediate action drills. I think it's because there's greater tactical advantage in those later tools than in rushing forward to tackle enemies and therefore a higher rate of success.

A soldier's job is more complex than taking down a single crazed gunman by oneself (despite what MCMAP suggests), so saying soldiers train to shoot, not tackle, therefore shooting is superior, isn't really comparing apples and oranges here. Soldiers work in organized groups with weapons that can coordinate across distances to achieve a variety of objectives.

I've heard it said that the defining characteristic of a warrior is the ability to close with the enemy. This is one reason that modern combatives incorporates sport grappling- it forces you eyeball to eyeball with a resisting person. The circumstances may dictate to shooting from behind cover, or going for the tackle, but the main thing is to take action, not lament your current armaments. This is basically what Riv said, so I don't really see what's being argued anymore.

[Rivington]

I'm thinking this is the bottom line, which is one reason why police departments changed their tactics against active shooters.

Yup.

But I'm also thinking there is merit to the point someone made earlier that unarmed responses are more effective because armed attackers often target unarmed individuals -- therefore raising the number of instances in which unarmed responses are successful.

It's certainly a possibility. I asked that poster—who actually made a slightly different claim, about locations where firearms are allowed—to show his work. He hasn't yet. Will you take up the call to show your work?

A certain number of unarmed responses are successful due to sheer luck, and others are successful due to some tactical advantage -- such as simply surprising an over-confident attacker with audacity to mount a counter-attack, or attacking from behind, etc.

The same is the case with armed responses from both civilians and police. Luck and some tactical advantage (or disadvantage, like the shooter has armor and the armed civilian or cop doesn't, which has happened) plays a role in every encounter. I've even made a guess as to why tackling works as well as it does: they seem to work best in school environments, where people actually train in tackling, and where the shooters tend to be small and weak, and don't have much practice in shooting lots of people. That's an example of tactical advantage, I think you'd agree.

It seems you are advocating the use of a lesser tactical advantage (surprise and tackling) while DerAus is advocating responding with a greater tactical advantage (returning fire).

I'm not advocating anything. Indeed, please review the thread and quote anything I've said that you read as "Always tackle, never shoot" or even "All else being equal, tackle rather than shoot." I guarantee that you'll find it nowhere except in your head, and in Der Aus's.

What I am actually doing is going through a list of shootings and pointing out that when Larry Correia writes "The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started," (emphasis mine) he is factually incorrect. In most cases, armed civilians weren't there when it started. Unarmed ones are. You can have whatever opinion you like; you may not have your own facts. Nobody can.

A second thing I am doing is ignoring appeals to Imaginary Shootings, in which the premise of the shooting event is that there a) will be cover for an armed counter-shooter to run for and b) will be time and space for the armed counter-shooter to run for it. The reason I am ignoring these appeals is because when looking at actual shootings, sometimes there is no cover and sometimes there is no time and space. Sometimes shooting still works best—as in the case of an armed security guard shooting someone who attacked a church. Sometimes it doesn't.

I'm not a military man, but I do believe there is a reason soldiers don't spend more time learning how to tackle enemy shooters than they do on the rifle range and rehearsing immediate action drills.

Do you think the solo (or occasionally dual) rampage shooter attacking a school, church, fast food restaurant, or workplace is a military issue? Heck, do you think the three people who tried to tackle Hassan at Fort Hood were poorly trained, or stupid? Or did they simply do the best thing they could given the situation they were in, whether it worked or not? We could ask the same about the cop who was wounded by Hassan and then relieved of her weapon by him too.

I think it's because there's greater tactical advantage in those later tools than in rushing forward to tackle enemies and therefore a higher rate of success.

You're making an appeal to the Imaginary Shooting, specifically the one in which you have placed the would-be tackler in front of the shooter so that he thus must start "rushing forward." Why not contemplate an Imaginary Shooting in which the tackler is behind the shooter, or the one where there is no cover, etc. It's not like there are so many rampage shootings that we can't actually go through them on a case-by-case basis and see when tackles fail and when shooting back fails—I've already done that work as well as one can do given the few minutes it's useful to spend on a bulletin board doing do. Rampage shootings aren't homogenous.

It's easy enough to imagine any set of conditions in which shooting back would work, and in which shooting back would not work. It's simply more useful to look at actual shootings and what tends to happen. What tends to happen is that by the time the cops show up, lots of people are dead, unless someone does something. In some cases, what someone does is shoot back—sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, one need only brandish a gun. Sometimes shooting back means dying. Same with tackling, or chasing someone away, or shoving them into another room.

What is interesting is that tackling seems to work fairly often. That may be because there are more tacklers around than shooters, but it's clearly also the case that nobody is told to tackle when faced with a gun—but it happens anyway, and works anyway, surprisingly often.

[Styygens]

A soldier's job is more complex than taking down a single crazed gunman by oneself (despite what MCMAP suggests), so saying soldiers train to shoot, not tackle, therefore shooting is superior, isn't really comparing apples and oranges here. Soldiers work in organized groups with weapons that can coordinate across distances to achieve a variety of objectives.

Perm,

My point was that soldiers seek to achieve and apply some significant tactical advantage over the enemy. I wasn't seriously suggesting they tackle people.

Cops, using a completely different set of rule of engagement, also seek to apply a tactical advantage in violent situations. That's why they carry an array of tools to apply different levels of force, or why they call in back-up.

And, I would suggest, both of these examples ideally seek to apply the greatest possible tactical advantage -- overwhelming advantage, if achievable. (Although "overwhelming" is likely -- hopefully? -- defined differently in the two contexts.) Experience shows that the greater the tactical advantage applied, the greater the chance of success.

I don't think this principle of applying a greater tactical advantage changes in regards to civilian violence.