Church Of Christ...We hate the sin and love the sinner, but will kill a bitch at a moment's notice.

That's it. I thought @Elwood meant that he didn't shoot until after "slide lock", which didn't make sense. I guess the crowd and people that were in his way had something to do with it...and the head shot.

 

that's why in "The Big Lebowski" when that pedo bowler says he will shove John Goodman's own pistol up his ass and pull the trigger till the gun goes "click" it doesn't make sense. After the last round there is no "click" because the slide shouldn't go forward. But hey, it was still a great line.

 

You all have to read what Elwood wrote:

"That said, I was prepared to Monday Morning Quarterback the good guy for not shooting until slide lock until I realized his one shot was a head shot."

In other words Elwood was going to criticize the guy for only shooting once instead of shooting his whole magazine until the slide locked back but since it was a head shot there was no need to shoot the whole magazine.

 

"...and since I accomplished everything I needed to with that first shot, I elected to save the remaining ammo for another day."

 

Yeah, I'm not sure why there was confusion about that because @Elwood clearly meant that very thing.

 

Something I've found myself thinking about a lot in recent weeks is Robert Heinlein's famous saying, "A well-armed society is a polite society." It's a kind of interesting saying, and PJ O'Rourke couldn't help but quote it back in the '90s in his column about being in Afghanistan and visiting a market where seemingly everybody was carrying a gun.

Why I've been thinking about this quote so much is because while I once sagely nodded in agreement with it, I now find his word choice very interesting. Heinlein was a Libertarian (and even if he never officially embraced the party, he certainly inspired many of its members), so I think we can all agree that he was kind of big on the concept of "freedom." Heinlein was also someone who carefully chose his words. So, why did he describe a well-armed society as "polite" and not as "free"?

 

oh I see. But still a risky move - plenty of folks survive head shots. I have family members who survived them. Obviously I likely would because my brain is a tiny target.

 

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
- Robert E. Howard

 

Either way, we should be the most polite society on Earth.

 

very true! Just about every time you see somebody act like constant dick or disrespectful smartass you say to yourself "damn that guy needs his ass kicked"

 

We don't yet have enough guns to achieve a polite society.

 

My mistake. When I read "not shooting until slide lock", it sounded inside my head like, "Hold fire until after slide lock".

 

"out of the mouths of babes" as they say!

 

So having a gun makes you safe in church. However, the shooter did not fire at people who were unarmed. He killed two people with guns first. The only people killed were security because guns make you the first target.

Good shoot, only the gun owners were culled.

 

So you figure he wouldn't have shot up the church at all if none of the parishioners were armed?

 

Come on! Who among us hasn't brought a concealed shotgun to church?


That's... that's where the demons are, after all.

 

One of the recurring themes around here (usually promulgated by Gunforge after one of these incidents) is "Better Mental Health Care!"

To which I agree across the board, but with health care being slashed and burned at every opportunity under the current administration, where is the "better" supposed to come from?

Then the conversation usually devolves into

Non-Gunforge: "Take all guns away from all crazy people!"
Gunforge: "You can't take away someone's Second Amendment rights just because they were hospitalized for depression 20 years ago!"

Rinse, repeat.

Just sayin'.

 

okay I must be missing something here - can somebody provide a link saying that the two shooting victims were armed? You said "however, the shooter did not fire at people who were unarmed" did you not? Please provide a source.

 

Sorry if “due process” confuses you.

 

I'm not confused. Just wondering what sort of "due process" you propose to apply to the shooter in this instance.

 

His due process was a slug to the brain pan. Clearly the system failed him since it came to that.

 

And his victims?

 

The first person he shot was actually in the process of drawing a gun when he was shot.

The second person--the usher the shooter was standing closest to--was shot next. I am unclear whether the usher is armed, but does not seem to be drawing when he is shot.

The shooter was taken down by a headshot a second later.

An analysis of the shooting:


Look at how many people are armed! This wasn't going to evolve into a mass casualty event because the shooter would have had a lot of fire concentrated on him had he not been dropped so quickly.

 

it was a church service! That fucking place should have been knee-deep in angels protecting people. Talk about dropping the ball! How about a couple of miracles like the shooter's gun misfires or blows up in his face or something? I think that somewhere in the bible Jesus says "wherever two or more of you are gathered my spirit will dwell" or something like that. So where the hell was Jesus or even one of his minions? Total FUBAR on the spiritual side of the house.

 

so a lot of "good guys with guns" in one location can actually stop a violent situation from escalating further? And weird but with all these people armed other innocent church members were not hit by friendly fire by trigger-happy stupid rednecks as predicted by the anti-gun folks. Interesting!

 

Nope, learn to read properly.

 

Yep. And--not to Monday morning quarterback--if they had been a little more on the ball, the guy would've been dropped as soon as the shotgun came out.

I'd MUCH rather risk being hit by a stray bullet then having someone stand over me and shoot me in the head.

 

This is false.
The second victim was unarmed. The shooter killed the first victim because he recognized he was drawing a gun. But even if he had no gun that man probably still would have been shot. It’s just likely that he wouldn’t have been the first victim.
And not all of those people in that church were armed.