Craig Henry over at Lead and Gold has a bone to pick with Richard Clarke’s speculation about terrorist attacks in the US. So do I.
Clarke says that a few gunmen can mow down hundreds of people in a shopping mall with impunity.
Four men, disguised as private mall-security officers and armed with TEC-9 submachine guns, street-sweeper 12-gauge shotguns, and dynamite, entered the mall at two points and began executing shoppers at will.
(Insert paragraph about how the Assault Weapons Ban would have prevented the terrorists from arming themselves.)
The panic and confusion brought on by the terrorists’ opening volleys led many shoppers to run away from one pair of murderers and into the path of the other, leading to more carnage. Two off-duty police officers were cited for bravery after they took down one pair of terrorists with their personal weapons, before the local SWAT team could get to the scene. Meanwhile, one of the other terrorists used his cell phone to remotely detonate the rental van he had driven to the mall; this resulted in even more chaos in the parking garages. Once the SWAT team arrived, it made short work of the two remaining terrorists. By the time the smoke had cleared, more than 300 people were dead and 400 lay wounded. In the confusion of the firefight the SWAT team had killed six mall guards and wounded two police officers.
400 dead? Not if I’m in there buying new tennis shoes. And not if any of my former students are there. Or anyone from the Pink Pistols, one of the organizations for which I volunteer.
This might seem reasonable to someone who isn’t concerned with self defense, but to those of use who shoot it’s pretty much insane.
Read the whole thing. Craig is more than a little long-winded about this subject, but I can see why he wanted to talk about it at length.