Predictably,
in the days following the Aurora, Colorado, tragedy, some gun
enthusiasts have argued that if several theatergoers had been
carrying concealed weapons that night, they could have limited the
number of people killed and wounded. We heard the same suggestions
after the Gabby Giffords shooting and after the Virginia Tech
shooting.
It
was good to read in this morning’s Times, then, the op-ed
piece by Michael Black, a former Chicago police officer.
Black
relates some of his own experience with armed criminals – and he
emphasizes the difficulty that well-trained, experienced officers
have when they’re faced with someone with a gun.
In
the Aurora theater, with the sights and sounds of the movie combining
with gunshots from a live person and a panicking crowd: “Even a
highly trained armed police officer would have been caught off
guard,” Black writes. “Try adding a bunch of untrained, armed
civilians into the mix – this type of intervention could have made
things much worse.”
This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2012.
