>>>>>(also wouldn't hurt to have more good-guys prepared to intervene when a nut-job shows up assuming he's the only one armed and dangerous in the zone. Cops make a lot of enemies, but you don't see a lot of people going in to shoot up cop bars. I'd bet if that had been an NRA rally he would not have got that many shots off... or been taken alive.)
>>>>
>>>>Something new to me, it seems being in a real, high-stress situation can compromise even the best-trained people who have not been in such a situation. Aside from the psychological factors, apparently you lose fine motor skills so you get cases of people forgetting, or being unable to release manual safeties from their weapons. I don't know the average makeup of an NRA rally, but those members who hadn't been in a live-fire situation up to that point might not be of much use even if armed.
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>>>True, but the odds are much higher that one of the not-freezing ones will shoot back - and thereby at least disturbing the accuracy of attackers shots if not stopping them.
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>>That's an attractive theory, and sounds plausible but I wonder how well it holds up in practice. According to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States ) there were 10,100 homicides using firearms committed in the United States in 2005. I imagine the current numbers are comparable. Off the top of my head I can't think of any mass (or even single) shootings that were ended by another armed person who was not police, military or some other trained professional. So, although the idea of "armed and ready" citizens sounds good, it may be they are never there when you need them most :(
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>>That could be a very interesting question to ask directly of the NRA: "How many shooting incidents in the last X years were ended by armed members of your organization, who were not trained professionals acting in the course of their regular duties?"
>
>The thought of being in a room full of "armed and ready" citizens when some nutcase pulls out a gun is a strong reason to avoid the USA :-)

There were plenty of armed citizens in the Safeway at the time and not one fired their weapon. It's impossible to determine if any of them would have fired had they been outside at the time.