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The university police chief has legit concerns on training and identification of who is the bad guy with the gun. I am curious what you Utah CCW instructor and holders think?
As far as concerns about other people making mistakes in target identification, NYPD studies have shown that police are several times more likely to shoot the wrong people than you and I are.
The only "legit" concern they have is whether there are enough armed and capable students and staff around to stop (or better yet, deter) a determined mass-shooter...
I don't agree with his broad statement of officer have constant training with firearms. Maybe in some PDs but not all.
Maybe if the officers could be trained not to automatically open fire on anybody with a gun until they've determined what's going on, but that would require some real training.
What do you think would happen in a typical active shooter incident anyways with the campus PD.... my money is "Secure the perimeter and wait for reinforcements" . This happened at Columbine, and also happened at VT. All the guys with the guns just waited outside until long after the gunfire stopped. Nobody charged into the building to see what was going on. The risk of them shooting a good guy was essentially ZERO.
The mistaken identity on the part of the PD is a potential problem BUT these types of encounters happen so quickly that its not likely to matter much.
The advice given was that if you are CCW'ing during an active shooter situation and you have a gun drawn, you may very well be shot by police if you have a gun in your hand.
how frequent does that happen? I think I stand a better chance of getting shot during a no knock warrant than I do by having the police come upon and active shooter scenario where both myself and the gunman are still alive
The same argument could be made to explain why out of uniform off duty officers should not be allowed to carry. It would be a good start for the chief to order all of his officers to be unarmed whenever off duty and out of uniform so that their safety may be enhanced by removing the chance a police officer will mistake them for a criminal in a shooting situation.
Also, expect the school to change their written policy on weapons to bar the legal ones as well now.
I think it is more important to remove the incentive of "gun free zones" as a matter of deterrent...The people who choose to be lawfully armed will also need some training of sorts. Yeah I know the idea of that pisses off the libertarian elite on NES, but the fact of the matter is that some of the LTC holders who walk among us are mall ninjas who think their gun is the magic wand to solve all problems.
Fortunately, this isn't going to happen. The administration tried to implement those sorts of policies for students and faculty back when Utah adopted their current CCW laws. The state supreme court slapped them down (twice, IIRC) as being in violation of the rather broadly written law that prevents any state agency or local jurisdiction from adopting any rule or policies that conflict in any way with the state CCW law.
Ken
I have no illusions that merely carrying the gun makes you superman. I always advocate people take the time to train themselves, though I will not ever say that training should be required by a government agency of CCW'ers.
It's possible that schools would still be considered a soft target. Unfortunately, the only thing that would be sure to change that perception would be an incident where a school shooter was dropped by a civilian early in their rampage. Now, however, this is a virtual impossibility. First step is to make that possible...