This was originally televised back in April, but was repeated again tonight:
Too bad Lesley Stahl couldn’t utilize footage of 20/20’s “Virginia Tech” gun experiment (which looks to have been aired the same weekend as the 60 Minutes ep) to buttress her “more gun control/guns are bad” push:
I think there are some good points and merit in the 20/20 scenario staging; however, their experiment itself, I think, is far from empirical and nonbiased.
For one, the “intruder” is already at a clear advantage given he’s a trained firearms instructor firing with the accuracy of such, while the students have only been given a crash course; other than clearing a holster, I don’t really see them getting trained in combative handgun use. Sure, it’s one possible scenario; but how about one of those students trade places and be the intruder, while the firearms instructor be the one sitting in the classroom? Or, if that’s “unfair” and “missing the point”, why not replace the firearms instructor completely in his role as intruder and use one of the students with short-term training to make it “even”? Why give the students baggy clothes? Why create just one possible environment and hypothetical scenario? How about having someone not taken by “the element of surprise and panic”, and arriving on scene to draw his weapon on the attacker? The situation is heavily weighted to demonstrate failure.
I agree with 20/20 points regarding reaction time, stress, tunnel vision, etc. (reminds me of the classic law enforcement video, Surviving Edged Weapons); but not with the propaganda 20/20 is pushing: That guns in the hands of ordinary citizens doesn’t save lives, and if anything endangers them.
So what’s the alternative to 20/20’s hypothetical that they are endorsing? Remove all chances of defending yourself (and others) with an equalizer and just live out the last remaining seconds of your life as a sitting duck.
Here’s an antidote video for the 20/20 piece:
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
We watched this tonight…I’ve refused to watch 60 Minutes for years, but my husband has control of the clicker tonight, I was glad he did…
Talk about outright leftist propaganda, Eric Holder is smiling as is the O-Team, we all know they are working incrementally via congress, will get them no-where for now, but they will via the JD/Holder.
Talk about set one’s hair on fire…mine still is!
Btw…Since I’ve watched the Senate for more years than I can count, McC was bit proponent RINO on the right side of the aisle for closing the Gun-Show-Loop-hole Law….I seethed once again at home listening to his rhetoric, him knowing the majority of Americans would never hear his BS, but the msm would, as he would remain their ‘R’ darling as a guest on their various shows, networks, why yes, McC to the rescue…and after OCare is over, one way or the other, we now have illegal immigration coming up next with the congress-critters plans.
McC will remain a fav…
Fun, fun, fun.
Lance Thomas is a fugging STUD!!!!!
P.S. I didn’t expect anything but anti-gun tripe from 60 Minutes.
I wasn’t disappointed…
You have to remember that an “unarm citizen becomes a subject”. That is what this is all about. The politicians are afraid of the armed public. And today in this government it doesn’t make a difference what party these politicians belong to, their ultimate goal is power over the American people.
I noticed in the 20/20 piece that besides the shooter being trained, he seemed to know exactly who in the room had a gun. Additionally, it sure didn’t help any of the “test subjects” that their vision was obstructed by the protective gear.
The lesson from the piece is that if somebody comes in a room looking for you, you’d be better off in the back of the room.
60 Minutes is still on? Huh, who would have thought that.
I do take exception with having staged scenerios where the assailant know exactly who and where the person with the gun is located. How many killers have that information when they go on a rampage?
But what caught my eye most was that when the person stood up and fired at the assailant did you notice that the gun man concentrated on them and no one else. On both scenerios he never shot another person but kept his focus on the other person with the gun while 20 or 30 people escaped to safety. No one brought that point up when Diane moaned that the civilian “may” have hit one of the people fleeing.
Wow – thanks. I am so tired of hearing about assault weapons and the intimation that they are essentially machine guns. The press constantly makes this allusion – it is nothing but propaganda technique.
Other comments made above about the “experiment” are perfect – if this was a science class on how to design an experiment – they would score a D or less.
By the by, I have read that Feinstein has a concealed carry permit that she obtained some years ago. Hypocrite.
I suppose that I am one of those that Feinstein and her ilk just hate – yesterday, I got up early and went to the range to practice presentation from the holster and shooting….and then I went to church later in the morning. I don’t want to have to use my gun ever, but like Lance Thomas, I don’t want to be a victim either – and I don’t want anyone entering my house to harm my family.
Stories like this are great for gun sales. Every time a story like this is aired gun sales go up. I have to wonder if producers of such shows are not getting kick backs from the gun lobby. In any case, as a gun dealer, I could just hug them all.
I don’t think you need STRICTER gun controls. You just need to enforce those that are already there. And as has been pointed out ad nauseum, shooters don’t show up to places like gun ranges, police stations, and other places where there are many others who are armed. They like to target “gun free” zones and we see how fair that goes.
@ThomNJ: I hear ya. I haven’t been to the range in a while and until my situation improves that isn’t going to happen. I just don’t have that kind of stock pile lying around 🙂
Anyway, my wife is from Canada and has gone from anti-gun to a “just enforce the controls already in place” kind of person. I am pretty sure that the bank robber we had hide in the next apartment building over changed all that. I knew something was up when she called me at work and asked “Where is the gun?”
I’m looking forward to getting back to the range so we can teach her to shoot properly.
Once that is done, I better watch my P’s and Q’s 😉
To make it even, the “shooter” should have no knowledge of who has the gun. Notice that’s the first person they shot at. Such a contrived example.
Aleric, something else they did was even if the student shot the “gunman”, they declared it a failure if the student didn’t avoid getting shot.
One of the students got shot center of mass but shot the “gunman” in the leg. That’s one of the ones they declared a failure becuase the student was killed and the “gunman” was not.
The problem with the little game they played is that they assume the shooter was not stopped, the student was dead for sure and the shooter wasn’t. WRONG! Anyone who has studied this sort of thing knows that nothing is guranteed in a shootout. That shot may not have killed or even incapacitated the student and the wound to the shooter’s leg may have severed an artery or even broken his leg.
Really, I’m being silly because the point of the whole thing was to show that guns in civilian hands don’t save lives and we all just need to be good little victims.