When one quote is worth 1,000 words
When terrorists opened fire in a Mumbai (Bombay) railway station, they killed dozens of people, yet no one opposed them. Sebasitan D'Souza, the photographer and picture editor for the Mumbai Mirror snapped the famous photo of one of the terrorists in India, seen around the world last week, said it all: "I only wish I had a gun, not a camera."
Mr. D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them?"
Governments have the capacity to massively overwhelm attacks like his, but it would be like cutting off your hand because you burned a finger. Airstrikes would have stopped the attacks, but at the expense of massive casualties. The only alternative was the response that we saw on our televisions repeatedly: A small army of police encircling a building while unarmed citizens are slaughtered before their useless show of force.
The truth is that no one will protect you – not the police, not the part-time security guard, not the staff of whatever business you are patronizing and not the national armed forces. You must take responsibility for protecting yourself and the only means to do that is to ensure that you are appropriately armed whenever you intend to go out in public.
If the laws prohibit taking responsibility for your own safety, the laws must be changed to allow citizens to protect themselves and their families. Currently most states allow concealed carry. The few states that do not must be changed or we will surely see this kind of carnage in our own country.
In fact, we have seen miniature versions of this type of violence before. Shootings in our schools, post offices, shopping malls and some office buildings. As pointed out in my previous blog posting, the experts are now starting to think that "Gun Free Zone" signs attract violent acts because killers see it as a "safe zone" for them.
There were just ten (10) terrorists in Mumbai and they managed to hold off the majority of that city's emergency personnel. They were highly motivated, well trained and disciplined in their actions. Hours went by before the first police were even able to move in on one of the hotels. By that time the terrorists had killed over a hundred people. That's frightening.
What's more frightening is that just two or three men created the Mumbai railway station disaster. Dozens were killed yet police inside the station did not fire on the terrorists. Confusion, uncertainty and some fear probably played a big part in that. But no doubt some citizens could clearly see who the killers were and only lacked the means to fight back.
Gun owners in the U.S. often discuss tactics and strategies for similar situations. But I think the tactics are straightforward. Either you get your family to safety or you immediately and aggressively engage the shooter. If someone is trying to kill multiple people in a public place stopping him is priority one.
The question about "collateral" damage always comes up. Someone always mentions the innocent hit by a stray bullet. Not to sound callous, but those people are already dead if the killer is not stopped. When James Oliver Huberty walked into a San Ysidro, California McDonalds in 1984, he killed 21 people and wounded 19 in an unobstructed 77-minute killing spree. If one armed person had killed Huberty and one his future victims, the outcome would have been an improvement.
Most civilized governments put the responsibility of a gunshot injury on the originator of the bullet. Thus, if your bullet kills an innocent grandmother, most civil authorities will claim you committed a crime. Yet, while such laws serve to deter wanton shooting, when it comes to mass murder, such laws inhibit, and may prohibit, police and citizens from preventing a worse disaster.
I wonder how many of Mumbai's police officers worried about hitting an innocent person. Or if their training had emphasized the dire consequences for hitting an innocent. When mass killings are underway, one wonders which is the worse tragedy - the number killed by a madman or that capable people could have limited his death toll, but did nothing.
Cell Phone shutdown during shootings?
One item caught my eye about the Mumbai shootings. The terrorists used Blackberry phones to communicate and coordinate during their raid. I expect this to be hotly debated in government circles as the immediate concerns die down.
This little tidbit in the news tells any other terrorist or other group of nutjobs out there this is one way to keep in communication. That police did not or could not get the services shut down has implications for the future. Not all of them good.
If police can order cell phone services interrupted during a shooting event, what happens to the dozens or hundreds of people trying to call for help? Or those who are inside the situation? Imagine talking to your daughter locked in her dorm room during such a shooting when the phone goes dead!
Cell phones have better range and reliability than traditional radios. It's possible that well equipped killers could switch to radios but these are more easily monitored than cell phone traffic. Still, expect that governments are going to take a serious look at how to curtail cell phone use in these kinds of emergencies.
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