You undoubtedly heard about the shooting at a Congressional baseball practice in Alexandria VA last week injuring four people, two critically. The entire incident is reported to have lasted less than 10 minutes. Putting aside all of the politics and who’s to blame for the attitude and violence, I want to take a look at this from what was seen and heard on a cell phone video taken of the incident.
This is the link to the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHM73eJCa7k It is 5:45 minutes long. I encourage you to take a look at it then come back here.
First, let’s talk about time. The video is reported to have initiated at some point after the shooting started. You can clearly hear the rifle shots in the video. At about 50 seconds, you can hear someone giving commands to “put the gun down”. This is presumably the Capitol Police who were on site. Alexandria Police were reported to be on site within three minutes of the first 911 call.
Witnesses on scene said their lives were saved because of the presence of the Capitol Police security detail, which was only on site due to the Congressional leadership position of one of the participants.
I’ve written about police response times before and how the saying “when seconds count, the police are minutes away” is true. It’s unknown how long it took for the 911 call to be placed to get Alexandra Police responding. But very fortunately in this incident, the police were already on site acting as the security detail and able to pin the shooter down before he could shoot anyone else. The shooter was eventually shot and killed by the Capitol Police.
Most of us are not fortunate enough to have the police on site to protect us as part of our daily lives. Most of us are not in a financial position to have armed guards protecting us. Most of us have nothing but what we have on us as our protection. Think of what the death toll would have been if there hadn’t already been someone armed on site to engage the shooter. The time between something bad happening and someone else getting there to help is all about you.
Following this incident, there were simultaneous calls for tighter gun control and for concealed carry reciprocity for congressional members. Several congressional members and staffers have concealed carry permits in their home states, and while they may or may not have reciprocity in Virginia, they were all from the District of Columbia where they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country, there is no reciprocity and they very rarely issue concealed carry permits.
It is of course lunacy to think tighter gun control will prevent anyone from inflicting violence upon another, either with firearms or any other tool. And while our Congress considers increased levels of armed protection and reciprocity for their own, the remainder of the country is left to fend for themselves.
Now, let’s consider the video. Too many people seem to want to have one of their eyewitness videos go viral so they can bask in the requisite 15 minutes of fame. So what of the guy with the dog who took this video? About two minutes in you can hear someone off camera asking if he has called 911. The cell phone camera guy’s reply: “I assume people have been calling 911 already”.
Here’s my response.
1) Turn off the F’ING camera and call 911! You have NO IDEA if anyone has already called for help. You may be the 1st person to call or the 100th. You may have a perspective on what is going on nobody else has. Assuming someone else has called so you can continue to roll video is arrogant and stupid.
2) Help others who can’t help themselves. Others may already be injured or paralyzed in fear and not able to move. If you still have your wits about you, do something to keep others from dying.
3) Get your ass out of there! You’ve got hard ground and a couple of chain link fences between you and a shooter. If you’re not in a position to get involved to stop what is going on; run, shuffle or low crawl your ass out of the danger zone and get to safety behind hard cover. Those bullets are going somewhere and your soft, squishy skin is as good a place as any.
Your video may gloriously document an incident for generations to come, but at what cost? What could you have done to keep yourself safe or help save someone’s life?
More pointless laws and more gun control will never do anything to prevent violence. You are and always will be your own best first line of defense. And crying out loud, don’t be a selfish, fame seeking idiot. Put down the camera and either get involved, help others or get the hell out!
What is a life worth?
Bob
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