NYC Mass Shooting

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August 25, 2012 by Ish

Reports are still coming into the various news agencies, but we know that two NYPD officers fired 16 shots at a hostile criminal some ten to twenty feet in front of them. The bad guy was killed, and nine bystanders were shot by the police.

Now, I don’t want to play “monday morning quarterback” here. All accounts in the press have police responding to an active shooter, who spotted the approaching officers, and then turned his gun on them. No one in their right mind would question the decision of those two officers to shoot. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t have Some Questions for Mayor Bloomberg.

I’d like to add one more question to that list: What if the police hadn’t been there? What means do New York resident have to protect themselves from criminal attack? Thanks to “common-sense gun laws,” the shooter could count on having nothing but defenseless victims to choose from. That he ran into a pair of NYPD was just bad luck.

In a move that shocked me, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Ownership, has actually issued a statement calling this terrible event a mass shooting, you can read their press release here. As usual, they didn’t even wait for the blood to be cleaned off the sidewalk before issuing this fundraising letter and they don’t acknowledge any facts about what occured other than that there was a mass shooting at the Empire State Building. (Which they have to turn into an “All About Me!” moment. Classy.) Not a word from them about the nineteen shootings in Chicago the same day though.

Chicago, New York City, universities, high schools, military bases, movie theatres… maybe we need bigger “No Guns Allowed” signs?