Reply #29: It is difficult to be the first to rush, but this actually might work [View All]

[krispos42]

It's only a couple of dozen feet in most classrooms to attack any given shooter and can be done in a couple of seconds. But nobody wants to be first, because they don't want to be the first one shot. Look at United 93; nobody attacked until they learned the Twin Tower fell. They spend a lot of time working themselves up into a frenzy before storming up the plane and into the cockpit.

A determined shooter can fire maybe three rounds per second from a autoloading pistol, so maybe six to nine shots could be fired before the first students tackle the shooter. Less, if the students throw textbooks and bookbags just befored they charged to distract the shooter.

Also, a shooter charged by several people will also probably hesitate because of several reasons. One, he's lost the initiative. He thought "I have gun, I am the aggressor", and now that's been violently and quickly turned. Two, now he had to pick out a target, and trying to pick the most dangerous threat attacking him will also slow him down.

Finally, once he engages an attacker, he will most likely be looking at the person charging him, not at the front sight like he should. This drastically reduces his chances of scoring hits, so he will have to fire several rounds at his attacker. Most likely he would only have time to engage one attacker before he was fighting hand-to-hand for control of the gun.

This is perhaps an optimistic view, but the view that the attacker is some sort of para-military killing machine is I think unduly pessimistic. People that don't use guns a lot often times think that simply having one in your hands makes you invulnerable to attack, and that is simply false confidence.