Was the Aurora
Shooter Really Wearing Body Armor?
-Andy @ Ace of Spades HQ
From the first reporting of the incident up through the present, we've heard
that the person who attacked the
Dark Knight Rises audience in Colorado
last week was wearing "body armor". A sampling:
*
USA
Today: He was dressed head-to-toe in black bullet-proof gear, including
helmet, vest, leggings and a groin and throat protector.
*
HuffPo:
[Aurora Police Chief Dan] Oates confirmed that the suspected shooter was ***,
who entered the theater during a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises"
dressed in all black and with heavy body armor.
* And this breathless piece in Amateur Webzine
Slate:
Armored
and Dangerous, The scariest innovation in the Aurora mass shooting isn’t
guns or ammo. It’s SWAT gear.
But is this true?
Here's a
pdf
of a receipt for some of the equipment the shooter purchased. One of the
items is called the "
Blackhawk Urban
Assault Vest". Here's what it looks like:
That's not a bulletproof vest. A clue can be found in the big green open
spot in the middle of it. Some would call that "center mass".
Now it's possible the shooter wore that vest
over a bulletproof vest,
but following the trail of the reporting, it seems like there's also a decent
probability that an initial erroneous report from the scene that either
repeated eyewitness accounts of body armor or mistook the vest above to be
bulletproof morphed into the account of the fully armored killing machine that
the press is running with now. After all, they do have
a
history of being not even wrong where gun-related reporting is concerned.
It will be interesting to see if the "facts" as we now know them
change as more details are released.
Why is this important?
Back to
Slate:
He was so well equipped that if anyone in that theater had
tried what the National Rifle Association recommends—drawing a firearm to stop
the carnage—that person would have been dead meat. Holmes didn’t just kill a
dozen people. He killed the NRA’s answer to gun violence.
Ahh, so concealed carry is now inoperative because this guy upped the ante
with body armor? Ummm ... no ... and there are several reasons why.
First, it's not like body armor is a new invention. As a matter of fact, its
use played a significant part in one of the most infamous crimes in recent
history, the "
North Hollywood Shootout"
in 1997. This incident didn't herald a wave of body-armored criminals roaming
the streets, and there's no reason to think Aurora will either.
And the idea that the theatergoers were better off unarmed with a shooter
who doesn't have body armor (the writer's default position) is just silly. It's
undermined by the facts in front of us, where a dozen unarmed people were
killed and scores more were wounded. The fact that they were unarmed rendered
whatever body armor the shooter may have been wearing irrelevant.
But in the case where the assailant was indeed wearing body armor, the armed
citizen still would have played an important role. Anyone with a CCW permit
should expect that he will become the primary target in the unlikely and
unfortunate instance that he ever has to draw his weapon. The idea that the
assailant is going to just stand there and ignore incoming rounds bouncing off
his body armor while he goes about his business like that scene in
The
Terminator where Arnie stalks Connor and Reese through the police station
is just that ... pure Hollywood.
What's more likely (read damned near guaranteed) to happen is that the
assailant will be forced to focus his attention on the "victim"
that's unexpectedly shooting back at him and away from other potential targets.
By choosing to voluntarily place himself at heightened risk, the armed citizen
buys time for the unarmed to flee to safety.
And, finally, there's the head shot. If there's any lesson to take from this
incident in regards to concealed carry, it's that a CCW holder can't spend too
much time at the range.
Anti-gunners hate that their predictions of blood in the streets!!11! were belied
as concealed carry became much more common in the last few decades while the
rate of gun-related crimes steadily dropped. Why, it's almost like
there's
a relationship between the two or something.
They're now shamelessly using the shootings in Aurora to try to convince you
that concealed carry is a bad thing. Don't believe them.
http://minx.cc/?post=331266