zlacker

>>david9+(OP)
There's video of the police carrying someone away, with his pants down. They drop him on his face at one point. Apparently the wrong guy.

Utah has what they call "constitutional carry." Extremely permissive gun laws. I'd bet there were several people carrying concealed in that crowd, not counting security and police.

>>Zigurd+RG
Reports are that the single shot came from ~200 yards/meters away, which is basically the worst case scenario for good-guy-with-a-gun. In an active shooter situation, an armed bystander could in principle stop an attacker from continuing, but the only way that an armed bystander could hope to stop an assassination is if they were walking around looking for trouble.

Regardless of where you stand on the subject of concealed carry, I don't think its controversial to say we shouldn't be encouraging untrained/unvetted folks to go seek out would-be assassins before they have demonstrated themselves to be a danger. That's exactly how "armed security" shot and killed an actual bystander at the Salt Lake City 50501 demonstration earlier this year.

>>petsfe+OI
Correct, no right to bear arms people think it stops bad guys shooting people, only that it caps the deaths - i.e. you'll have a few killed then the bad guy is dropped, rather than they get to go killing dozens of people at leisure without resistance until the cops arrive (and presumably, wait outside while the bad guy continues killing, to "secure the perimeter" or whatever).

The theory then is that this will act as a deterrent - an angry bad guy wants to go out taking dozens of people with him - a few people wouldn't be "enough" for his grandiose end.