Excellent editorial in local Bakersfield paper on how the shooting at Taft High could have been so much worse (and how good guys without guns stopped bad guy with gun). Note:
Here are my many updates late yesterday on this incident. And
my piece at
The Nation today on all this.
The Taft gunman was armed with a shotgun. He was reportedly carrying a
dozen or more shotgun shells in his pocket, which, had he had the time
and motivation, would have to be manually loaded. Kern County sheriff's
officials say between two and four shots were fired at two students, and
only one was hit. Had the shooter been wielding a semi-automatic gun
the outcome most certainly would have been different. According to an
FBI study, even a novice shooter can fire off three rounds a second with
a semi-automatic rifle. A shotgun can certainly be deadly -- especially
in a crowded place, given the way the shot disperses -- but it's much
more cumbersome and certainly doesn't have the rapid-fire capabilities
of an AR-15 with high-capacity magazines, where a sustained spray of
bullets can make up for poor aim.
For that we can be thankful that we live in a state with some of the
strictest gun laws in the nation. California already bans the sale of
military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And it has
much stricter requirements for registration and training and rigorous
background checks on gun sales. Interestingly, our strong gun laws can
be traced to Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, who passed the nation's
first assault weapons ban in California..
The shooting in Taft also points out the major weakness in proposals by
the National Rifle Association and others that the only way to counter a
bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.
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