California's Hateful Gun Laws are worthless

Yeah, honestly...but that's not exactly a negative thing.

Well not necessarily just stand by and watch but probably run. Contrary to the more romanticized view of the world most people actually run away from danger. Most people who believe they wouldn't run away from danger actually run away from danger as well.

There are of course exceptions as are demonstrated often by armed citizens intervening in many situations. But the amount of people willing to do that isn't nearly as high as some people think it is. When real bullets start flying most people are going to run and hide because that is what you are programmed by nature to do and when people are scared they tend to return back to that basic instinct.

And even if one does wish to intervene they may not necessarily be as physically able to do so as they might think either. People tend to freak out when they are scared, being able to calm yourself down enough to even shoot back is difficult.

I've been in plenty of firefights in my life. What you think you would do and what you would actually do if real bullets were flying in your direction are two vastly different things....

 

How do you know? Have you ever been in such a situation?

I'm not trying to talk down to you or anything but the truth of the matter is that you don't know what you would actually do, you only know what you think you would do.

In regards to how you would respond to a dangerous situation the only factually correct response is: I have no idea.

 

Not necessarily true either.

I am professionally trained. Many years ago I went from sitting on my couch eating ramen noodles to the middle of a small outpost in the second deadliest region of Afghanistan in the span of about 4 months.

I was part of about a 2+ squad sized element who were the only combat troops in the outpost tasked with defending it and the non combat Soldiers within it. A few weeks after getting there our outpost was attacked. I as part of the combat troops was supposed to muster to a specific rally point in the event of such a thing then go and defend the post with my squad.

I didn't. I was so terrified that I took off running to the nearest bunker with all of the paper pushers and sat in there shaking next to a female who was also violently shaking in fear. She turns and says to me "Aren't you guys supposed to be doing something about this?" I thought "you guys?" Then I turn around and see 2 of the other members of my squad in the bunker as well, also shaking. One pissed himself.

Then our buddy comes running up yelling and grabs two of us by the back of the collar and kicks the other guy and drags us outside where the rest of the combat troops were waiting and our squad leader screaming at the top of his lungs at us. Then we fought back.

Yeah, my first time ever actually being in a situation like that I was so mortally terrified that I couldn't even hold my own rifle. And I am a professionally trained Combat Arms Soldier, and I have no shame in telling that story.

I was fine after that though. But that day, no I was not fine, not even close.

That wasn't the first time something like that happened to somebody over there and it wasn't the last. That same veteran squad leader who was screaming at me the first time is the same guy I had to physically drag out of a vehicle during an ambush a few months later because he was too frozen and in shock to move and we were about 30 seconds away from having a very bad day if we didn't move.

No, you have no idea how you are going to actually react when real bullets start flying. I don't care who you are.

We are professionally trained to not freak out, and we freaked out anyway.

 

Really?

Have you ever been on the front lines of a war before? We train our troops to try to reprogram the part of your human brain that says "run" when you are in danger. The training is thorough and realistic as we can make it without actually shooting at people. We do that to obviously make you less likely to freak out and return to your natural instincts when we need you to charge that machine gun nest, but it's by no means fool proof.

In real wars the human factor is a hell of a lot less like the old John Wayne flicks and a hell of a lot more like the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan where they didn't try propaganda it up and show troops just bravely charging in to battle. It showed people bravely charging in to battle and it showed a lot of them freaking the hell out and panicking which is what actually happens in real life.

Of course if you ever go to a Soldier bar and listen to them swap drunken war stories you'd think that we are all just a bunch of super bad asses who ain't scared of ****.

 

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I specifically said it did happen and we see it all the time. However what is not reported is how often people could have done something and instead take off running or hide. That is a statistic that is obviously not one that can be obtained.

I guess my only real concern with this would be a well meaning citizen accidentally shooting the wrong people or something because they aren't trained to really deal with that type of thing. But I guess that's sort of the trade off I'm willing to accept. Id rather have armed citizens on hand to possibly take out a nutcase shooting up the place and possibly accidentally shoot me in the process rather than just have an active shooter running around and nobody being able to do anything about it.

Now that I thought about it a bit, you are correct. I went off in the wrong direction, I was under the impression you were one of those people who were trying to say that in the event of a mass shooting all Americans around are going to bravely pull out their side arms and take the guy out. I was sitting here thinking yeah ok...My mistake.