In looking at a few comments sections on stories about last night's shooting, there are any number of bravado statements about "If I'd been there with my (insert handgun type here), I'd have taken him out before he could have shot anyone." Or "If only someone had been there with a gun that knew how to use it...". Yeah, let's explore this idea for a minute below the fold.
First of all, let me emphasize that I'm not anti-gun. I'm not even anti-concealed carry, particularly, provided that an intelligent vetting process is in place for such permits.
That's not the point. The point is that a crowded movie theater is the worst conceivable place for someone to pull that concealed weapon out and start blazing away. Of all the scenarios where having a loaded gun might be a deterrent or actually save a life, that's one of the least likely I can imagine where it would actually work.
One commenter (I don't have a direct quote), actually posited a scenario along the lines of "a man with a concealed gun is sitting in the third row of the theater when the shooter comes in and start shooting. After the first two shots, the man stands up, aims and take the shooter down. Three people die, but a dozen more live that would have died and many more are saved from injury."
Ummm, probably not. As long as we're playing Unproductive Baseless Speculation, let me posit what I feel is a more likely scenario...
A man with a concealed gun is sitting in the third row. The shooter comes in and starts shooting. The man with the concealed gun stands up, takes aim, and pulls the trigger just the young woman in the row in front of realizes what's going on and stands up in panic, right into his line of fire. He drills one into the back of her head and she dies instantly. The bullet is deflected and misses the gunman's head by two inches. The concealed weapon carrier, shocked and confused at what he's just done, stands looking stunned at the woman he's just killed. A moment later he himself is gunned down as the gunman targets him.
Or, let's say lots of people had guns....
Four people scattered through the theater are carrying concealed weapons. The shooter comes in and starts shooting. Concealed Carrier #1, realizes what's happening first and stand up and fires twice, but because he's so far away he misses. Concealed Carriers #2 and #3 see the shooter in front but also hear gunshots behind them and assume there are multiple shooters. #2 whirls and peers into the smoke and darkness and sees #3, who has pulled his gun fraction of a second earlier, and assumes he's the second gunman in the theater, targets him and takes him down. #4 sees #3 take down #2 and also assumes there are multiple shooter killing moviegoers, pulls his gun, but by now there is pandemonium in the theater, with smoke from the shooters smoke/tear gas bomb mingling with gunsmoke from the gunplay, and the screams of patrons mingling with the gunfire of the shooter who is going about his deadly work. People are pushing each other toward the exits, climbing over seats, there is no good way for #1 and #4 to get a good shot at the shooter, but in the mayhem they spot each other and in a panic start blazing away at each other at short range in the middle of the crowd. Multiple people are hit by their stray shots and both go down severely wounded. The shooter himself, wearing a gas mask and body armor and well past caring if anyone's shooting at him, is perturbed not one bit. The body count is far higher than it is in reality, plus figuring out the exact events of the evening are going to be ever so much more complicated for the authorities as they try to sort of whether this was a coordinated group act, who shot who and when, etc.
That's just as likely, if not more likely, than all these BS macho chest-thumpers who think that this stuff goes down just like in an action flick. Truth is, it's insanely hard to accurately fire a handgun accurately under any sort of pressure, let alone in a noisy crowded, dark movie theater with smoke or tear gas wafting through it. Many gunfights of the Old West featured dozens of gunshots, sometimes without anyone ever getting hit. Even in shootouts with trained police, a lot of shots miss their target, which is why the cops don't just whip out their guns in a crowd and start blazing. Real life isn't like a Lethal Weapon movie.
* Edits for a couple of minor typos that were irritating me.