Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Shlomo ben Maved on January 3, 2016 at 10:56

Before answering, what is a Dillard's store and why would the rear door be chained--by ISIS or the store?

In MemoriamPermalink Reply by D ale on January 3, 2016 at 11:16

First .. Thank You Shlomo ben Maved for a sane response !!!

Dillard's is a "chain" store .. a brick & mortar store .. which has a physical presence in many a Mall here in the U.S.

As far as the rear door being chained .. locked .. or otherwise barred & unusable .. I believe .. is strictly for the sake of discussion.

Shlomo ben Maved said:

Before answering, what is a Dillard's store and why would the rear door be chained--by ISIS or the store?

Permalink Reply by Shlomo ben Maved on January 3, 2016 at 11:35

Well, I found that they aren't like a Sears with tools etc. but at least they have a knife section in their Kitchen Centre.

Dillard's would be sued successfully for having their doors chained; not that it would help your sorry butt.

Well, you could go all Rambo on them but chances are you'd lose; hide and pray to the Saints above that they like you or at least have room for you at the inn--Xmas reference.

Most likely the terrorists will not be going into stores, at the onset, so you would have some time to organize or possibly get out of the mall after they pass you by -- like they did in Kenya.

Permalink Reply by Howard P Reynolds on January 3, 2016 at 12:43

I have a concealed carry permit, and always carry in public.  I hope I still have the guts to take a defensive position behind a pillar or other "hardened" structure, if available, at Dillard's (Macy's, Nordstrum's, etc. - department store), and fire back.  Will send the wife to hide under a counter, unless she is armed - working on that at the moment.  Having spent some time in the military it would be (theoretically) difficult to run in the face of the enemy, especially being armed.  Some resistance is better than no resistance,  At 70, if I don't make it, oh well that's the breaks.  

Permalink Reply by Clint Thompson on January 3, 2016 at 14:43

Dillards would not have the doors chained. To run to the exterior exits and find them chained would quickly tell you this attack is well planned. In addition the chaining of the doors was timed to the event taking place in the mall. There are more terrorists than the four shooters. There are terrorists who will be posing as hostages who can run through the store in a fainted panic to find hidden shoppers. Four shooters working toward the Dillards store means they are herding their victims to a single store to develop a hostage situation.

The police have been called. There is a 10 minute response time. SWAT...five hours for a response. What are you going to do? This is a very possible, even likely scenario. We can count on at least 300 sleepers and or supporters in the low populated states and up to 3,000 in the populated states.

Remember they will hit soft targets where the likely hood of armed citizens is low. Malls, schools, sporting events, church and very popular larger restaurants and sports bars.

In an exercise to get us to think on what you or I would do, lets hear your ideas. One thing is for sure, we can't bring a knife to a gunfight.

FeaturedPermalink Reply by dead_left_knife_guy on January 5, 2016 at 20:47

Don't forget about running AND hiding &  running some more.  That's my option.

Dillard's will have back rooms for inventory storage -- that's a good place to go, especially since these back rooms will have fire doors.  They won't be chained.  Because no one planning a covert operation will allow themselves to be seen locking these doors -- they'll be quite visible to the public, as well as mall security & vigilant citizens -- besides, many of these doors are hard to lock closed & they're purpose built to be opened if/when needed.

I'm not shooting at anyone.  Something like this starts going down, police are not as much as 10 minutes away, no way that SWAT is 5 hours away, but that doesn't really matter because we'll be out of there by then or the terrorists will.  Regardless, if you're holding a gun when LEO's come in -- in a high pressure situation like this, very good chance you're getting shot.  Maybe not, but hardly worth the risk.

Even so, what's your combat mettle, operating without a team?  Don't they teach team coordination in the service, & in law enforcement?  You don't have that if you're operating independently, especially if operating independently of other CC permit holders out there.

And what kind of confidence do you have in those other CC permit holders out there aren't going to mistake you for the terrorists?  What if those terrorists aren't dark-skinned Middle-Eastern-types, but light-skinned David Koresh / Dylan Klebold / Adam Lanza types?  The latter are more likely to pop up at a mall with a gun within the US borders, after all...  I'm guessing that most of us in this forum here are lighter-skinned -- of course, there's no reason that ISIS operators couldn't be light-skinned too.  And hey, remember all those 80's actions flicks with the German terrorists?  

And as mentioned in another post, they don't necessarily need to be dressed in camo or black tactical gear -- they might be wearing a football jersey.  Of course, you could have a former Marine with a Middle Eastern background fighting against the terrorists with his weapon...

I'd rather not get shot by anyone, even a "friendly" (& I put that term in quotes because anyone that shoots me is no friend of mine, even if it's an accident -- read, "negligence").

Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on January 6, 2016 at 18:30

My first thought is run and hide (but I have never been good at that) it seems the wisest choice IF you can.  If not, no way I am standing around like a sheep.

Even up on a mountain, if a bear is attacking...you shoot.  No different in a mall, if you are trying to harm me or my family..you have made your choice

Permalink Reply by Cory Hess on January 6, 2016 at 20:59

I'm with Howard.  There's no way I'd be at the mall without my carry pistol.  I started carrying because of scenarios like this one.  I do a lot of work in schools, and whenever a school shooting would take place I'd think to myself "What would I do?".  I came to the conclusion that the most likely scenario involves me searching the room I'm in for a weapon and going after the attacker.  I know I'd get killed, but I'd buy somebody else some time, or at the very least use up some of the attacker's ammo so that others can live.  My next thought was "Wouldn't it be great to find an actual weapon in the room I'm in and have a chance to fight back?"  Again, not under the assumption that I'd stop the attack and be a hero, but just from a perspective of how much time I could buy for others to be saved.

I came to the conclusion that if my greatest wish in this situation would be to find a weapon I'm a fool for not bringing one in with me.  If I'm in a mall and a group of people pull out rifles and start slaughtering people I'm going to be firing back.  At the very least I'm going to save some lives by wasting the attacker's time worrying about me.  If I can hold out long enough for the police to mistake me for an attacker that's a huge win in my book.  I'm not afraid to die, I know where I'm going.  That's not false bravado or delusions of grandeur.  That's the result of some serious reflection time and coming to the conclusion that I value the lives of the innocent people around me more than my own.If I have to die so that somebody else can live, so be it.  I'm going to do my best to make sure that it takes them as long as possible to kill me.  Like Howard, I'm a vet.  Maybe there's something ingrained in us that would prevent us from putting ourselves first in these situations.  Maybe that something was there before we enlisted, and is in fact what caused us to enlist in the first place.  Either way, I've spoken to other vets about this and have found that many have the same mentality.

Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on January 7, 2016 at 18:47

Cory,

I think you may be right, this was something that was in you before you enlisted.  I know with my own father having fought in 2 wars, he never carried a weapon and never went hunting again.  He did however always have a loaded gun in the house and insisted we all knew how to defend ourselves.  He also taught us all the defending someone that cannot defend themselves is just what you do, so yeah.....find a weapon and make sure you fight the good fight

Permalink Reply by Ellis H. Roberson on January 7, 2016 at 19:13

I applied once at Walmart to be a back door greeter and break room manager. Walmart needs the armed also.

FeaturedPermalink Reply by dead_left_knife_guy on January 8, 2016 at 19:50

I'm sorry, I can't sit on this any longer.  There's a really big elephant in the room, & I was alluding to it when I mentioned training in teams.  It's the human aspect of this issue.

Not the human nature aspect of this issue, I think everyone here is likely responding with good intentions & some have even mentioned it directly with notions of self-sacrifice for the good of the group.

Rather, it's this.  When you go to the range, weapon cleaned & sighted, fixed target at a set distance, finally ready to relax & (literally) unload, how's your accuracy?

Might that accuracy decline in a high stress active shooter situation where there might be multiple shooters that are not only moving but are also trying to shoot you or your loved ones?  And if it's been a while since you've cleaned & sighted your weapon, what then?  

What about one of the shooters taking a hostage?  

And if another CCP holder starts shooting, from an unknown location?  Maybe someone who doesn't recognize you as a friendly, or doesn't even know you're there?  

What if the terrorists are wearing black tactical gear, just like SWAT teams?  What if you shoot at a SWAT member thinking there's no way, SWAT couldn't be there yet?  What if you shoot at that Marine that just happens to be darker-skinned?

What about ricochets?

What if you hit your target, center-mass, below the rib-cage, above the pelvis, & off to either side of the spine?  What if your counterparts, the other CCP holders, have jackets on their rounds?

What if you hit a child by accident?  What if you hit my child?

Permalink Reply by Cory Hess on January 8, 2016 at 22:17

The accuracy question is an easy one to answer.  I train regularly.  My aim is good enough that I can put an entire magazine inside of a six inch circle from 30 feet.  I usually do better than that, but I can bet my life on 18 in a row inside of 6" from 30'.  I train enough that muscle memory controls the mechanics of drawing, sighting, and firing my weapon.  Firing a pistol is a skill that has to constantly be trained.  It fades quickly.  I try to shoot at least once a week, and I go through at least a couple hundred rounds each time I shoot.  I've been doing this for several years, so I've fired my carry weapon thousands and thousands of times in training.  Even if my accuracy suffers because of the situation around me, it would have to be considerably reduced before I missed a target as large as a person.

The fact is that I train a lot more than most of the police in my area.  Would you suggest that the police shouldn't interfere with an active shooter situation because they may make the situation worse?  Of course not.

That being said, there are thousands of scenarios in which drawing your weapon in self defense can go wrong.  However, simple math shows that in the scenario presented the greatest likelihood is that you're going to do more good than bad.  Is it possible that you make things worse?  Of course it's possible.  It's just not very likely.  We can look at previous attacks and know that mass shootings don't just happen all of a sudden.  They are planned out well in advance.  The killers pick targets that allow them to take out the maximum number of people.  The idea that somebody disrupting their plan is somehow going to make it more effective is pretty laughable.

We can also look at previous attacks and see that having an armed citizen present that fights back against the attackers saves lives.  There are dozens of attacks in the last 10 years in which somebody attempted to commit a mass shooting and ran into somebody else with a weapon and the attack was prevented.  I haven't heard of one in which the armed citizen made things worse.  That's not to say it's never happened, just that I haven't heard of it.  I try to keep up on these things, as defensive carry is much more serious to me than something like collecting knives.  I'd be surprised if I missed many stories about a defensive carrier causing carnage.

If I shot your child I would feel terrible.  If I sat by and watched your child be murdered knowing that I could have prevented it I literally wouldn't be able to live with myself.

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