An Hour and a Half

Reports from Norway indicate that the shooter at Utoya had an hour and a half to shoot children before the police were able to get to the the scene and arrest him.  Apparently he surrendered as soon as he was confronted by police with guns.  The delay in response was lengthened by the police helicopter not being available and a lack of boats for the police to use to get to the island.

Imagine being in an active shooter situation, unarmed, with little to no cover or escape route, for an hour and a half.  You can hide or play dead, but until the SWAT team gets there, the shooter has nothing but time to sort the quick from the dead.

This is one of the reasons I carry.  I don't have delusions of grandeur or fantasies of being the hero in a shooting.  All I want to do is survive a bad situation if it should ever happen.  While active shooter situations like this are relatively rare, they do happen.  More common are the usual criminals who want to rob me or the store I'm in.  The thing that convinced me to learn how to shoot pistols and get a carry permit was the robbery of a store where I stopped off to get a Coke.  In that case, the thief flashed a gun and left after he got his money, but all it would have taken to make a bad situation worse was for a policeman to stop off for some coffee or for the thug to decide that witnesses were a bad thing.

People, we're not movie heroes.  We don't go out looking for trouble, and we shouldn't fantasize about being the guy who stops a shooter in his tracks.  But we have to be prepared.  We have to carry, we have to know how to safely and effectively use the tools we carry, and we have to think about how we would react to the most common threats for the environments we frequent and at least spend a moment thinking about the uncommon threats.  These people weren't in a bad neighborhood or at the local Stop 'n' Rob.  They were at a summer camp for children, and the sky fell in on them.

Like Breda says, carry your gun - it's a lighter burden than regret.