I Know Rambo, You Would Have Saved The Day

Another day, another mass shooting, another excuse for the gun nutters to flap their useless gums.

The first wave of batshittiness came in the form posting memes about how Bill Clinton passed a law in 1993, disarming military bases. These memes, of course were accompanied by the assertions that if these bases weren’t “gun free” zones, yesterday’s shooting would have been stopped by an armed Rambo. I didn’t comment, because I like to have facts upon which to form my thoughts, but I found it fairly inconceivable that a military base in America would be left sans any protection. Sure enough, we find out that there were an ample number of armed marines guarding the base.

Did that shut the nutbags up? Of course not. Facts never do. The next wave of fact-free douchebaggery asserted that if there were more armed people on that base, the problem would have been solved. Because naturally, the armed guards at the base were overtaken by the shooter because the real Rambos on the base weren’t armed. Okay, well now you’re shitting on our marines and their training in order to maintain your batshit crazy world view, but don’t let that stop you.

So the problem in America is that Rambo is never armed when these shootings happen. Never mind the fact that there were armed armed guards at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and the shipyard yesterday. The problem is that none of these armed guards are Rambo, the way these nutters are. They would have saved the day with their guns, if only they had been there. Here’s the problem with the Rambos. Despite their mad shooting skills, they seem to lack the ability to show up when it counts. In fact, armed civilian intervention (with a good result) accounts for 1.6% of all mass shootings in the past 30 years. Rambo saving the day is very rare.

There was one case in our data set in which an armed civilian played a role. Back in 1982, a man opened fire at a welding shop in Miami, killing eight and wounding three others before fleeing on a bicycle. A civilian who worked nearby pursued the assailant in a car, shooting and killing him a few blocks away (in addition to ramming him with the car). Florida authorities, led by then-state attorney Janet Reno, concluded that the vigilante had used force justifiably, and speculated that he may have prevented additional killings.

But there are also these stories;

In 2005, as a rampage unfolded inside a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, a civilian named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with a licensed handgun he was carrying. The assailant pumped several bullets into McKown and wounded six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. (A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.)

In Tyler, Texas, that same year, a civilian named Mark Wilson fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson—who was a firearms instructor—was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47.

So the Rambo factor can go either way. Sometimes, more people get killed because a Rambo managed to work out that timing thing, and ended up at the right place at the right time.

But these fucking nutbags cling onto their fantasies of being Rambo and someday saving the day. Never mind that your fellow Rambos seldom seem to get it right. You’re special, and someday your day in the sun will come.

I have a message for the Rambos of the world. Until you personally have stopped a mass shooting, or any shooting for that matter, you need to shut the fuck up. You have neither statistics nor anecdotal evidence to support your lunatic fantasies or your childish claims. That’s what you are; a fucking child with childlike fantasies. Do us all a favor and engage yourself on a more productive fantasy, like becoming an astronaut, or a fireman. Your Rambo fantasies are comical.