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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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Press the button to drop the mag, slam in the new one, pull the charging handle, and all of this is designed to be done fairly easily without taking your right hand off the pistol grip. You have to be really bad with guns for it to not make sense, and even then a pistol as your backup makes far more sense than a second long gun.

Press the button to drop the mag, slam in the new one, pull the charging handle

It's a bit more subtle than that. I've seen even experienced shooters simply trying a new but unfamiliar gun do this:

  • Pull trigger, get click and not bang

  • Look at the gun to figure out why it stopped

  • Notice you're out of ammunition

  • Drop mag

  • Fumble around in your pockets for another mag

  • Try to put it in and notice it won't go because it's backwards

  • Flip it around and put it in

  • Close the slide/pull the charging handle

  • Aim at the target and pull the trigger

  • Get another click

  • Take another couple seconds to figure out it's because the mag isn't seated- full magazines, especially Glock 33-rounders, need some authority to lock in (this can also cause a secondary malfunction where the round is free of the mag but stuck in the action, but we'll assuming it doesn't here)

  • Seat the mag harder this time

  • Charge the gun again

  • Fire

This generally takes about 10-15 seconds for someone who has these remedy steps already in working memory.

Unpracticed is going to take longer, and in this context anyone in the line of fire who isn't frozen in fear has more than enough time to escape. More than one gun makes it possible to give up halfway through. (The handgun was probably there for suicide reasons; this shooter was probably not expecting to just get shot on sight.)

I think you underestimate the skill floor of doing this kind of thing under stress. Watch videos of 2-Gun ACM/Brutality matches and see how hard seemingly simple things become. Now try doing this in a real-ass situation where you're literally killing people and you're up against the harsh timer of "the cops are going to show up at some point to stop you." Ian McCollum and Karl Kasarda have talked about how adding the stress of a timer changes everything about your execution of your shooting skills. This is also leaving aside the concept of "spree shooters are not half as experienced as 'gun nuts.'"

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