Friday, June 17, 2016

How Could One Man Do All This?

WarOnGuns Correspondent PG writes:
I am curious to know the estimated amount of ammo Mateen probably carried into The Pulse, how much it weighed and how he could manage the crowd all by his lonesome. We are debating this and I have no idea other than a guess. Please help. Maybe you can blog about how a lone wolf could kill so many and hold his position over three hours. 
I'm afraid all I can do is guess as well  -- and I expect crime scene information is going to be closely controlled.  In terms of how much ammo, in that closed space it would seem the number of magazines needed ought not be too cumbersome or weighty.  In terms of how he could hold his position, I'd attribute much of the crowd's reaction to "trauma and the freeze response." That and herdthink.

There have also been scattered reports about an accomplice, and also about some of the victims being shot by police.

What really needs to be looked at is why it took over three hours for the "Only Ones" to do something about saving victims who were disarmed by "law." I thought "we" learned that lesson after Columbine.

That's my gut feel with no other real intel.  Anybody else have insights?

5 comments:

Brian Dunbar said...

Only insight I have is that my basic load, as a marine, included 6 magazines with 30 rounds each, carried in two ammunition pouches. The weight is negligible for a man in any kind of shape.

Anonymous said...

How many wounded bled out over those 3 hours, while the cops were waiting for the "right moment" to enter? How many of the patrons weren't drinking and doing drugs, and would have been eligible to carry concealed that night, if it had been a option and not a "gun-free" killing zone? Like "designated drivers," could we also start encouraging "designated concealed carriers?"

Archer said...

RE: Brian Dunbar's comment: Agreed. The Columbine killers carried multiple magazines each, and didn't seem hampered at all by the "extra" weight. And they were scrawny high school students.

Empty mags weigh a couple ounces. A couple hundred rounds weighs a few pounds. Combined, the weight is indeed negligible, especially for the brief period in which it's expected to be carried.

RE: Orlando: I'd heard -- but not corroborated -- that the responding police feared a hostage situation or multiple killers and didn't want to cause more casualties by moving in too soon. However, as in Columbine, there's really not any way for an "armed mass murder" situation to get much worse by early intervention attempts, so part of me thinks that when they delay action to "prevent more casualties" they really mean "prevent police casualties".

Also a gut feeling with no real intel, but there it is.

Anonymous said...

Another factor is that a couple of them held a if not the good exit door shut for a while after they escaped early in the massacre (they really panicked). Not only do we have the testimony of one of them, we have a survivor who asserted that they experienced this from the other side.

John Otis Comeau said...

from piecing together early reports to the few articles I've actually read, I got the picture that he did a lot of shooting right away, then stopped after just a few minutes with about 20 dead. Stockholm syndrome then quickly settled in among the remainder. remember there was a black lady to whom the shooter said he wasn't there to shoot blacks, "they had suffered enough". it wasn't until SWAT started busting in did he shoot a few more hostages, and SWAT shot the rest. my guess is the cops shot roughly half of the 49 victims, not that they'll ever admit it.