In reference to a 2015 Oregon mass shooting, Ben Carson said he would have rushed the shooter. Would rushing a shooter be a good option at any point?
"The will is everything. The will to act." - Raz Al GhulContext matters. Who's rushing the shooter? 1 determined individual? 5? 10? Ben Carson states he would've rushed the shooter, he wouldn't have just "stood there" in order to be killed. This is typical of someone who has never encountered or experienced any violence in their lifetime. A perpetual stay at Camp "Coulda-Woulda-Shoulda". Real life isn't this simple.A single person, even if trained, probably could not stop an armed assailant alone if the gunman walked into a room and just started shooting. They would almost certainly be shot unless they managed to stay down during the first salvo and waited for the gunman to reload. Now if 5 or 10 ran at the gunman all at once? Sure, they would probably take him down. But lets explore what this would entail.They would have to be physically trained. Our would-be Ben Carson's would have to exercise anywhere from 7-10 hours per week minimum in order to be effective.They would have to have a degree of combat training as well as combatives training. This would take more training hours. Around 30 per week.They would have to drill all of this behavior regularly outside of foundational exercises. This would entail more training.They would have to maintain constant vigilance and be in the right place at the right time.You see where i'm going with this?Ive basically described a soldier or a Marine. It's absurd to think that someone should have to maintain that type of skill set to live an everyday life in the US, or anywhere for that matter.Most people, Ben Carson included, panic and freeze in such a situation because no reasonable person expects to experience a mass shooting in their lifetime and as result, fail to drill for such a scenario. And that is a perfectly acceptable expectation. In order for Ben Carson to live out his little fantasy, he would have to endure an extraordinary amount of training in order to expect to execute proficiently. Finally, to accept all of this is to give into the idea, a particularly false one, that mass shootings are just the "cost of doing business" in the United States and there is nothing to be done, so we should just learn to deal with them. As if they're hurricanes or something comparable. What nonsense! Ben Carson would have a ghost of a point if he spent more time talking about how to effectively prevent such horrible tragedies in the first place then living out tough guy fantasies in the press. Thanks for the A2A Marc.
How much room combat (CQB) does your average US Navy (or Royal Navy) sailor learn during their training?
I got none. Never needed it.People who board a ship aren't going to be repulsed by Chuck Norris style round house kicks. If you try climbing up the ships lines you'll likely be blown off with the ship's fire hoses. If you make it on board, you'll be confronted by the ship's reaction force, armed with weapons designed to make you dead if you don't put yourself on the deck right pronto.In the 1980s I was stationed on board the USS Hunley which was in the Holy Loch in Scotland supporting the forward Refit Site One for the Poseidon SSBNs. Site One had the ship moored in the middle of the Loch, with all access to it via small boat.Someone decided that it was time for a drill and dispatched a team to 'take' the ship (rumor has it, they were SEALs. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. It doesn't matter.)Two of the Team tried to come via the small boats using phony IDs and were caught at the pier. Two of the team tried to take control of one of the small boats from the water, but failed to grab on.The final two tried to swim from the shore and climb up the forward anchor chains. One of the two exhausted himself and couldn't make the climb (the Holy Loch is horribly cold, even in the summer and this was in the late fall) the last member of the team climbed up the forward anchor chains.It was 0-Dark:30 in the morning, and a pair of Messcooks were dumping the trash from Midrats into the trashbarge which was moored off the bow. One of them spotted the guy climbing up the chains.An experienced Crewman would have called away Repell Boarders and the ship would have responded appropriately. These two, however were newbies onboard for less than a month (one of the reasons they had the shitty job of dumping the Midrats trash). So, rather than letting anyone know, they dimmly remembered the old 'weapons of opportunity' idea from boot camp and grabbed a pair of dogging wrenches (basically pieces of 1 inch steel pipe about 15 inches long) and waited. When the Boarder pulled himself over the gunwale, these two kids, grabbed him, pulled him onto the deck, and laid into him with the dogging wrenches, beating him near to death... Then they told someone about it.The next day the two messcooks got a very stern talking to, and a meritorious promotion to E-2. (Basically: "You were very very bad. Good Job.")So, yeah, no hand to hand training. Because a ship is an environment where the average newby can mess you up in short order.
How are shotguns used by the US Armed Forces? Do some infantry carry them as their standard weapon? Are they carried on most missions? If not, what missions are they used on? Are there designated soldiers who use them in each unit?
As field MPs, a Mossberg M500 was the secondary was assigned to every squad leader in the company in addition to their M9, M4. Some carried them in lieu of their rifle, but they were always available when mounted. Previous posts mentioned their effectiveness in tight corridors, breaching, etc. The greatest use I saw the shotgun used for was it's effectiveness at immediately stopping the bullshit.While performing convoy and route security operations along Jackson, we were tasked to escort Gen. Karpinski (the knucklehead in charge of Abu Gharaib) to an IP station south of Hillah. While there, a riot broke out in the jail attached to it. My squad leader retrieved his weapon from the guards, walked up to the gate, racked a shell, and brought the weapon to his shoulder. You could have heard a pin drop. The prisoners proned out and shut up. The guards rushed in, searched and secured them, and we took the general and her PSD back to the highway.So while the shotgun's range is only slightly better than a pistol, used assertively it can remove the need for further violence. Less than lethal rounds are available, and can be loaded leading shot and slug shells, giving the weapon a built in escalation of force. 12GA slugs are even effective against enemies wearing body armor, as modern SAPI style ceramic plates are designed to stop high speed low mass projectiles like 5.56, but transmit too much blunt force trauma when hit with a shotgun slug.So while I like having a pistol and a 240B on patrol, the shotgun has versatility that made it perfect for niche applications.