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Don't over-learn from one example. Reloading is massively faster than throwing away a long gun and drawing a second one. Tarrant be damned in many ways: he was doing the wrong thing and doing it wrong.
This whole discussion is so fundamentally wrong that I can only write it off as video game logic. I know I'm lapsing into "just trust me bro" territory, but this is just dumb. This isn't how it works. Learn to shoot and see how comically wrong this idea is.
reloading is definately more efficient, but clearing a double-feed or other serious malfunction is not. Six extra mags probably isn't all that useful, given that most shooters don't actually make it through more than a mag or two, but serious malfs can and do happen, and render the longarm dead.
Spree killing pretty clearly isn't like other tactical situations. the shooter is not playing the long game; they're almost certainly dead within a half-hour of initiation, probably more like ten minutes. they are not going to be traveling long distances fast. They don't even need a ton of ammo. lethal effect of the ammo isn't even a top-tier concern. there's (hopefully) no backup, and any delay or hindrance is deadly to the shooter's intentions.
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I'm giving a single example to your no example after you made assertions that contradicted what happened there. Saying reloading is massively faster than throwing away a gun and presenting one that is strapped to your chest just isn't true. I'm sure it can be true if you are a smooth operator that reloads his weapon every time without hesitation or hitch. But if you are less than perfect at any moment during a reload I'd be much more inclined to say that dropping a gun for another that is strapped to your chest is faster.
Appealing to some greater understanding, be that the assertion of a 'true' cost benefit analysis, personal experience or framing the whole discussion as 'video game logic' just isn't relevant to me. There are plenty of obvious use cases for an extra rifle. And whilst there is a cost associated with that, I don't see why that cost is so obviously high that it renders the act 'silly' or 'comically wrong'.
I don't know what to say anymore. It just is true. I know I'm merely asserting, but I'm right, Tarrant be damned. That one bad data point of a guy purposefully making as much of a spectacle as possible doesn't change reality.
I wish we were on BLM land with a few rifles right now. We could compare the amount of fumbling and bumbling involved with throwing down a rifle and switching to another one vs swapping mags. You'd rock solid see I'm right.
The one data point of a guy in reality doing the thing I am talking about isn't a change to reality. It is reality. That's on top of every other benefit of carrying another rifle. Calling it 'silliness' in this context is far from warranted.
Tarrant wasn't engaging in optimal behavior. He was putting on as sensational a show as possible.
I don't dispute that it is physically possible to empty a shotgun into a group of innocent people and then switch to a rifle. I dispute the relative operational efficacy of such a plan.
Tarrant did just that. That's not at all evidence that switching long arms rather than reloading is a good plan. That's not a data point that contradicts me.
I wish you could spend a day shooting with me. Your misunderstanding would wash away.
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It's faster if you have experience reloading a rifle. I have reloaded a rifle exactly once in my life, and I would probably take a second rifle with me as well if I went mass shooting. Well, I would probably take multiple handguns instead.
The Virginia Tech shooter did this to great effect.
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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.
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.)
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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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