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What video game logic is this? Not to make light of tragedy or offer constructive criticism to mass killers, but this is silliness.
Why? A rifle to dump and drop followed by a second one, with a pistol as backup. Assuming 30 round magazines that's 60 rifle rounds before the first reload. Considering you are, at least in theory, going door to door shooting children I don't see what's so obviously silly about it.
As an example of this in practice, Brenton Tarrant carried a shotgun and a rifle. A shotgun he fired until empty which he then dropped for an immediate rifle follow up.
Yeah. This part right here. Reload rather than dumping your longarm and carrying an entire second long arm. This is the silly part.
Tarrant was strictly suboptimal since carry weight is the limiting factor.
I'm still at a loss as to why it is silly. On the other hand I can see a very clear benefit in minimizing the time you are not able to fire. Considering the most immediate threat before police show up is being tackled by someone who is unarmed, the only time you are vulnerable to that threat is if you are not capable of firing. Other than that you are, in theory, going door to door shooting children. What is 8 pounds of extra weight on your chest compared to a rifle backup that is quickly and easily presentable? For a cost benefit analysis I don't see the obvious cost and lack of benefit that render the approach silly.
Weight is everything. A true cost benefit analysis rejects excess weight with extreme prejudice. Here's where I'll assert that weight is a consideration so powerful that "I'll carry a second long arm" is ridiculous. "Quickly and easily" is reserved for swapping mags, not silly video game switching from one rifle to the next.
It didn't look like something out of a silly videogame when Tarrant did it in practice. He, in fact, looked far more vulnerable when he had to reload his rifle compared to when he had to chuck away an empty shotgun to present a loaded rifle. And as I stated before, I don't see the focus on weight being relevant here. You are not traveling long distances. You are not shooting and scooting like John Wick. You are walking door to door shooting children. Worst case scenario is either that you are unable to fire at someone tackling you or that your gun stops working. Carrying an extra gun, ready to fire, solves both of those issues.
I don't see the assertion of a 'true' cost benefit analysis being relevant unless substantiated. There is a very obvious benefit to carrying a secondary rifle. There is a cost that comes with that. But considering the situation I don't see why that cost would be so prohibitive as to be called silly.
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.
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.
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.
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