The Threat is Real, very real.

[Double Naught Spy]

How many shootings happen and someone armed is close by ? and does not act ? no way of knowing, I would bet a lot....Just because you have a gun does not mean you jump into the middle of something and end up dead...name one guy with a wife and kids who would have rushed shooters room ? would you have ? no.....what person carrying a gun in that hotel would have ? No way of knowing how many shooters were in the room, if door was booby-trapped......even LE or Military would not tried to charge through the door.....they would have set charges on the door, blew it, tossed in several flash bangs and gas before even thinking about entering....Seems odd that no LE who are usually at this big events and now mostly carry AR15's or similar locked in trunk never fired any rounds ? Surely at least one LE car had a rifle of some sort ? and tell me how many guns are in California ? How come the shootings in California were not stopped by people in California ? or any state ? Guns are in every state and how many shooting get stopped ? You can't compare 2A Rights to any shooting, 2A Rights give someone, anyone at least a chance to save themselves or others....You nor anyone else will ever for see the situation where you may need or use a gun, or what kind of gun would be best....

This was a no-win situation for your basic folks on the ground. No, cops in the US typically do not carry around patrol rifles. If they had rifles in their cars, their cars were too far away to get to in a reasonable amount of time given the shooting that was going on and the confusion with the crowd.

So you are saying the LE who may have had rifles kept under cover or did not have any skills to at least try and disrupt shooter by firing back ?

I will say it. Yeah, not only may they have not had the skills to shoot at unknown (to them at the time) distance at a barricaded individual moving between windows, but that there was no way in hell that they were going to risk shooting into a major hotel at an unknown distance with at a room 32 floors up in the low light situation that was present at the time of the shooting.

Tell me this, in all the video that you have seen of the shooting where cameras are pointed at the hotel, could you ever actually spot the guy in the window or did you just see muzzle flash? Could you tell how many hostages the shooter had with him? Did you know who was in the rooms surrounding him? Did you know the extent of the room/suite/condo that he had?

Just like the vast majority of cops never shoot at distances beyond qualification ranges, most cops with rifles never shoot at distances beyond qualification distances with rifles either and I don't know of any police departments off hand that have their officers qualifying at 350-500 yards.

Just as an aside, did you know that the average police sniper shot in the US is under 100 yards and most are less than 70 yards?

Remember, and this is critical. The issue isn't so much as to whether or not the cops could physically shoot back to try to stop the target, but whether or not the cops would be willing to shooting into a backstop and risk harming other civilians in adjoining rooms.