Good Guys With Guns?
Pekinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” - Was he prophetic or just betting a sure thing on the future?
“The Wild Bunch”, perhaps Sam Pekinpah’s finest film, was at that point the most graphic representation of gun massacre on the silver screen, when it was released in 1969.
The film opens with a platoon of 1900’s cavalry soldiers saunter into in some Western backwater town in what appears to be a detail sent to pick up Army payroll from the local bank. The soldiers in reality are a gang of outlaws using the Trojan Horse strategy in order to gain ready access to the bank while armed to the teeth.
Meanwhile on a rooftop opposite the bank a group of literally filthy, psychotic band of bushwhackers, led by a sociopathic railway security agent, lie in wait. Behind the rooftop facade the are itching at the chance to gun down the “soldiers” as they exit the bank with the loot.
That’s not all. Adding another dimension of horror to the scene, there is at that very moment a peaceful street demonstration by the townsfolk in support of the local Temperance League. The peaceful demonstration in turn invites others in the town to join in front of the bank in support of sobriety and an end to demon rum. An how can bored little kids (who also spend their play time watching fire ants attack a scorpion) miss all this excitement of a parade?
To facilitate a smooth exit from town, the “troopers” inside the bank shove an employee into the street to draw out any would be shooters aiming to interfere with their getaway. The railway gunmen kill the bank employee instantly; leading to the proverbial all hell breaking loose.
The film poses a lot of assumptions about guns as a means to commit crime, and even more so, as a great means to stop armed gunmen. What we today call “active shooters” before they can commit mass murder. Exactly who were the “good guys” given the aftermath of the massive shoot out where innocent women and children lying dead in the street suggests it may not be the best deterrent to mass shootings?
We’ll come back to the film after this “flash forward” some 60 years to the present.
I began to wonder about the current maxim of “the good guy” with a gun. Just how effective is this method of stopping mass murder and killing “bad guys” before they can kill innocents.
A June 22, 2022 article in the New York Times (Buchanan and Leatherby (2022) focused on a study with data derived from “Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, they work with the F.B.I. to catalog and examine these attacks… (the study excludes domestic shootings and gang-related attacks.)
I was curious bout Domestic Violence and mass gun murderers so, in a separate study of domestic violence and mass shooters by The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, 2021, reported that “in more than two-thirds (68.2%) of mass shootings analyzed, the perpetrator either killed family or intimate partners or the shooter had a history of domestic violence ”
The Texas based study found that of the 432 Attacks, only 12 were stopped by a citizen with a gun (less than 3%)**. That’s a pretty sorry track record when one considers that in Florida alone there are 2.26 million concealed carry licenses for guns. That’s close to almost 1 in 4 adults who are potentially armed in public. (The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, 2021)
This is in no way what Republican Fascist, like Ted Cruz, see these studies as any factually based reality. In the wake of the Uvalde Massacre where 21 children were gunned down as dozens of police too afraid to enter the school and kill the shooter, stood by; the Fascist loving Cruz offered the gun lobby mantra as the alternative fact; “What stops armed bad guys is armed good guys.”
** Follow-up column: Gun Supporters say the Texas State University/FBI study I used as the basis of this post DOES NOT reflect the (thousands) of successful interventions by citizens, carrying licensed concealed weapons, who successfully intervened to stop the active shooter and prevent the further loss of life.
I’ll be doing independent research on this matter. As one can imagine, it is a task that is quite arduous, so your patience is appreciated
References:
Buchanan, L., & Leatherby, L. (2022, July 26). How Often Do Police Stop Active Shooters? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/22/us/shootings-police-response-uvalde-buffalo.html
The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. (2021, June 1). Study: Two-Thirds of Mass Shootings Linked to Domestic Violence. https://efsgv.org/press/study-two-thirds-of-mass-shootings-linked-to-domestic-violence/