Yeah, that's what I thought he probably meant, too -- that someone trying to shoot at a threat would miss and hit a child. That's what triggered me saying, "yo

Yeah, that's what I thought he probably meant, too -- that someone trying to shoot at a threat would miss and hit a child. That's what triggered me saying, "you must not know much about guns." You're welcome to your own judgement call on that, of course, but to me that's really unrealistic. One of the places I went shooting was a weekly practical skills tournament. Everything we shot at moved or popped up or had something you weren't supposed to shoot next to it; sometimes all three. Most of it was pop-can sized, too! And while a lot of the guys there were pros, they had a deal where first-time shooters were free, so a lot of folks brought friends, and I got to see a lot of amateurs try to handle those situations. And you know, they did pretty well. Even if you've only been shooting for a week or two, even if you have to run up to where you're shooting from and peek out from cover, even if you're under time pressure and all the targets are in motion . . . most people can hit one paper-plate sized target and not another one at ten yards or so, most of the time. And that's kind of a worst-case scenario! So now you put a man-sized target in a classroom, probably less than 10 yards away, where he's probably holding still or at most walking, where everyone else is frozen or running away from him (and at any rate, isn't IN FRONT of him), and so on. I'm sure it's emotionally stressful, but . . . that's not a difficult shot. I'm not trying to pick on the GP in particular -- he just stepped on a pet peeve of mine. I've heard people opine that in that situation, the odds of missing and hitting a kid are something like 50%. I think that's crazy. I think, based on experience, that the odds are close enough to zero as makes no difference. And I don't mean just me, either; I mean anybody could make that shot. But more than that, think about what the cutoff should be, from a game theoretic perspective. These school shootings generally result in what, ten people dead? More? Wouldn't that mean the shot is a win even if the odds of hitting the wrong person were up around 90%?