For those who advocate guns for self-defense (ABC 20/20 article and video, 2009)

This is from 2009. It's a 20/20 special about how people who are armed (and trained in the basics) react under unexpectedly violent scenarios.

People don't take into account that, no matter how much training they've had at a shooting range, the dynamics when under stress are very, very different.


Article: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=7298996&page=1#.UM5UV6y5UR9

"It's a different situation between civilians that are armed and police that are armed," Guzman said in an interview on "Good Morning America Weekend" shortly after a school shooting at Northern Illinois University last year that left six people dead. "When police respond, there's multiple police officers, they're at a safer distance, 20, 30 feet away. And one officer doesn't fire; it's multiple officers firing. [If] it's one person, one criminal, a robbery, mugging, things of that sort [where] the victim is a couple feet away, you don't have to be a crack shot."

But opponents argue that using a weapon for self-defense in a true emergency is not like target practice.

"Video games and movies, they glorify gun fights," said Chris Benton, a police investigator with the Bethlehem, Pa. police department. "It's not reality you know and they get that warped sense that this video games is exactly what I can do in real life."

Average Citizens Not Prepared to Handle a Gun in an Emergency.


Here's the video: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/defend-gun-7312540