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Two US Marines Foil Terrorist Attack On Train In France
hcs_$reboot writes: A heavily armed gunman opened fire aboard a packed high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris late Friday afternoon, wounding several passengers before he was tackled and subdued by two Americans Marines. The assault was described as a terrorist attack. President Barack Obama has expressed his gratitude for the "courage and quick thinking" of the passengers on a high-speed train in France, including U.S. service members, who overpowered the gunman. Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, paid tribute to the Marines as he arrived at the scene, and said "Thanks to them we have averted a drama. The Americans were particularly courageous and showed extreme bravery in extremely difficult circumstances."
"This sort of thing feeds into the TSA mentality - search everyone everywhere every time. And then it will feed into the NRA mantra of everyone being armed everywhere every time."
And best of all, it's the umpteenth time that an illegal alien terrorist (sorry, "refugee") has taken advantage of European white guilt to slaughter people he know were unarmed and wouldn't resist. But whoops, US Marines happened to be standing near that toilet.
How many Charlie Hebdos will it take before they know
That too many people have died?
These guys weren't armed with anything more than good training, and the mental preparedness to take action in a crisis, nevermind the guts to do so at considerable personal risk.
The average person will most likely freeze in a crisis, just out of sheer human nature. It takes a lot of training to overcome that, and to build up the instinct to act (nevermind in a beneficial manner), which in a combat situation is often the difference between life and death.
Considering the deleterious impact that acts of terrorism have had on civil liberties
The greatest impact on civil liberties came from from the gross hysterical, overreaction to 'terrorism'.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
While flying without nail clippers might be debatable, 15 years ago you could not fly with a gun in the cabin.
You had to check your gun, and you can still fly with a gun, provided you check it. It cannot be checked in undeclared, and in the process of declaring it, it must be inspected to be save (unloaded) and secure (typically in a locked hard case).
A gun can puncture the pressure hull of the plane, and considering it's altitude, that would be both unpleasant and potentially life threatening (in addition to any other immediate threats). We have already seen personnel lost overboard on aircraft, and while a single small bullet hole is likely to not directly cause such issues, bullet holes could (in theory) cause other failures, leading to rapid depressurization.
Also note that in 2012, against a national trend, Chicago murder rates spiked, two years after lifting the handgun ban. Currently the rate is down for Chicago; however, on average a handgun ban lift doesn't create an easy prediction of future crime. Some cities it goes down, some it goes up. Odds are the ban doesn't have a direct impact, probably because people were already carrying, just illegally.