IF ONLY SOME OF THE CONCERT GOERS HAD BEEN ARMED

89 Parisians were killed at the Eagles of Death Metal band performance in Bataclan concert hall

Friday night’s terrorist attacks in Paris initially left 129 people dead and 352 wounded with 99 of them hospitalized in critical condition. Most of the deaths occurred at a rock concert.

1,500 patrons packed the Bataclan concert hall for a performance by the California rock band, Eagles of Death Metal. The name of the band seems ironic because many of the concert goers were about to face death by full metal jacket bullets.

Forty minutes after the beginning of the concert, three men - some reports say they were accompanied by a woman - wearing suicide vests and armed with AK-47s entered the concert hall and opened fire. Ironically, the band had just finished playing “Save A Prayer” and had started to play “Kiss The Devil.”

The hall had a wheel chair section where the terrorists struck first, shooting the wheel chair-bound patrons one at a time. Then they began to fire methodically at the other concert goers. The carnage that killed 89 Parisians lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes before a heavily armed French anti-terrorist police unit stormed the concert hall. At that moment two of the terrorists exploded their nail studded vests, while the other one was shot dead by the police.

It didn’t take more than a New York minute for America’s defenders of the Second Amendment right to bear arms to proclaim that if only some of the concert goers had been armed, they could have prevented the carnage.

Speaking Saturday at a rally in Beaumont, Texas, presidential candidate Donald Trump said:

“When you look at Paris, you know the toughest gun laws in the world, Paris, nobody had guns but the bad guys. Nobody had guns. Nobody. You can say what you want, but if they had guns, if our people had guns, if they were allowed to carry --- it would’ve been a much, much different situation.”

Come on, let’s get real. The chances that armed concert goers could have stopped the machinegun toting terrorists with hand guns are slim to none. With 1,500 panicked concert hall patrons scrambling in all directions and the terrorists also moving about, it would have been extremely difficult for someone to shoot well enough to stop the mass killings. After all, the hall was not a firing range with a stationary target that is not shooting back. Unless an armed citizen had been standing practically next to one of the terrorists, the chances are more likely that he would have shot some of his fellow concert goers.

Every time there is a mass shooting, we hear this crap about armed citizens. This is not to say that an armed citizen could never stop some mass shooter, but the chances of that happening are about as good as Bernie Sanders winning the presidency.

The best thing a patron inside a venue under attack by a shooter can do is to throw himself on the floor, curl up and place his head between his legs, and hope he doesn’t have to kiss his ass goodbye. Oh yes, and that includes any armed citizen. Then if a shooter gets to within a few feet of him, maybe he’ll be able to get off some effective shots. But that’s a big maybe!