Contrasting the El Paso and Dayton shootings...

Police at the scene of the Dayton shootings. 

As you are most certainly aware, there were two major mass shootings yesterday. The first one was in El Paso that killed 20 people and left many more wounded. The second was in Dayton Ohio and ended with 9 people dead (not counting the shooter) and more wounded. I already covered the El Paso attack yesterday and I don't really think it's necessary to cover the Dayton shooting in depth. For a quick, fairly balanced round up on that attack you can look at this Time article. 

I'd rather draw a rather important contrast between the two attacks. Both of the men that carried out the attacks were similarly armed with AR's and both attacks occurred where large number of people were gathered. But in one case there were double digit deaths and in the other there were less than ten. 

What was the difference? I think it's pretty clear it's the fact that the Dayton attacker tried to target a place that had armed people defending it. The attacker in that case opened up on the street and tried to enter Ned Peppers, a crowded bar. Had he gotten in a lot more people would have died, but he never made it. 

Why? Because police shot him dead. Having armed people there to respond to the attack saved many lives and just goes to show that "good guys with guns" isn't a myth. There wasn't anyone willing or able to shoot and kill the attacker in El Paso as the one guy near there with a CCW permit decided to evacuate children instead. That was probably the right choice but I think if there had been someone to return fire at the El Paso Wal-Mart, fewer people would have died. 

Much has been also made about the political leanings of the El Paso attacker. Patrick Crusius has been rightly called a White Nationalist, though he doesn't seem to cleanly fit into the left/right paradigm as he had several left wing beliefs as well. Predictably people have blamed the right for this attacker. He definitely had some right wing beliefs though. 

However, the political leanings of the Dayton shooting has been revealed as well. Heavy.com has a good article up about his social media postings and it's pretty clear he was on the left side of the political spectrum. Though his motive is unclear and may have been personal in nature, it just goes to show that this isn't a left/right problem as there are violent people on both sides. 

I don't have much more to add that hasn't been covered better in previous posts. Yesterday's post is a major part of why I think these kinds of things are happening. In the past I have also wrote about what I think we can do about mass shootings and what a real compromise on gun rights would look like.