UNC Charlotte shooting, like others, showed deadly potential of pocket-sized weapons
The popular profile of a mass shooter has him armed with a menacing, military-style assault rifle, its magazine loaded for death. But this week’s attack at UNC Charlotte showed the lethal power of a weapon that slips easily into a pocket.
A suspect with a handgun killed two students in a UNCC classroom on Tuesday and wounded four more — using a weapon that fits the statistical average for such events.
Pistols were the most powerful weapon used in 56 percent of the 200 active-shooter cases between 2000 and 2015, according to an analysis for the FBI by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, known as ALERRT, at Texas State University. Rifles were used in only 27 percent of the attacks.
ALERRT defines active shooters as those killing or attempting to kill people in a confined or other populated area. Its operations and tactics in response to active shooters have trained more than 85,000 law enforcement officers nationwide and are considered by the FBI to be the national standard.
Handguns are often of the same 9mm caliber as some rifles, experts say. Pistol magazines can carry up to 30 rounds of ammunition, similar to those of assault rifles. Both fire semi-automatically, firing bullets with each pull of the trigger.
The difference is simple: Handguns can be easily concealed and rifles can’t.
“If somebody wants to do something bad, a big old rifle is hard to hide,” said Larry Hyatt, owner of Charlotte’s Hyatt Guns. “The handgun under a jacket is more dangerous, to me, than a long rifle.”
Handguns were used, often in conjunction with rifles, at virtually all the nation’s biggest mass shootings in recent years. But they’re quite deadly alone.
Stephen Paddock, armed with AR-15 assault-style rifles fitted with now-banned bump stocks to make them fire faster, killed 58 people and injured nearly 500 more from his Las Vegas hotel room in 2017.
Shooters at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, where 20 children and six adults died, and at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub in 2017, killing 49, used both rifles and pistols in their attacks.
Last November, Ian David Long used only a .45-caliber Glock pistol with an extended magazine to kill 12 people in a Thousand Oaks, Calif., bar.
Seung-Hui Cho was armed only with two pistols when he killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech in 2007.
Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan used a pistol with laser sights to slay 13 people and injure 32 during his 2009 rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Jiverly Wong fired his two Beretta pistols 99 times to kill 13 people at an immigrant community center in Binghamton, N.Y., that same year.
Pete Blair, a criminal justice professor at Texas State University who is ALERRT’s director, said data show that the type of weapons used by active shooters is less important than where bullets strike the victims.
Rifles are designed for long-range shooting, and their longer barrels develop more bullet velocity and offer more accuracy than handguns intended for closer targets. But their size also makes rifles harder to maneuver in tight spaces.
“What I think the best modeling of data suggests is that it’s not the particular kind of weapons that are used but the total number of weapons used,” Blair said. “The more weapons that are brought in, the more people shot.”
Paddock stowed 24 guns in his Las Vegas hotel rooms in committing the nation’s deadliest mass shooting by a lone shooter.
No data are available to assess the impact of shooters whose guns have high-capacity magazines, Blair said. Most states, including North Carolina, don’t restrict their use.
Most handguns will hold seven to 17 bullets, Hyatt said. Depending on their caliber, rifles typically can hold 20 rounds but high-capacity magazines can hold 30 or more bullets. Emptied magazines on either can be replaced in 1.5 seconds or less.
“If a person has time — there’s nobody fighting them, just innocent victims — they can reload and can have much more power,” Hyatt said.
But civilians who do fight back can make a critical difference in shooting attacks, Blair added. In one out of six such attacks, he said, a potential victim stops the attacker.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said student Riley Howell, 21, saved lives by tackling the UNCC shooter before Howell was fatally shot Tuesday. Former student Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22, was charged with murder and assault.
“It’s far more common than you would think,” Blair said. “Most of them involve people who are unarmed who simply tackle the assailant and take them down.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2019 at 5:35 PM.