CDZ Gun-free zones in VA Hospitals - Open invitation to terrorists

[protectionist]

Funny you should mention it, Pro. The fact is that I serve on the Sheriff Auxiliary Volunteers. I DO patrol in uniform, with a badge, a radio, and no gun. But you are getting off base. The Republican fear mongering calendar says that Jan. 23rd is the day to preach about that.

Nothing funny about mentioning it at all. Mohammed. As for Jan. 23rd, what's special about that ?

 

[protectionist]

They are always around when I go to the VA..

Then you're covered, and his thread is not meant for you. It is meant for all those people who are vulnerable in the VA hospitals that I mentioned, where there is never a cop in sight.

 

[Moonglow]

They are always around when I go to the VA..

Then you're covered, and his thread is not meant for you. It is meant for all those people who are vulnerable in the VA hospitals that I mentioned, where there is never a cop in sight.

Kinda hard to carry when you are hospitalized....and most of those inside are very elderly and there is oxygen...

 

[protectionist]

Kinda hard to carry when you are hospitalized....and most of those inside are very elderly and there is oxygen...

Not hard for those who are not hospitalized to carry their guns. And if the need arose to fire the guns, the oxygen would be the least of anybody's worries. And I'm elderly, and I've had 8 surgeries in the VA hospital + some other visits, and could have had my gun with me through all of it.

 

[protectionist]

Picture says a thousand words.

 

[Vandalshandle]

I see a TV series in this. "Ben Casey, Head Resident VA Sniper".

 

[Elvis Obama]

I'm being called a Jihadist. I can certainly understand why gun rights supporters would be so concerned about mental health diagnoses. If we had effective mental health outreach, their paranoia would be discovered and appropriate steps might be taken.

You're a Jihadist! No, you're a Jihadist! This is clean debate?

 

[Vandalshandle]

I filmed this at a citizen's CC guns rights rally:

 

[320 Years of History]

You can't define a gun-free zone as a place where less than 100% of the people are armed. Nidal Hasan was fired on by two individuals during his ten minute long rampage. The army is not the NRA. They're not insane. They understand the nightmare that a free-for-all could cause. In the army you're only supposed to shoot your guns when you're told to.

My point was that there is no correlation between the target a terrorist chooses and the ability of people to shoot back at them. All terrorists/mass shooters know they're likely to be facing armed opponents within minutes. Many have already given themselves up for dead. The notion that we can cut down on response time by making everyone in the world an armed and deadly peace officer is way out there.

There is only one rational response to terrorism. Go about your business.

1. Nobody was defining a gun-free zone "as a place where less than 100% of the people are armed", Mr Straw Man. Those are YOUR words, not mine.

2. You sound like a jihadist too. Your post is right in line with what they wish to program Americans to. "No correlation between the target a terrorist chooses and the ability of people to shoot back at them" ?? Wow. What a thing to say. What could be more purely ISIS then that ? Of course there's a correlation. Does anyone with a brain think that ISIS is going to attack an NRA meeting ? Or a gun show ? Nope. They attack what they think are SOFT targets. Occasionally, they might get stupid, as in the the Garland TX case, where they rqan into opposition, and paid the price for their stupidity.

3. What terrorists/mass shooters know is that in soft targets (gun-free zones) there will be plenty of "minutes" for them to conduct a massacre, before the armed opponents you mention arrive.

4. Of course we cut down on response time (to zero) by making citizens with the right to carry a gun, ecercise that right, and this should be ANYWHERE. There is no reason why anyplace should be off limits to law-abiding CCW holders, from carrying their guns, and 1). creating a deterrent factor to terrorists and 2). stopping the terrorists cold, as saving lives. What you suggest is a formula for the massacres of innocent people. You're a jihadist (or may as well be).

5. Oh sure. "Go about your business" (UNARMED) > Precisely, the ISIS line.

TY for a serious reply to my seriously written remarks. I will reply to you, not now...I have time to read, but not to read and write just now.

 

[Kondor3]

Obama has made the VA hospitals gun-free zones...

He has?

I've been operating under the impression that the possession of firearms, knives, and other similar handheld personal weapons, by private individuals, while on US Government property not otherwise designated, has been a violation of the USC for a very long time, rather than something that Obumble just conjured up.

...With practically zero security in our hospital...

That's odd... the several VA hospitals with which I am reasonably well acquainted ALL have a sizable and active US Dept of Veterans Affairs Police Dept presence.

 

[Agit8r]

Obama has made the VA hospitals gun-free zones. With practically zero security in our hospital - James Haley (you never see a cop), the hospital is red meat to terrorists, with no one inside able to defend themselves.
Police chief supports the gun-free zone. Sure, he's working for Obama's appointee. And in general. most cops don't want anybody having guns except them.


Bottom line - gun-free zones need to be abolished. They are open invitations to terrorists, and there's no reason why a law-abiding citizen with a license, should be banned from carrying his gun ANYWHERE. This is especially true in VA hospitals, since terrorists, more than once, have picked military targets to hit. With everyone (veterans, doctors, nurses, etc) unarmed, the stage is set for a major massacre.

What would be the point of having VA hospitals, if no doctors were willing to work there?

 

[320 Years of History]

Red: Tell us, please...in what way is a gun helpful in defending oneself or others against an explosive device, particularly ones activated by suicide bombers? Seems to me a physical shield might be more useful than a gun in such circumstances, and particularly to people outside the central impact radius of a bomb. Better still are preemptive informative measures such as screening stations set up in perimeter locations.

Where were the 300+ million gun toting Americans who ostensibly should have been able to protect themselves and/or others at any one of the terrorist or so-called terrorist events over the past decade? Surely one would think that if having a gun were going to be an effective means of self-defense, at least once one person having a gun would have used it to neutralize the terrorists who didn't use bombs to effect injury. Yet, so far, not one such person has, at least not that I've heard of.

More relevant to any discussion on gun control/rights than is the impact of having a citizenry that ubiquitously (or not) "packs heat" is the fact that of all the gun-related, or just violent, crimes (with or without a gun) that occur in the U.S., terrorism doesn't even rate in even the top ten. Moreover, by the time someone having a gun were to use it to stop a terrorist, the terrorist has already accomplished what they aimed to do. Terrorism and its effects are nothing but a red herring to the gun control/rights discussion; the overwhelming majority of gun-related crime has nothing to do with terrorism (or mass shootings, for that matter), that is unless you want to define terrorism as "anything caused by another human and that might be scary to a person when it happens."

Why? Terrorists don't, and don't have to, think as you and I do when trying to accomplish something, and it's naive to think that they do and measure one's success in thwarting them using the same terms we use to gauge success and failure. Unlike many of the remarks I read on this site, it's clear from their actions that terrorists, particularly radical Islamist ones, can see both the forest and the trees. It's clear that when evaluating the success of their terrorist deeds, they see their "glass" as half full, not half empty.

Terrorists have two factors on their side that cannot be ignored and that having a gun as self-defense is unlikely (given the results so far) to stop: (1) the element of surprise, and (2) having either a low enough or no specific measure of harm that must be caused in order for the terrorist to consider him-/herself successful.

For example, do you think Timothy McVeigh was pissed that the whole Murrow building didn't collapse, or do you think he was thrilled that the front of it was destroyed? Consider the fourth 9/11 plane. Do you think that crashing a plane of U.S. passengers was something Al Qaeda's fans and members didn't cheer over, even though flying the thing into the Capitol or Washington Monument or whatever was the intended outcome? They most certainly were not put off; they were thrilled they, in a very dramatic way, killed some 200 more "infidels."

Blue:
It's curious that anyone advocating for gun control would mention anything having to do with military installations. The fact is that military installations are among the most heavily gun controlled places in the U.S. And what does recent history tell us about the prevalence of gun-related illegal shootings on military bases? It tells us that one can almost count all of them from 1994 to 2014 on one's fingers and toes.

It's hard to get crime statistics for military installations, but some were apparently released for Camp Pendleton. They had one murder and one successful suicide. (The info at the link doesn't say whether a gun was involved in either incident.) Given the base's population of ~5K people, regardless of whether guns were involved or not, that translates to a far lower violent death rate than is found in any number of other places in the country. (As an interesting exercise, check out how that compares with your own town's or section of town's murder/suicide rates.)

I realize I haven't any info that will allow me to determine whether those rates are consistent across all military bases. The referenced article states, "The overall rate for all the services was two reports of sexual assault per 1,000 service members. The Army's rate was 2.6 per 1,000; Navy, 1.6 per 1,000; Air Force, 1.4 per 1,000; Marine Corps, 1.3 per 1,000." That statement's placement in the article makes it unclear, however, whether that is with regard to sexual assaults, crime overall, or some other crime metric. (I suspect it pertains to sexual assaults, but it's hard to know since in typical "newsy" fashion, the writer has made nearly every damn sentence its own paragraph rather than putting related stuff in one paragraph.)

From the very beginning of your post I question your sincerity. You ask a foolish question that appears to be designed to divert attention from the truth. Since your post is so long, I will address it by your paragraphs/

Red section: Paragraph 1 - Guns in the hands of citizens are "helpful in defending oneself or others against" terrorists who engage in shooting attacks (like Paris, Fort Hood, San Bernardino). In the case of "explosive devices", like ones "activated by suicide bombers", sure a physical shield might be more useful than a gun in such circumstances. Nobody said it wouldn't be. "Preemptive informative measures", good also. Nobody spoke against them. But these things pertain to the bombers. The abolishing of gun-free zones, and having CCW licensees armed, pertains to the shooter terrorists. Form follows function. Get it ?

Paragragh 2 - the "300+ million gun toting Americans who ostensibly should have been able to protect themselves and/or others", at "terrorist events over the past decade" were AT THOSE TERRORIST EVENTS. And they got shot and killed, BECAUSE THEY WERE IN A GOVT-MANDATED GUN-FREE ZONE, and were therefore unarmed (which is precisely what I'm talking about)

Paragragh 3 - Abolishing gun-free zones serves to stop ANY criminal who starts a crime of ANY kind, terrorist or not.
No, the terrorist has NOT "already accomplished what they aimed to do" "by the time someone having a gun were to use it to stop a terrorist", because that "time" you speak of, is exactly ONE SECOND. That's how long it take to pull a gun out of a pocket and fire it.

Paragraph 4 - It doesn't matter how the terrorists see their activity. Fact is , terrorists continue to use mass shooting as a way to conduct terrorism. Together with that they pick SOFT TARGETS (ie, Gun-Free Zones) as places to do it. So, it is elementary that by hardening these targets with armed CCW holders, 2 things happen. 1) a deterrent is created, where the terrorists no longer have an easy path in a soft target of unarmed people, and 2) shooter terrorists who do show up and start shooting will be stopped, avoiding any further killing

(Example; the 2002 LAX terrorist, Ahmed Mohammed Hadayet, who was shot dead by a security guard after he shot and killed 2 people. He had 2 semi-automatic pistols & hundreds of rounds of ammunition in an airport filled with people) If the armed guard had not been there Hadayet surely would have conduct an bloodbath. The armed guard (who could have been just any civilian), saved hundreds of lives.)

2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paragraph 5 & 6 - No matter what the terrorists think about their deeds, having armed citizens on hand, is both a deterrent and a cure to stop an mass shooter attack just as it begins (as in the case of the 2002 LAX shooter shown in the link provided here)

Blue section: Regardless of the statistics on violence in military bases/installations over the span of decades, the fact is there have been quite a few just within the past few years, since the 2009 Fort hood attack, and no matter how many there have been, the fact remains, that VA hospitals are US military, and as such are prime targets for jihadists who have specified that these are their top choice. That together with the rash of jihadist shooting massacres, is more than enough to validate the abolition of gun-free zones, especially in VA hospitals.

Terrorist shooting incidents in the U.S. since 2001:

1. El Al counter shooting (California) 7/4/02
2. Beltway sniper attacks (DC, Mid-Atlantic) Oct. 2002
3. Knoxville church shooting (Tennessee) 7/27/08
4. Pittsburgh police officers killed (Pennsylvania) 4/4/09
5. Tiller abortion clinic (Kansas) 5/31/09
6. Holocaust Museum shooting (DC) 6/10/09
7. Fort Hood shooting (Texas) 11/5/09
8. Fort Stewart Army base killing (Georgia) 12/10/11
9. Sikh Temple Shooting (Wisconsin) 8/7/12
10. St. John's Parish police ambush (Louisiana) 8/16/12
11. LAX Shooting (California) 11/05/13

Of the eleven terrorist shootings in the U.S. following 9/11, not one occurred in a zone covered by the Gun-Free Zone law.

Unless I misunderstand you, in a nutshell, you pose an anti-gun control assertion that says:

The right to carry guns should not be limited because such a limitation will leave on-site gun toting non-law enforcement/non-security personnel outmatched by would-be or actual terrorist shooters, and being outmatched, those civilians are thus unable to prevent from commencing or stop in progress a shooter(s) from doing harm with their gun.​

You have presented examples -- the LAX shooting and so-called ostensibly "gun free zones" -- along with the idea of self-defense as your means of/basis for arguing for (supporting) the validity of the assertion. Furthermore you argue that lay folks carrying guns makes for a culture whereby the potentiality of vigilante intervention will either dissuade a terrorist shooter or bring an end to their deeds.

That argument suffers from the following fallacies:

• Just in case -- The argument fallaciously in part uses "just in case reasoning" to make it's point. The thrust of this flaw in reasoning is seen in that you imply that regular folks should carry guns just in case a terrorist shooter "show up," their carrying guns will allow them to "do something."
• Alleged Certainty -- In discussing the LAX event, you claim that "If the armed guard had not been there Hadayet surely would have conduct [sic] an bloodbath."
• Weak analogy -- An on-duty security guard or law enforcement professional is not a lay civilian; thus what such a person does or doesn't to to bring closure to a shooting event is not analogous to what a lay person can, might or should do in the same circumstances. "Gun-free zone," no matter what it sounds like, does not mean security personnel and law enforcement officials won't or cannot have guns in such zones.
• False Dilemma -- The argument proposes that either "many folks are free to carry guns at will and "wherever" and knowledge of that will deter or stop a terrorist from acting on their intentions" or "many folks are not free to carry guns and that will encourage terrorist shooters to act on their intentions." There are other alternatives, such as the presence or absence of gun-wielding civilians having no impact on a terrorist shooter's willingness to act or the extent to which the shooter achieves their objective(s).
• Argumentum in terrorem -- Fear is at the heart of almost every self-defense justification for an assertion's validity, at least those for which fear of the alternative is a key driver. It may be that one carries a gun out of the fear that not doing so exposes one to greater risk of harm/death, but that fear being a basis for arguing one way or another on a matter is nonetheless irrational when the likelihood of (probability) of the feared event is low or very low. Insofar as the U.S. has experienced eleven terrorist shootings since 2002 (see below), the risk related to terrorist shooters is very low and thus the need for individuals to defend against them is illogical.
  
• Post Designation -- You have chosen to use the examples you have and make them fit your predefined conclusion. Do there exist examples where the terrorist's target was "soft?" Yes. Does their existence establish a causal relationship exists between the "softness" of the target(s) and the shooter's willingness or ability to kill/harm their intended targets? No.
• Affirming the Consequent -- Your argument affirms the consequent insofar as it suggests the following: If there are present people (lay people) with guns, they will use them to stop unauthorized shooters. Unauthorized shooters were stopped by folks who had guns (notwithstanding that they weren't lay people). Therefore, more people (lay people) should have guns.
• Denying the Antecedent -- Your argument in part says "If people are allowed to freely carry guns, terrorist shooters will not have a free reign to kill people. Some examples that show this not be true -- gun toting civilians or not, the free reign exists -- include:
  • UCC shooting in Oregon where there were present multiple civilians who had a gun and who could have attempted to use it to shoot the shooter.
  • Beltway Sniper -- The man and his son's sniping campaign was unabated by the presence of gun toting civilians.

While I would be willing to accept that the assertion above be true, but at the moment I do not because nobody has presented a logically valid argument that shows it to be so. It doesn't matter if I want it to be true. It doesn't matter if I feel like it should be true. My brain knows that it must be shown to be true, not just seem that way based on any number of arguments that attempt fallaciously to prove its veracity. Moreover, the line of argument above tacitly advocates for vigilante justice. Why you think that is a good thing is beyond me. Indeed, it makes no sense at all to talk about a set of laws, the Constitution, and in the same breath talk about non-law enforcement officials carrying acting as law enforcement officials, ostensibly in self-defense.

Contrast that, or other arguments against gun control arguments (limitations on one's ability to exercise one's 2nd Amendment right), with what gun control advocates' assertion: Laws that restrict one's ability to obtain guns (gun control laws) reduce the incidence of intended, unintended and/or illegal shootings. To support the assertion, gun control advocates assume that "fewer people being shot is a good thing" and they assume everyone accepts that assumption is true and that "fewer people being shot" is the goal of gun control legislation; thus they argue the noted assertion is true using the argument that follows:

1. Gun control laws make it harder for all people within the jurisdiction of those laws to obtain a gun by reducing the quantity of legal points of sale for guns.
2. Fewer legal points of sale results in fewer people who want to get a gun being able to do so, be it due to lack of awareness of from where to get an illegal or legal gun or lack of ability to get a gun from either a legal or illegal source.
3. If "tomorrow" fewer people who want a gun in order to shoot another person can obtain one, fewer of those people who want one to shoot other people will actually get get one.
4. Fewer people who want a gun with which to shoot another person actually having one necessarily means that more of those would-be shooters' targets will not be shot with a gun aimed by the person who wants to shoot them with it.
5. That it will be impossible for some would-be shooters to act upon their desire to shoot their intended human target necessarily means that fewer would-be shooting victims will become shooting victims.
6. First Conclusion: Fewer intentional shootings occur.
7. Gun control laws make it harder for all people within the jurisdiction of those laws to obtain a gun by reducing the quantity of legal points of sale for guns.
   
8. If one acquires a gun outside of the provisions of the gun control laws, one necessarily becomes an illegal shooter if one uses a gun thus acquired.
9. There exist illegal gun markets; however, not everyone who would have previously and legally purchased a gun via legal means, and who would then use it illegally, in the presence of very strict gun control laws, has access to those illegal markets and distributors/sellers. (A "straw seller" is someone who can/could legally buy a gun, does so, and then makes it available to someone who lacks legal access to a gun. In completing the "straw" transaction by delivering the gun to an unlawful user, the "straw seller" becomes an illegal distributor.)
10. Because fewer folks who lack legal access to guns have the means and ability to obtain them, there will be fewer illegal possessors of guns.
11. Fewer illegal possessors of guns who heretofore would have been legal possessors of them but who cannot be so because of gun control laws that make it impossible for them to legally obtain a gun.
12. Second conclusion: Fewer illegal shootings will occur.
13. Gun control laws make it harder for all people within the jurisdiction of those laws to obtain a gun by reducing the quantity of legal points of sale for guns.
    
14. ...[the general structure of the argument is obviously about the same for unintentional shootings and I've not laid it out here for brevity's sake.]
15. Third conclusion: Fewer unintended shootings will occur.
16. Q.E.D: Laws that restrict one's ability to obtain guns (gun control laws) reduce the incidence of intended, unintended and/or illegal shootings.

One will note that no promise or contention is made that gun control laws will eliminate all shootings. How can one logically refute elements of the argument above? Well, by showing credibly that the following is true:

• The quantity of shooting events that occur is inversely proportional to access to and widespread possession of guns.

There is no need to deal with how many people get shot because one shooter can shoot one or multiple people, but if that one shooter lacked a gun, s/he'd be able to shoot no people and there would be no shooting event.

Green:
??? What the hell? Do really think folks are going to pull out their guns and shoot the terrorist before s/he begins to shoot people? The terrorist's goal is to harm/kill people. They are going to accomplish that at least to the extent of one person, perhaps more, before a vigilante shoots them.

Purple:
It is not at all elementary. It is fallacious. (See the earlier discussion of the fallacies in your argument.)



P.S.
I presume your remark about my sincerity stems from the picture I placed at the start of my post. That image is the graphic representation of the theme in the red section of my post. Surely the reference didn't escape you?
For the record, when I write something meant as humor, and thus I don't intend readers to take it too seriously, I make my intent in that regard clear, either by writing "LOL," or something akin to it, after or before (or both) the remark.

 

[oldsoul]

Red: Tell us, please...in what way is a gun helpful in defending oneself or others against an explosive device, particularly ones activated by suicide bombers? Seems to me a physical shield might be more useful than a gun in such circumstances, and particularly to people outside the central impact radius of a bomb. Better still are preemptive informative measures such as screening stations set up in perimeter locations.

Where were the 300+ million gun toting Americans who ostensibly should have been able to protect themselves and/or others at any one of the terrorist or so-called terrorist events over the past decade? Surely one would think that if having a gun were going to be an effective means of self-defense, at least once one person having a gun would have used it to neutralize the terrorists who didn't use bombs to effect injury. Yet, so far, not one such person has, at least not that I've heard of.

More relevant to any discussion on gun control/rights than is the impact of having a citizenry that ubiquitously (or not) "packs heat" is the fact that of all the gun-related, or just violent, crimes (with or without a gun) that occur in the U.S., terrorism doesn't even rate in even the top ten. Moreover, by the time someone having a gun were to use it to stop a terrorist, the terrorist has already accomplished what they aimed to do. Terrorism and its effects are nothing but a red herring to the gun control/rights discussion; the overwhelming majority of gun-related crime has nothing to do with terrorism (or mass shootings, for that matter), that is unless you want to define terrorism as "anything caused by another human and that might be scary to a person when it happens."

Why? Terrorists don't, and don't have to, think as you and I do when trying to accomplish something, and it's naive to think that they do and measure one's success in thwarting them using the same terms we use to gauge success and failure. Unlike many of the remarks I read on this site, it's clear from their actions that terrorists, particularly radical Islamist ones, can see both the forest and the trees. It's clear that when evaluating the success of their terrorist deeds, they see their "glass" as half full, not half empty.

Terrorists have two factors on their side that cannot be ignored and that having a gun as self-defense is unlikely (given the results so far) to stop: (1) the element of surprise, and (2) having either a low enough or no specific measure of harm that must be caused in order for the terrorist to consider him-/herself successful.

For example, do you think Timothy McVeigh was pissed that the whole Murrow building didn't collapse, or do you think he was thrilled that the front of it was destroyed? Consider the fourth 9/11 plane. Do you think that crashing a plane of U.S. passengers was something Al Qaeda's fans and members didn't cheer over, even though flying the thing into the Capitol or Washington Monument or whatever was the intended outcome? They most certainly were not put off; they were thrilled they, in a very dramatic way, killed some 200 more "infidels."

Blue:
It's curious that anyone advocating for gun control would mention anything having to do with military installations. The fact is that military installations are among the most heavily gun controlled places in the U.S. And what does recent history tell us about the prevalence of gun-related illegal shootings on military bases? It tells us that one can almost count all of them from 1994 to 2014 on one's fingers and toes.

It's hard to get crime statistics for military installations, but some were apparently released for Camp Pendleton. They had one murder and one successful suicide. (The info at the link doesn't say whether a gun was involved in either incident.) Given the base's population of ~5K people, regardless of whether guns were involved or not, that translates to a far lower violent death rate than is found in any number of other places in the country. (As an interesting exercise, check out how that compares with your own town's or section of town's murder/suicide rates.)

I realize I haven't any info that will allow me to determine whether those rates are consistent across all military bases. The referenced article states, "The overall rate for all the services was two reports of sexual assault per 1,000 service members. The Army's rate was 2.6 per 1,000; Navy, 1.6 per 1,000; Air Force, 1.4 per 1,000; Marine Corps, 1.3 per 1,000." That statement's placement in the article makes it unclear, however, whether that is with regard to sexual assaults, crime overall, or some other crime metric. (I suspect it pertains to sexual assaults, but it's hard to know since in typical "newsy" fashion, the writer has made nearly every damn sentence its own paragraph rather than putting related stuff in one paragraph.)

From the very beginning of your post I question your sincerity. You ask a foolish question that appears to be designed to divert attention from the truth. Since your post is so long, I will address it by your paragraphs/

Red section: Paragraph 1 - Guns in the hands of citizens are "helpful in defending oneself or others against" terrorists who engage in shooting attacks (like Paris, Fort Hood, San Bernardino). In the case of "explosive devices", like ones "activated by suicide bombers", sure a physical shield might be more useful than a gun in such circumstances. Nobody said it wouldn't be. "Preemptive informative measures", good also. Nobody spoke against them. But these things pertain to the bombers. The abolishing of gun-free zones, and having CCW licensees armed, pertains to the shooter terrorists. Form follows function. Get it ?

Paragragh 2 - the "300+ million gun toting Americans who ostensibly should have been able to protect themselves and/or others", at "terrorist events over the past decade" were AT THOSE TERRORIST EVENTS. And they got shot and killed, BECAUSE THEY WERE IN A GOVT-MANDATED GUN-FREE ZONE, and were therefore unarmed (which is precisely what I'm talking about)

Paragragh 3 - Abolishing gun-free zones serves to stop ANY criminal who starts a crime of ANY kind, terrorist or not.
No, the terrorist has NOT "already accomplished what they aimed to do" "by the time someone having a gun were to use it to stop a terrorist", because that "time" you speak of, is exactly ONE SECOND. That's how long it take to pull a gun out of a pocket and fire it.

Paragraph 4 - It doesn't matter how the terrorists see their activity. Fact is , terrorists continue to use mass shooting as a way to conduct terrorism. Together with that they pick SOFT TARGETS (ie, Gun-Free Zones) as places to do it. So, it is elementary that by hardening these targets with armed CCW holders, 2 things happen. 1) a deterrent is created, where the terrorists no longer have an easy path in a soft target of unarmed people, and 2) shooter terrorists who do show up and start shooting will be stopped, avoiding any further killing

(Example; the 2002 LAX terrorist, Ahmed Mohammed Hadayet, who was shot dead by a security guard after he shot and killed 2 people. He had 2 semi-automatic pistols & hundreds of rounds of ammunition in an airport filled with people) If the armed guard had not been there Hadayet surely would have conduct an bloodbath. The armed guard (who could have been just any civilian), saved hundreds of lives.)

2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paragraph 5 & 6 - No matter what the terrorists think about their deeds, having armed citizens on hand, is both a deterrent and a cure to stop an mass shooter attack just as it begins (as in the case of the 2002 LAX shooter shown in the link provided here)

Blue section: Regardless of the statistics on violence in military bases/installations over the span of decades, the fact is there have been quite a few just within the past few years, since the 2009 Fort hood attack, and no matter how many there have been, the fact remains, that VA hospitals are US military, and as such are prime targets for jihadists who have specified that these are their top choice. That together with the rash of jihadist shooting massacres, is more than enough to validate the abolition of gun-free zones, especially in VA hospitals.

Terrorist shooting incidents in the U.S. since 2001:

1. El Al counter shooting (California) 7/4/02
2. Beltway sniper attacks (DC, Mid-Atlantic) Oct. 2002
3. Knoxville church shooting (Tennessee) 7/27/08
4. Pittsburgh police officers killed (Pennsylvania) 4/4/09
5. Tiller abortion clinic (Kansas) 5/31/09
6. Holocaust Museum shooting (DC) 6/10/09
7. Fort Hood shooting (Texas) 11/5/09
8. Fort Stewart Army base killing (Georgia) 12/10/11
9. Sikh Temple Shooting (Wisconsin) 8/7/12
10. St. John's Parish police ambush (Louisiana) 8/16/12
11. LAX Shooting (California) 11/05/13

Of the eleven terrorist shootings in the U.S. following 9/11, not one occurred in a zone covered by the Gun-Free Zone law.

Unless I misunderstand you, in a nutshell, you pose an anti-gun control assertion that says:

The right to carry guns should not be limited because such a limitation will leave on-site gun toting non-law enforcement/non-security personnel outmatched by would-be or actual terrorist shooters, and being outmatched, those civilians are thus unable to prevent from commencing or stop in progress a shooter(s) from doing harm with their gun.​

You have presented examples -- the LAX shooting and so-called ostensibly "gun free zones" -- along with the idea of self-defense as your means of/basis for arguing for (supporting) the validity of the assertion. Furthermore you argue that lay folks carrying guns makes for a culture whereby the potentiality of vigilante intervention will either dissuade a terrorist shooter or bring an end to their deeds.

That argument suffers from the following fallacies:

• Just in case -- The argument fallaciously in part uses "just in case reasoning" to make it's point. The thrust of this flaw in reasoning is seen in that you imply that regular folks should carry guns just in case a terrorist shooter "show up," their carrying guns will allow them to "do something."
• Alleged Certainty -- In discussing the LAX event, you claim that "If the armed guard had not been there Hadayet surely would have conduct [sic] an bloodbath."
• Weak analogy -- An on-duty security guard or law enforcement professional is not a lay civilian; thus what such a person does or doesn't to to bring closure to a shooting event is not analogous to what a lay person can, might or should do in the same circumstances. "Gun-free zone," no matter what it sounds like, does not mean security personnel and law enforcement officials won't or cannot have guns in such zones.
• False Dilemma -- The argument proposes that either "many folks are free to carry guns at will and "wherever" and knowledge of that will deter or stop a terrorist from acting on their intentions" or "many folks are not free to carry guns and that will encourage terrorist shooters to act on their intentions." There are other alternatives, such as the presence or absence of gun-wielding civilians having no impact on a terrorist shooter's willingness to act or the extent to which the shooter achieves their objective(s).
• Argumentum in terrorem -- Fear is at the heart of almost every self-defense justification for an assertion's validity, at least those for which fear of the alternative is a key driver. It may be that one carries a gun out of the fear that not doing so exposes one to greater risk of harm/death, but that fear being a basis for arguing one way or another on a matter is nonetheless irrational when the likelihood of (probability) of the feared event is low or very low. Insofar as the U.S. has experienced eleven terrorist shootings since 2002 (see below), the risk related to terrorist shooters is very low and thus the need for individuals to defend against them is illogical.
  
• Post Designation -- You have chosen to use the examples you have and make them fit your predefined conclusion. Do there exist examples where the terrorist's target was "soft?" Yes. Does their existence establish a causal relationship exists between the "softness" of the target(s) and the shooter's willingness or ability to kill/harm their intended targets? No.
• Affirming the Consequent -- Your argument affirms the consequent insofar as it suggests the following: If there are present people (lay people) with guns, they will use them to stop unauthorized shooters. Unauthorized shooters were stopped by folks who had guns (notwithstanding that they weren't lay people). Therefore, more people (lay people) should have guns.
• Denying the Antecedent -- Your argument in part says "If people are allowed to freely carry guns, terrorist shooters will not have a free reign to kill people. Some examples that show this not be true -- gun toting civilians or not, the free reign exists -- include:
  • UCC shooting in Oregon where there were present multiple civilians who had a gun and who could have attempted to use it to shoot the shooter.
  • Beltway Sniper -- The man and his son's sniping campaign was unabated by the presence of gun toting civilians.

While I would be willing to accept that the assertion above be true, but at the moment I do not because nobody has presented a logically valid argument that shows it to be so. It doesn't matter if I want it to be true. It doesn't matter if I feel like it should be true. My brain knows that it must be shown to be true, not just seem that way based on any number of arguments that attempt fallaciously to prove its veracity. Moreover, the line of argument above tacitly advocates for vigilante justice. Why you think that is a good thing is beyond me. Indeed, it makes no sense at all to talk about a set of laws, the Constitution, and in the same breath talk about non-law enforcement officials carrying acting as law enforcement officials, ostensibly in self-defense.

Contrast that, or other arguments against gun control arguments (limitations on one's ability to exercise one's 2nd Amendment right), with what gun control advocates' assertion: Laws that restrict one's ability to obtain guns (gun control laws) reduce the incidence of intended, unintended and/or illegal shootings. To support the assertion, gun control advocates assume that "fewer people being shot is a good thing" and they assume everyone accepts that assumption is true and that "fewer people being shot" is the goal of gun control legislation; thus they argue the noted assertion is true using the argument that follows:

1. Gun control laws make it harder for all people within the jurisdiction of those laws to obtain a gun by reducing the quantity of legal points of sale for guns.
2. Fewer legal points of sale results in fewer people who want to get a gun being able to do so, be it due to lack of awareness of from where to get an illegal or legal gun or lack of ability to get a gun from either a legal or illegal source.
3. If "tomorrow" fewer people who want a gun in order to shoot another person can obtain one, fewer of those people who want one to shoot other people will actually get get one.
4. Fewer people who want a gun with which to shoot another person actually having one necessarily means that more of those would-be shooters' targets will not be shot with a gun aimed by the person who wants to shoot them with it.
5. That it will be impossible for some would-be shooters to act upon their desire to shoot their intended human target necessarily means that fewer would-be shooting victims will become shooting victims.
6. First Conclusion: Fewer intentional shootings occur.
7. Gun control laws make it harder for all people within the jurisdiction of those laws to obtain a gun by reducing the quantity of legal points of sale for guns.
   
8. If one acquires a gun outside of the provisions of the gun control laws, one necessarily becomes an illegal shooter if one uses a gun thus acquired.
9. There exist illegal gun markets; however, not everyone who would have previously and legally purchased a gun via legal means, and who would then use it illegally, in the presence of very strict gun control laws, has access to those illegal markets and distributors/sellers. (A "straw seller" is someone who can/could legally buy a gun, does so, and then makes it available to someone who lacks legal access to a gun. In completing the "straw" transaction by delivering the gun to an unlawful user, the "straw seller" becomes an illegal distributor.)
10. Because fewer folks who lack legal access to guns have the means and ability to obtain them, there will be fewer illegal possessors of guns.
11. Fewer illegal possessors of guns who heretofore would have been legal possessors of them but who cannot be so because of gun control laws that make it impossible for them to legally obtain a gun.
12. Second conclusion: Fewer illegal shootings will occur.
13. Gun control laws make it harder for all people within the jurisdiction of those laws to obtain a gun by reducing the quantity of legal points of sale for guns.
    
14. ...[the general structure of the argument is obviously about the same for unintentional shootings and I've not laid it out here for brevity's sake.]
15. Third conclusion: Fewer unintended shootings will occur.
16. Q.E.D: Laws that restrict one's ability to obtain guns (gun control laws) reduce the incidence of intended, unintended and/or illegal shootings.

One will note that no promise or contention is made that gun control laws will eliminate all shootings. How can one logically refute elements of the argument above? Well, by showing credibly that the following is true:

• The quantity of shooting events that occur is inversely proportional to access to and widespread possession of guns.

There is no need to deal with how many people get shot because one shooter can shoot one or multiple people, but if that one shooter lacked a gun, s/he'd be able to shoot no people and there would be no shooting event.

Green:
??? What the hell? Do really think folks are going to pull out their guns and shoot the terrorist before s/he begins to shoot people? The terrorist's goal is to harm/kill people. They are going to accomplish that at least to the extent of one person, perhaps more, before a vigilante shoots them.

Purple:
It is not at all elementary. It is fallacious. (See the earlier discussion of the fallacies in your argument.)



P.S.
I presume your remark about my sincerity stems from the picture I placed at the start of my post. That image is the graphic representation of the theme in the red section of my post. Surely the reference didn't escape you?
For the record, when I write something meant as humor, and thus I don't intend readers to take it too seriously, I make my intent in that regard clear, either by writing "LOL," or something akin to it, after or before (or both) the remark.

While I cannot(don't have the time to see if it is possible) refute your arguements above, I do have this to say:

Those who are willing to give up even a small amount of freedom for any amount of security, deserve neither. Freedom is not free, and if someone near and dear to me has to pay the ultimate price for my freedom, as much as I will mourn their death, I can accept that. If I have to make that sacrifice for you, your family, or mine, I will "bear that cross with honor," because FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.