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...it's about the nature of the claim being addressed.
As I said, anecdotal evidence cannot support a general claim, but it can disprove it. If someone were to claim that no concealed carry permit holder ever commits a violent offense with a firearm or suffers a negligent discharge in public (and that therefore CCW permit holders present no threat at all to public safety), a single anecdotal example of a CCW permit holder committing an assaultive shooting or causing a negligent discharge in public would be sufficient to prove that claim false. That would be an example of perfectly legitimate use of an "anti-gun" anecdote.
Problem is, nobody on this forum has, to the best of my recollection, ever made such a claim. The claim has been made that CCW permit holders are less likely--much less likely--than the general public to commit violent offenses (or otherwise misuse their firearms to jeopardize public safety), but implicit in that claim is the acknowledgement that some CCW permit holders will do so. So when anecdotal evidence is presented of CCW permit holders committing violent or other offenses against the person with their firearms, all the poster is doing is making a point that the pro-RKBA types on this forum have already acknowledged, and does not contradict their claim that the overwhelming majority of CCW permit holders do not form a threat to public safety. Or at least, do not form a threat to public safety as a result of carrying a firearm in public.
Conversely, if a pro-RKBA poster were to claim that an armed private citizen will, if present at the scene, stop a violent crime in progress all or most of the time, anecdotes of armed private citizens successfully doing so do not prove this claim, because these anecdotes only prove that these outcomes happen some--i.e. more than none--of the time, but not how much more than none.
But again, to the best of my recollection, nobody on this forum has ever made such a claim, though here it does behoove me to point out that there is a possibility for misunderstanding due to the ambiguous nature of the word "could," as in, "if an armed CCW permit holder had been present in Norris Hall, that person could have stopped Cho from killing as many people as he did." This sentence can be interpreted to mean "the armed private citizen would have been able to successfully stop Cho"; such an assertion would insupportable, and it has to be noted, in the context of this elaboration, that anecdotal counter-examples of mass shootings where an armed private citizen was present (or at least nearby) but failed to put a stop to the shooting (e.g. Tacoma Mall or Tucson) are valid evidence against such a claim.
However, the sentence can also mean "the possibility would have existed of such a person stopping Cho," as opposed to that possibility not existing during the half hour it took for the cops to breach the chains with which Cho had locked the outer doors to Norris Hall. Strictly speaking, the construction "might have been able to stop Cho" would better convey the acknowledgement of uncertainty of the outcome, but "could have" does a better job of conveying the contrast with the actual situation, which is that, disarmed, nobody was able to stop Cho. Bottom line is that it's not grammatically incorrect to say "could have" rather than "might have been able to," because "could have" ≠ "would have."
The possible role of armed private citizens in mass shootings is tricky to resolve at present, because the fact is that mass shootings tend to occur in locations where private citizens are prohibited--either by law or by the property owner's rules--from carrying firearms. While I've repeatedly pointed out on this forum that correlation ≠ causation, I don't think I'm making a huge leap by asserting that there is a causal relationship between those two facts, but I'll acknowledge that I don't know which way it runs: it's equally plausible that malls, schools, workplaces, etc. ban guns because mass shootings tend to take place in such locations as it is that mass shootings take place in such places because the prospective victims will be unarmed, or even that the two effects feed off each other like two serpents swallowing each others' tails. Be that as it may, it's pretty evident that declaring certain locations "gun free zones" has done exactly bugger-all to stop premeditated mass shootings (as if there were any other kind) while ensuring that the shooter generally won't face any effective resistance until the cops arrive and get themselves organized.
Be that as it may, the posting of anecdotal instances of armed private citizens successfully preventing the completion of violent crimes does effectively contradict the It-Stands-To-Reason speculative arguments that armed private citizens can never be effective in such situations. And please don't insult my intelligence by pretending such claims are made, or at least insinuated, on this forum.
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