In your segment, If I Only Had A Gun, Ms. Sawyer again promoted herself and your Corporation as being politically left wing, and once again defines ABC by their true name sake; Always Broadcasting Crap.
I’d like to look specifically at the scenarios with the students in the lecture hall. It was interesting to note that the person who was “armed” sat in the same seat during each segment. As well, interesting was the fact that the so-called shooter knew not only who would be armed; but where that person would be sitting. What I saw was the shooter coming into the room shooting the lecturer and immediately turning his attention on the armed plant. Not exactly real world now is it.
In the real world the shooter would have no knowledge of who might be armed. Nor would he/she know where an armed person might be positioned in the room. In the real world, yes, the lecturer would have been shot, as he was the intended victim. Possibly the shooter would be able to take out, randomly, others in the room. However, the shooter could and most likely would be taken out by an armed citizen; thus, decreasing the carnage and saving lives.
Your segment also failed to acknowledge the fact that knowing someone might be armed, is in itself deterrence. While on the other end of the spectrum knowledge that no one is armed opens the door for violent criminal acts against a normally non-violent citizenry.
Example, piracy on the open seas. How many armed military vassals have pirates attempted to lay sedge to? NONE!! Why then do they attack merchant shipping – simple really, merchant ships are by law and treaty unarmed. Closer to home look at the published FBI crime statistics. Violent crime in metropolitan areas is shown to be much higher in those areas where arming for self-defense is restricted – go figure.