UD covers gun news closely and can assure you that all over America every day men, women, and children walk easily about with small medium and large guns all over them. Of course some of this happens in open carry states, where everyone sees the gun, but no one (cough) responds…
As for the lack of response in midtown Manhattan — the area immediately around the shooter in the plaza is curiously devoid of people, so I’m assuming the response was run away. My response would certainly have been Give this person PLENTY of room.
I would also have called 911, and I’m assuming some people in fact did, but there wouldn’t have been a quick enough response to 911 to stop him.
Psychologically, there may have been denial/disbelief/maybe someone is filming a movie scene here... There may have been, in other words, human all too human tendencies to normalize/vaporize a twilight zone sight in the middle of the day.
Just as more Americans need training in active shooter drills, so more Americans need to be taught to lead their daily public lives with a heightened degree of paranoia.
Introduction, THE SHITS ARE TRYING TO KILL US, PEOPLE. GET IT INTO YOUR HEAD THAT THERE ARE FIVE HUNDRED MILLION GUNS IN THIS COUNTRY. Meets Wednesdays, basement of St Mark’s Episcopal, 7:00. Refreshments served.
July 31st, 2025 at 1:57PM
Fear not, Smart cities are on the way along with ubiquitous surveillance and predictive policing embiggened by AI. Of course this will require more storage and processing, paving the way for more data centers.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/cities-should-act-now-ban-predictive-policingand-stop-using-shotspotter-too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_issues_in_smart_cities
https://sls.eff.org
See also LLAP-Goch