'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."

Why?

Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back.

Mumbai photographer: I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera. Armed police would not fire back

It is the photograph that has dominated the world's front pages, casting an astonishing light on the fresh-faced killers who brought terror to the heart of India's most vibrant city. Now it can be revealed how the astonishing picture came to be taken by a newspaper photographer who hid inside a train carriage as gunfire erupted all around him.

Sebastian D'Souza, a picture editor at the Mumbai Mirror, whose offices are just opposite the city's Chhatrapati Shivaji station, heard the gunfire erupt and ran towards the terminus. "I ran into the first carriage of one of the trains on the platform to try and get a shot but couldn't get a good angle, so I moved to the second carriage and waited for the gunmen to walk by," he said. "They were shooting from waist height and fired at anything that moved. I briefly had time to take a couple of frames using a telephoto lens. I think they saw me taking photographs but theydidn't seem to care."

The gunmen were terrifyingly professional, making sure at least one of them was able to fire their rifle while the other reloaded. By the time he managed to capture the killer on camera, Mr D'Souza had already seen two gunmen calmly stroll across the station concourse shooting both civilians and policemen, many of whom, he said, were armed but did not fire back. "I first saw the gunmen outside the station," Mr D'Souza said. "With their rucksacks and Western clothes they looked like backpackers, not terrorists, but they were very heavily armed and clearly knew how to use their rifles.

"Towards the station entrance, there are a number of bookshops and one of the bookstore owners was trying to close his shop," he recalled. "The gunmen opened fire and the shopkeeper fell down."

But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."

Dan Friedman opined, "This has been bothering me a lot. Mumbai (Bombay), a great metropolis of 19 million people, is no stranger to terrorism. It has had a history of bloody attacks that have taken hundreds of innocent lives in only the last few years. Yet 10, that's right 10, young men carrying large assault weapons could make their way through the streets of the toniest part of the city during the early evening hours, shoot up a major train station, a popular high-profile bar, then move on unchallenged and enter and reach the upper floors of the Indian equivalents of the Waldorf-Astoria and New York Hilton - all without a shot from law enforcement being fired at them. Pardon the American pride, but if terrorists were to try and mimic their Indian colleagues in any of America's great cities, it wouldn't take two days and 100's of military commandos to stop them. A dozen good cops would have them lying dead on the sidewalks inside of an hour.

Exit question: Just how much of the death and destruction do you think was actually caused by the "good guys" in this incident?"

Comments

[Josef K]

What a disgrace.

We Yanks have Flight 93, on the other hand.

[Timur]

One has to wonder how many of those policemen are muslims.
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

[Papa Ray]

I don't have any numbers, but in my little city in West Texas there are thousands of men and women who carry pistols. All quite legal mind you. But I'm sure there are many more that carry in their vehicles without permits (which are not required anyway).

The Cops would have to hurry to get in on the action if terrorists came and tried to shoot up our malls, buildings (which most downtown have security guards). Anyway the Cops would have to be there quick because the terrorists would either be dead or wounded and tied up.

We have lots of gun clubs as do most cities and even small towns in Texas and the Southwest. Where average people go shoot when they can to keep in practice. Anyone who carries knows the rules, knows safety and knows the responsibilities that come with the weapon.

But we also know that if you shoot... you shoot to kill.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

[Mamba1-0]

An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.

In the final analysis, the only defense the people have against organized evil is themselves, their guns and their will.

[kobi]

they were complicit. either moslems, or somebody got paid...or, there was an understanding that if the cops didn't shoot, they wouldn't be shot ( i don't know the stats on that). it's hard to believe that the cops were frozen in fear. i think there was an 'understanding', cause this thing was being planned for months.

[charlesmartel]

Politically control police, like under the Congress Party rule, are risk averse and only act under political orders. Indian police are also badly trained and are unlikely to have had the skills to hit a target. Most are armed with substandard weapons. Many still carry bolt action rifles and I am sure the pistols they are issued are barely functional.

[dm60462]

Bravo, Papa Ray. Here on the south side of Chicago we do the same, albeit pistol ownership itself is still outlawed, never mind concealed carry. Better to pay a lawyer to defend you on a weapons charge than a funeral director to bury you.

[TINBH]

Recall that during the 7/7 London murderous-muslim attacks when several policemen took down a bomb-carrying terrorist. They shot him point blank (in the head) to eliminate any chance that the lunatic could use his last energy or even his post-death muscle-reflexes from pushing the button.

It was a matter of minutes after that news went out that the usual reality-refusing liberals began wailing about how terrible it was for those London police to have shot the murderer as they did. The journos gathered their favorite eyewitness accounts that lamented the actions of the policemen as being too extreme (even when it saved their dumb basses no less)...

Right on West Texas!

And Chicago - you all need to remove some politicians from office - as your Second Amendment rights are being violated.

And wasn't Chicago -like gun-free Washington DC - at one of the highest rates nation-wide for murder-by gun in 2007 and 2008?

"...carrying large assault weapons..."

No disrespect, but - those were small arms; auto-assault rifles and machine pistols, even the grenades - all small arms (but usually only available to military, governments, private security organizations).

Think about what these murderous fools will do with true heavy (large) weapons.

[Josef K]

At least the Times of India gets it: "It's also time to end the habit of basing one's stand on terrorism on the particular religious affiliation of terrorists, criticising or exonerating them using their religion a point of reference. Terrorists have no religion."

[jwheels]

Taking away your gun is the first step to taking away your freedom and ultimately your life. In every corrupt country the first act is to take away the right for the citizen to own arms thus the right to protect themselves. Often caused by a government who fear the populace with use the guns against them, that should tell you something about their form of government in start. The result is in countries like Nigeria everyone is a setting duck you are at the mercy of almost everyone. All of the bad guys have guns and will use them in an instant in fact the Nigerians are in more danger than the expat because the worth of the individual. Side by side expat and Nigerian they will shoot and kill the Nigerian and Kidnap the expat for money. It is the lowest level of animal behavior on earth. A mans 10 dollar watch is worth more than his life and you can lose your life in an instant with out control or objection. We drive around with our door locked and window up as if that alone is going to save us when in fact we are not allowed by this government to basic protecting and the bad guys will knock out your window and you will spend 90 days in the Jungle tied to a tree and they will do as they like with you until ransom is paid. Sure in Holland you do not need a gun, right they will shoot you in the head while walking along a street full of people and if Holland is not safe where is? Detroit? Oakland? Chicago? Washington DC??? We are not safe on our streets and we too are loosing our right to own arms or to protect yourself. What is the liberal plan once they have taken you ability to protect yourself? What is the end game when only the bad guys have the weapons and are free to move about at will? They are so fond of saying it takes a village, who is going to protect that child when you can not protect yourself? Are we in America going to start using the African model to "PRODUCE THE PROMISED CHANGE"?

[jwheels]

At Luby's restaurant near Ft. Hood Texas everyone had to lay there on the floor while some crazed A-hole spent all his rounds shooting and killing at will why? Because not a single person setting in that restaurant had a gun to protect themselves. Men and women killed every day by some bad guy wanting to take their car and all positions at will and they can not protect themselves why? Because some democrat liberal some time in the past helped write and pass a law saying you can not carry a gun in your car! The enemy of freedom and protect is doing this to us and we are electing the enemy year after year. Now we are really in for it the next at least two years we are all setting ducks waiting to see what they will decide to do with us. They will appoint liberal judges like never before and they will pass liberal laws as fast as they can because they know in two years the Americans will come to their right mind and reset the balance of power in Congress. It happens every eight years the populace goes liberal mad and votes in a congress and a president both liberal and democrat and they cause all kinds of damage to our country and our way of life "as promised" "CHANGE" and I too promise you change will come only not a single one of you who voted without thinking are going to be too happy with the resultant CHANGE. Not a single person on any of those highjacked planes had a means of protecting themselves or the plane or the 3,000 innocent people on the ground. Not a single person could stop them. The bravery of those wonderful people on the flight 93 who took over and fought back lost their lives because the couldn't stop the highjackers until it was too late not a single person on that flight had the means to protect themselves. The democrats will only take guns out of honest peoples hands the criminal could care less and by the way better than half of those democrats will continue to own and carry guns themselves because they are above the laws they make. Those laws are for you to follow not them.

[pythagoras]

The way to destroy liberalism is to show the world how leftwingers nearly invariably act to protect Islamic terrorists, homicidal criminals and radicals instead of the public that is threatened by these people. And show the public the many ways that leftists endanger our homeland and culture (as in attempting to take away our guns via legislations while brazenly importing something into our nation as nightmarishly murderous as Islam-- to cite one example).

Leftists have become a mortal danger to us and have turned western civilization into an open-mouth catastrophe. Tragically, we have continue to allow these people to do this to us.

We need to produce and distribute some searing fiction movies that accurately illustrateg and dramatize the ways the political left puts us all in danger from the thugsters they go to bed with ... the Communists, the Islamic terrorists, homicidal radicals like Williasm Ayers, etc. There are plenty of literally dramatic ways open to destroy the corrupt likes of BHO and his supporters (by simply showing how and where they are corrupt and how their corruption puts us all at risk). But that will all depend on our being to get our media back from the Arab Muslims who have bought it up and subverted it and turned it into a pro-Islamic propaganda fest.