You’ll search the mainstream media a long time before you find it mentioned, but the hero of the shooting in Las Vegas was…
…a civilian with a carry permit:
…the victim at Wal-Mart was a concealed carry holder who actually successfully confronted the male shooter, but didn’t realize that he had a partner in the crime.
From the report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, police say that the concealed carry holder confronted the male shooter while the female shooter was pushing a shopping cart.
Mr. Wilcox shot the first shooter. The shooter’s wife then shot Mr. Wilcox in the back.
She then slipped behind the concealed carry holder and shot him at close range, unfortunately.
“He had no idea the wife was walking behind him,” the police official said of the murdered man
This underscores the importance of working on proper shooting drills, especially shaking your head to clear your focus, and maintaining your situational awareness.
But the real point?
. “This guy (Wilcox) was not some idiot with a gun. “He had no idea the wife was walking behind him,” the police official said of the murdered man. “This guy (Wilcox) was not some idiot with a gun. To me, he was a hero. He was trying to stop an active shooter.””
And here’s the important part – while the mainstream media will never report this, Wilcox did precisely what the police are starting to realize is the most important thing to do in mass shootings; get fire on target ASAP. The psychos who do these shootings carry out their acts in a fantasy, a reverie – and taking return fire breaks the reverie for them. They then almost inevitably either give up, or shoot themselves (as the killers in Vegas did).
This same exact thing happened three days before Sandy Hook, at the Clackamas Mall in Portland Oregon, when citizen Nick Melo, pointing a pistol at a crazed shooter who’d already killed two, caused the shooter to abandon his carefully-laid plan and kill himself.
Or, for that matter, the New Life Christian Center in Colorado Springs, when return fire from volunteer security wounded a spree killer, causing him to withdraw and, shortly, kill himself.
There is no way of knowing how many lives Joseph Wilcox saved by his action. Likely many.
And this the example to throw into the fact of the orcs who’d take your right to defend yourself.
They – like the spree killers – live in a fantasy world.
Attention Target — Think of how bad this situation could have been without the armed citizen. Are you sure that is what you want?
They – like the spree killers – live in a fantasy world.
… just as the Orcs do when they think that outlawing guns will outlaw shooting, while they sit back and take another toke on that illegal weed.
I wonder how many more would have been killed if the late concealed carrier hadn’t confronted the back-shooting cowards? No way to tell, or even if it had that effect. However, the two rats supposedly killed themselves right after the confrontation so I believe it did.
I suggest that like many of these vermin, they weren’t prepared for any resistance, and executed “plan B” as soon as it became clear that they weren’t in a gun free zone. The MSM spin on this aspect of the shooting might knock the Earth off it’s axis. But so far I have heard little about the CCW’s involvement.
If this does become widely publicized, I hope we don’t eat our own again. That is, hopefully the coffebreak commandos and water cooler warriors won’t add fuel to the fire by publicly critiquing the CCW’s techniques and tactics. He did what he could to help and died doing it. The MSM would love to see the dead man skewered by fellow CCWs.
these two just got down here and are even crazy by our standards. Kinda entertaining though
Any commentary on the CCW carrier I’ve read so far has been orcs saying “I thought it took a good buy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun – but he got shot! Therefore it doesn’t work!” More pea-shooter logic.
We now throw the term “hero” at anyone in the public eye who suffers any type of job-related misfortune.
I believe that true heroism can only be identified as such when the alleged hero takes some proactive step that puts her/him in clear danger, for the benefit another, when s/he could have honorably not taken that step and remain safe.
So far, it sounds like the Wal-Mart CCW took that step and paid the full price for doing so. No doubt he’ll undergo some Joe-the-plumber-style postmortem colonoscopy. If his reputation survives that his true status will be clear.
It is not surprising that the left, who cite the CCW’s death as proof of failure (while disregarding the rapid cessation of hostilities immediately after the CCW joined the scene), are not able comprehend true altruism.
Joe’s definition of hero pretty much squares with the Carnegie Hero Fund and Foundation’s:
A civilian who voluntarily risks his or her own life, knowingly, to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the life of another person is eligible for recognition by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission….
…The act of rescue must be one in which no full measure of responsibility exists between the rescuer and the rescued. Persons not eligible for awards are: Those whose duties in following their regular vocations require them to perform such acts, unless the rescues are clearly beyond the line of duty, and members of the immediate family, except in cases of outstanding heroism where the rescuer loses his or her life or is severely injured. Members of the armed services and children considered by the Commission to be too young to comprehend the risks involved are also ineligible for consideration.
NW, any apparent plagiarism was not intentional.
The transition of victim to hero seemed to get popular with the return of the American hostages held for about 1.5 years in Iran by “student” protesters in the late ’70s. Upon the hostage return, they were praised as heroes. They weren’t. They got screwed. The group as a whole (there were no doubt some individual acts of heroism) deserved to be acknowledged for their ordeal, but certainly not praised for it.
Seems like from that point on, a victim’s status was more desirable than that of a true hero.