Whenever a law-abiding citizen with a legal firearm engages against a criminal bent on a spree killing, the left and media engages in what is at the least misunderstanding and at worst deliberate obfuscation.
In cases where a citizen kills or apprehends someone bent on a spree-killing – as in the Appalachian Law School and Pearl Mississippi school shootings – in many cases the number of dead is low enough that it doesn’t even qualify as a “spree-kiling”; the average number of dead at mass shootings when a civilian intervenes is two.
But at other shootings – the New Life Christian Center shooting in Colorado Springs, the Clackamas Mall shooting in Oregon, and this week’s shooting in Las Vegas – it’s a little more complex, and the left and media (ptr) are a little more ignorant, or misleading.
And so – purely for educational purposes – I’m going to compare two spree-shootings. They are for our purposes identical – with one exception.
Read on:
| Step | Shooting 1 – Victims Wait For The Police | Shooting 2 – A Citizen intervenes |
| 1 | Our future perp – a deeply disturbed person – picks a target for their rage. The target is one that the perp believes will make them a household name, an object of eternal fascination. The intended victims are people – or associated with people – who the perp believes have wronged him in some way. | Our future perp – a deeply disturbed person – picks a target for their rage. The target is one that the perp believes will make them a household name, an object of eternal fascination. The intended victims are people – or associated with people – who the perp believes have wronged him in some way. |
| 2 | Perp spends months, maybe years, planning shooting down to the most infinitesimal detail. It is both fantasy and obsession, occupying every waking and most sleeping hours of the perp’s day. | Perp spends months, maybe years, planning shooting down to the most infinitesimal detail. It is both fantasy and obsession, occupying every waking and most sleeping hours of the perp’s day. |
| 3 | Perp painstakingly hoards weapons and equipment: maybe an AR/AK, a large-capacity handgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, black overalls and ski mask, goggles, gasoline bombs, the works. Absolutely nothing is left to chance. | Perp painstakingly hoards weapons and equipment: maybe an AR/AK, a large-capacity handgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, black overalls and ski mask, goggles, gasoline bombs, the works. Absolutely nothing is left to chance. |
| 4 | On the day of the attack, the perp painstakingly prepares for the attack, leaving behind video and written manifestos that will later cause experts to wonder what the hell is the matter with humanity. | On the day of the attack, the perp painstakingly prepares for the attack, leaving behind video and written manifestos that will later cause experts to wonder what the hell is the matter with humanity. |
| 5 | The perp arrives at the target, yells something vainglorious, and begins shooting. He shoots and kill/wound a few victims before anyone can react. | The perp arrives at the target, yells something vainglorious, and begins shooting. He shoots and kill/wound a few victims before anyone can react. |
| 6 | Lost in a reverie – a fantasy, the achievement of that for which they have planned for so long, the shooter saunters through the pandemonium, shooting as people flee, killing and wounding more. The killer is a happy as he has ever been | Lost in a reverie – a fantasy, the achievement of that for which they have planned for so long, the shooter saunters through the pandemonium, shooting as people flee, killing and wounding more. The killer is a happy as he has ever been |
| 7 | Grinning from ear, the shooter blazes away, calmly changing magazines and firing almost at random at fleeting people, grinding his teeth with hatred and contempt as they fall. The police receive several 911 calls about a shooting. The police start rolling. | The killer notices a sharp “crack” sound by his head. He turns toward the sound, and sees someone – a middle-aged, middle-class schlub, one of the people he holds in contempt, down the business end of a handgun. The handgun barks again, and through his adrenaline rush the shooter feels a sharp sting from his left arm. High on adrenaline, he barely notices the fact that he’s been hit – but he is keenly aware that his plan is off the rails. |
| 8 | The killer goes from room to room, calmly slaughtering people at his leisure. Just has he’s planned. | The killer palpably deflates – not so much from the bullet wound as from the unplanned deviation from the fantasy. They withdraw into a room just off the main hallway as the citizen – who, pumped on adrenaline, scored no more hits – stands, the slide on his small pocket pistol locked back on an empty magazine, dumbfounded, before remembering his training, shaking it off, reloading and retreating. |
| 9 | The killer indulges his caprice, leaving a few people alive in some rooms, calmly finishing off all the wounded in others. | The killer, his reverie thoroughly smashed, falls into a crippling despair, turns his handgun on himself. |
| 10 | More rooms. More shooting. More dead. | The killer is dead. |
| 11 | Terrified cell phone calls end with loud bangs, as the killer calmly walks from room to room, killing at his whim. Survivors – the wounded whom he didn’t finish off, and a few who managed to hide – noted that his expression was calm, serene, almost…happy. | The killer is still dead.
The civilian, hearing nothing, calls 911 – the lines are jammed, so it takes several tries. Then, per his training, he calls his lawyer. |
| 12 | The police finally arrive; they engage the shooter as soon as they make contact – following their training | The police arrive – to find few dead and wounded people in a building that echoes with the crying of survivors who are, it is noted, alive and unscratched. |
| 13 | The reverie broken, the shooter returns fire, then withdraws into a room where, after killing a few final victims, he shoots himself. | The police start sorting out the situation, and note that the situation, tragic as it was, was likely saved by the intervention of a law-abiding schmuck with a gun. |
| 14 | As a parade of ambulances and satellite trucks howl up to the crime scene, the senior cop shakes his head, and starts securing a very big, gory crime scene. | As his officers cordon off the building, the senior officer meets the citizen. Although the citizen – per his training – declines to speak until he can talk to a lawyer, the lieutenant tells his sergeant that the guy is the hero of the day. |
| 15 | At the news conference that evening, the chief of police calls the situation a tragedy that they will be investigating for some time. | At the news conference following the incident, the chief calls the civilian a hero who doubtless saved many lives. |
| 16 | The media quietly ponders, on a bunch of “Journo-lists”, how to help this story push the nation toward “meaningful action about gun safety”. | The media buries the story of the mass-shooting that wasn’t. |
For those who aren’t paying attention? The right column is – in broad outline, not actual particulars – what happened in the WalMart in Las Vegas.
Take your pick.
(Bonus: when the story of the shooting in the right column is discussed in public, the pundits on the left will knowingly smirk and say “the shooter killed himself”, painstakingly ignoring the “why”)
Minor correction; the permit holder retreats, reloads, and pulls out his cell phone and makes calls to the police and his lawyer. No?
Yep. Updated accordingly.
Sadly Mitch the difference with the story on the right is I believe from what you said earlier is that the permit holder died in this case. Needless to say he got a great reception up in heaven.
I think if I were involved, somewhere in there would be “hand pistol to officer, ask permission to change underpants”. Hopefully I never find out. :^)
RIP Joseph Wilcox, we honor your bravery !!
Obama will never mention his name, someone in Congress should and a college fund should be set up for his kids if he has any.
Don’t forget to include Greg Ebert, the gun shop clerk at the Guns Galore Gun Shop of Killeen TX in the list of forgotten heros with guns.
Ebert tipped-off the police about a customer acting suspiciously in the gun shop. Due to Ebert’s diligence, the terrorist, Pfc. Naser Abdo, was apprehended before anyone was hurt. Abdo wanted to recreate Maj. Nidal Hasan’s previous Ft. Hood massacre:
http://kdhnews.com/news/article_d7e42760-0317-5e96-a167-1195a67a1c73.html
Ever wonder why Ebert’s name is virtually unrecognizable to most MSM consumers? Fortunately, Ebert escaped without any accusations of profiling, or discrimination for not selling Abdo the explosives he wanted. CAIR must have taken that day off …
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