Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed in re the Indiana mall shooting, and the Good Guy with a Gun that ended it:
Holy crap! Nice shootin’, Tex.
Seriously.
OK, first things first: having to shoot someone in self-defense is the second-worst possible outcome to a very bad situation.
With that out of the way?
To elaborate on Joe – within fifteen seconds of the demented troglodyte [spree killers seek fame, so I won’t name him] starting a shooting spree where he killed three people, and clearly intended to kill as many people as possible, 22 year old good samaritan and good guy with a gun Elisha Dicker moved his girlfriend to safety, and then engaged the murderer, firing ten shots, hitting the would-be spree killer eight times.
At a range of 120 feet. With a handgun.
While under life-or-death stress.
That is incredibly impressive.
And just try to find the story in the mainstream media.
That, as usual, isn’t nearly as depressing as some of the other responses from leftyworld on social media:
- “If ‘good guys with a gun’ were of any use, they’d kill the bad guy before they killed ANYONE'”
- “Ack-shyu-ally, good samaritans are *only* non-violent. If he were a *real* good samaritan, he’d have only carried a first aid kit.”
- “Wouldn’t it be better if *nobody* had a gun?” (I try to ask them how they get the guns out of the hands of the Sapirmans of the world *first*. They never answer).
- “It’s still another person dead…”
Remember – their votes count as much as yours.
Depressing, huh?
The New York Times sounded off with an unctuous “Ack-shyu-ally”, saying good guys with guns ended about 3% of spree killings. That’s too low – but if you leave out shootings that happen where civilians aren’t allowed to have guns at all – schools, government buildings, bars in Florida, churches in Texas – and the fact that maybe 3-5% of the population actually carries even in permissive states, thats a pretty good percentage.
I’m looking forward to doing the analysis on that sometime soon, here.
The list of good guys with guns who’ve ended mass shootings is long, and full of the kind of people this brutally imperfect, evil-riven world needs more of. Dominic Rozier. Nick Meli. Jack Wilson, Stephen Willeford, Jeanna Assam. And now, Elisha Dicker.
I apologize for the completely off-topic post but want to reach Jeff to have his take (in a different post, of course) on the latest info about Watergate that were completely absent from his otherwise excellent post from about a week ago. Please do not respond to this post. Thank you.
And what were the Post’s purposes? Well, it soon became clear to Woodstein that the Watergate break-in had been a CIA operation for which Hunt, because he was a White House official, had been able to claim presidential authorization. Yet the Post – which, as O’Connor notes, was founded in 1877 as “the official organ of the Democratic Party” and which in the 1970s, believe it or not, shared a general counsel (Joseph Califano) with the DNC – didn’t want to bring down the CIA. It wanted to bring down Nixon. And after learning that the CIA’s motive for the break-in had to do not with political secrets but with a prostitution referral service that was operating out of DNC headquarters, the Post wanted to protect Democrats.
right no cue:
Much has been written and said by some writers, politicians, and journalists about “fake news,” … But almost nothing has been said or written about “news blackout,” that is, the deliberate, coordinated effort to exclude certain news events, or opinions, that contradict the journalist hivemind ideology.
Brendan Herrara on YouTube named him.
Of course the name he used was “Piece Of Shit” throughout the vid, so there was that.
8 of 10 at 40 yards is pretty damn good considering the circumstances, and the fact that he managed to come to situational awareness and respond that fast is exceptional. Considering all the reports I hear from FBI agents about their shootouts at 2 yards where all the shots miss, I’m extremely impressed.
The mall in which this happened was a gun free zone, and Eli was carrying “illegally.”
Care to bet that in one of the lefty hellholes like NYC or LA he wouldn’t have been charged for carrying? Anyone?
Way, way off topic, but media have broken the story of President Brandon Biden getting COVID. Despite being vaccinated, masking etc. Prepare yourselves for yet another round of scolding those deniers who will dare to point out the futility of such attempts to eliminate an endemic disease.
I am waiting for confirmation on this.
You wanna face off at 40 yards with a guy with an AR and you’ve got a nine?
That’s pushing the border on foolhardiness.
He should have waited until the AR shooter got closer to him and his girl?
There was a report that Eli charged(!) the shooter. You know, doing things pigs (not all cops are pigs…) would never do.
nerd – it is perfectly legal in IN to ignore “gun free zone” postings. Even sheriff made that point when he pronounced Eli a hero.
^ I believe – I’ll await a comment by someone more knowledgeable – that this is the case in MN too. That “gun free zone” posting is only advisory unless it’s a government bldg.
UMMP, agreed that facing off with a guy with an AR armed just with a pistol is foolhardy, but it’s also worth noting that as the guy came out shooting, Dicken was towards the center of a 200′ or greater food court with his girlfriend. So Dicken had at least a 5-10 second run to any semblance of safety (and a girlfriend to protect), but knew that the heavy steel post would block anything from the perp but a miracle head/arm shot. I think that (among other reasons) is why the police commended his tactics. It was probably the lowest risk thing he could have done, and it arguably saved about a dozen lives.
Even mall officials commended this, and so I wonder if some postings are coming down, along with a nice confrontation with the management at Dick’s.
Since mass shooters are looking for notoriety, I say let’s name them using the same protocols used for naming hurricanes, and the more embarrassing the name, the better.
Hence, you’d have mass shooters named Alfalfa, Beavis, Chauncey, or Dipweed.
As for the best weapon for taking on a shooter with an AR-15: it’s whatever weapon you have. Several weeks ago an elderly gent took out a shooter at church meeting with a folding chair. (When I was serving as a door usher at our church I considered “if/then” scenarios, including throwing a chair. Once when we had a broken chair I even took the opportunity to chuck it a couple of times in the alley, just to get a feel for range and aerodynamics.) In the Greenwood Mall, my thinking could have been to at least provide suppressing fire to keep the shooter on the defensive while others made their escape. If I happened to pot the guy a couple of times in the process, so much the better.
In MN courts have ruled that, because of the various disability laws, you have to be informed that you can’t carry in an unambiguous way, e.g. they have to tell you and get your affirmation. Still, you post the sign and I’ll obey and take my business and money elsewhere. I’ve yet to find something that I can’t get somewhere else at the same or better price than outlets that post those signs.
I’m not sure what IN says, tbh. The “Piece of Shit” thought he was going to a gun free, target rich environment and I’m glad he was wrong. The hero was preternaturally aware and making really good decisions (and shots!), and prepared.
But my point still stands: in leftist hellholes like NYC and LA the Soros DAs would still charge you. Just look at the bodega dude and the immense amount of publicity and pushback it took to get the DA to drop bail and then finally drop the charges in what was very clearly self defense.
But my point still stands
Agreed.
NW’s comment about the chair suggests to me that Bobby Knight would be a great person to have responding to an active shooter situation…..though you might end up losing to Purdue in the process. :^)
Seriously, good point on using what you have, referring to active shooters by some derogatory name, and avoiding gun free zones when possible. Letting business owners “if you let criminals know I’m not armed, then I will avoid doing business with you.”
I bet his grouping was awful.
40 yards, under fire, that’s impressive. Not impossible, but DAMNED good shooting. I consider this guy braver than 99% of people – so while I applaud him, I’m also clear-eyed enough to know it’s the SUPER rare exception, especially at 40 yards. I can quickly shoot several rounds at a 25 yard target (say 1 round per 1.5/2 seconds) and hit the inside the circles with maybe half – and I’m a trained shooter/former competitive shooter BUT NOT UNDER FIRE. That’s beyond unlikely.
However, again, you focus on the highly unlikely outcome – less than 5% of mass shootings have ended with a bystander shooting the assailant while ~25% ended in the assailant killing themselves. I concur that they are seeking fame or notoriety, and they are pretty “sick”, but not in a way I think means they get to go to the assylum, the kind where if they die, the world isn’t cheapened. But you’ve missed the point on this. It’s not that “good guy has to stop the shooter first” no one said that, least of all me, but thanks for being defensive, the point, just to use small words, was that we have an illness, and ANY situation where we have someone acting out in a mass shooting is a failure, no matter how quickly they are stopped. it’s not a victory, not something to celebrate, that’s the point – but again, thanks for mistating/engaging in sophistry about what I meant. Not new, not news, but there it is.
Far more importantly, though is that you focus on THIS guy as a hero. I don’t mind if it were one of 20 stories you did, if ONE, just ONE called out the damage being done to our democracy by the lies of Trump and his followers (including you), the damage being done saying we should replace electors, or just put people in place who will just declare fraud without ever proving it.
Heroes ARE, to be sure, those who put themselves at risk for the benefit of others. This guy did, but so has Liz Cheney, or Adam Kinzinger, probably Mike Pence will wind up there too. You don’t applaud them for their courage in the face of the mob. It ended their political careers. Instead, you are the propogandist, covering Trump’s lies, his inaction, and in fact his complicity in an attempted coup/attempt to unlawfully prevent the peaceful transition of power. He didn’t go to court, win or lose his case, and follow the law, he incited a riot, a riot that put many lives at risk and did NOTHING to stop it when he could have.
As the Atlantic columnist wrote far better than me…
“The basic problem is that one of the two major parties in the U.S.—the Trumpified Republican Party—has become authoritarian to its core. Consequently, there are two main ways to protect American democracy. The first is to reform the GOP, so that it’s again a conservative, but not authoritarian, party (à la John McCain’s or Mitt Romney’s Republican Party). The second is to perpetually block authoritarian Republicans from wielding power. But to do that, Democrats need to win every election. When you’re facing off against an authoritarian political movement, each election is an existential threat to democracy. Eventually, the authoritarian party will win.”
If you want to applaud people for bravery, how about you finally applaud members of YOUR chosen political stripe for being willing to speak truth to power. This article is very well written and I realize that you may not have access to the Atlantic, but I urge you to really, finally consider that American democracy is under threat, not from mass shooters, or those who seek to limit high capacity magazines, nor from BLM or AntiFa, no, it’s from those who seek to ignore the law, overturn the will of the people, stack the courts with friendly judges and then have kangaroo courts side with them whenever/however asked. 60 judges, some of them Trump appointees, shot down Trump’s claims of fraud, yet Trump would not relent, and since 1/6 the GOP has slowly, inexorably, fallen in line, no matter how outraged they may have been on 1/6. You are the death of democracy Mitch, you and those like you But hey, build a shrine to someone who shot a murderer. He might deserve it, but Trump doesn’t – and that’s what you have missed, and in fact purposefully avoid even addressing.
Paddyboy, if indeed this gentleman is such an exception in successfully warding off an attack, you ought to have a long list of cases where the carry permit holder was either killed, or killed a number of innocents because he couldn’t keep his pistol on target.
Since this isn’t the case, we can infer that there is something inherent in lawful self-defense that tends to prevent cases like this. Part of it is because many thugs back down when confronted with lethal force, another part of it is because many thugs (like in this case) have their back to a good backstop simply because they don’t want to be attacked from behind, and another part of it is because (as in this case) a lot of carry permit holders tend to be better shots than police officers.
Whatever the Pareto here, though, it would be very appreciated if your comments on topics like this were a little more rooted in reality. Let’s give it a try.
Hey, Paddy! Nice to meet another competitive shooter. I assume you’re another Camp Perry vet?
Anyhow, let’s see what the FBI has to say about the utility of concealed carry:
Seems to me the problem is twofold:
1) About 2 of every 3 active shooting cases occurs where people are not allowed to defend themselves. It seems to me that creating a gun free zone increases the risk inside it.
And
2) We very probably don’t have enough concealed carry holders around. Concealed carry holders are less than 10% of the population, and the vast majority of them do not carry very often. If you believe the FBI, then if almost half of active shooters were stopped by the very small number of people actively carrying, we probably need more training and encouragement for permit holders to increase the number of responsible, active carriers.
BTW, having looked at it, I find I was wrong. Indiana actually has sensible laws. They have constitutional carry, so Eli was allowed to carry there. However, Indiana’s constitutional carry law only went into effect on July 1. Talk about critical timing!
However, since the mall was posted as gun free, had he been asked to leave because of his pistol he would have had to leave or face trespassing charges.
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We need a new classification of mental illness to describe the manic obsession leftist slobs like Peevee have for Trump.
Because it’s real and it’s dangerous.
Should we also ban knives now?
A crazed lefty assaulted NY GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, during a campaign event yesterday. The psycho jumped on the low stage with a “sharp object” and appeared to have been cut. He was able to hold the assailant’s wrist long enough for others to subdue the perp.
^ I guess we won’t be getting any “dangers of violent rhetoric”-style lectures from the DNC-MSM
BH, leftists are all suffering from mental instability, but some, like Peevee, are ticking time bombs.
When I read one of Peevee’s inchoate, hate filled diatribes I picture Travis Bickle.
Peevee needs to be disarmed, before he hurts someone.
Welcome to NY. You can’t make this shit up!
…43, from Fairport, New York, was arraigned overnight in Perinton Town Court on a count of second-degree attempted assault stemming from the attack on Rep. Zeldin but was quickly released on his own recognizance.
P tells us that a Good Guy with a Gun stopping a crazy man from mass-murdering shoppers at a mall is rare but fine when it happens; but the real problem facing this nation is citizens protesting a stolen election so why aren’t we talking about that?
Because, dummy, it’s Mitch’s blog so Mitch gets to pick the topics he wants to talk about. One of his interests is the Second Amendment. Talking about a Good Guy with a Gun stopping a crazy man from committing mass murder is a logical and reasonable thing to discuss on a Second Amendment blog.
If you don’t want to discuss the topic Mitch wants to discuss, why don’t you find a blog where the blog host talks about what you want to talk about? Or start your own blog so you can pick the topics? Link up with E and you two could have an All Trump All The Time Hatefest Blog. Why come here and threadjack our topics?
What gives you the moral authority to tell people what they should and should not talk about?
Encountering a Paddyboy post (not reading, mind you, I only have an hour lunch break):
scroll
scroll
*SIGH*
scroll
Oh thank God, I reached the end!
However, again, you focus on the highly unlikely outcome – less than 5% of mass shootings have ended with a bystander shooting the assailant while ~25% ended in the assailant killing themselves
My next project for a stormy winter weekend is determining:
Ending 6% of spree killings when the vast majority of civilians can’t and don’t carry guns is likely a pretty high average.
And the Secret Service, after Colulmbine, found that spree killers tended to operate a fog of fantasy – and that nothing broke through that reverie like violent resistance. So a significant chunk of those suicides can be credited to the citizen shooters who provoked their emotional crash.
P and E are convinced the Good Guy with a Gun stopping a mass shooting is a rare occurance and therefore should not be celebrated.
A. Rare occurances are what humans DO celebrate. If it were common, nobody would notice. If it’s actually rare, then it’s cause for celebration.
B. It’s not rare. The ‘rare’ theory comes from manipulating statistics. “Mass shooting” is defined as “4 or more people.” The Indiana mall hero stopped the shooter before he killed 4 people; therefore, it was not a “mass shooting” so the hero gets no credit and the statistic remains ‘rare.’ Of course, if the killer had shot 5 people before being stopped, then a “mass shooting” would have occurred so the hero cannot claim to have prevented it. Again, the statistic remains ‘rare.’ This is a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose way of lying with numbers in service of The Narrative. In real life, an untold number of lives were saved and that’s a Good Thing.
C. P and E focus on the wrong measurement tool. The argue that a Good Guy with a Gun doing a Good Thing is a rare occurance, so society won’t miss them if we take away all the guns to prevent a Good Guy with a Gun doing a Bad Thing. But how often does a Good Guy with a Gun do a Bad Thing? How many people have been wrongfully shot by permitted carriers compared to how many people have been saved?
Lying with statistics to trick people into doing harm to society, is evil.
How many people have been wrongfully shot by permitted carriers compared to how many people have been saved?
You wanna have fun with statistics? Here you go: How many people have been wrongfully shot by permitted carriers compared to how many innocent bystanders were killed by cops because they can’t hit the broadside of the barn.
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