{"id":65398,"date":"2017-12-12T07:11:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T13:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65398"},"modified":"2017-12-12T07:20:50","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T13:20:50","slug":"the-unsung-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65398","title":{"rendered":"The Unsung Hero"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was five years ago yestarday that Jacob Roberts – a loser and delusional narcissist – walked into the Clackamas Mall in Portland Oregon with an AR15, a pistol and a couple hundred rounds of ammunition, apparently intent on giving his pathetic excuse of a life a big finish.<\/p>\n

He murdered two Christmas shoppers –\u00a0Cindy Yuille and Steven Forsythe – and was by all accounts intent on murdering many more; the load of ammo was a dead giveaway.<\/p>\n

Then, Nick Meli – an off-duty security guard with a carry permit and a concealed Glock – drew down on Roberts.<\/p>\n

The media’s and law enforcement’s accounts vary from this point<\/a> – a point that the media\u00a0 holds against the notion that Meli is a hero.\u00a0 But by all\u00a0rational\u00a0<\/em>accounts, Roberts saw the gun aimed at him, and did exactly what the FBI, in its study of spree killers after Columbine, said he’d do; delusional narcissists like Roberts (as opposed to terrorists like Omar Matteen) either run away, give up, or kill themselves rather than face the consequences.<\/p>\n

Which is what Jacob Roberts did; he retreated into a Gap store and, shortly, shot himself.<\/p>\n

The media and Big Gun Control has done its best over the years to bury this story.\u00a0 Meli himself has been very reticent about being in the public eye.<\/p>\n

But it’s the position of this blog that Meli was, and is, a hero who saved many lives that day, and kept Clackamas Mall off the list of infamy that Sandy Hook school would join three days later.<\/p>\n

Other than different\u00a0denouements<\/em>, the episodes had a lot in common; mentally-ill losers who planned to leave this mortal coil in a blaze of demented, twisted “glory”; buildings full of captive victims; and the big one – both were “gun free zones”.\u00a0 Clackamas was posted (but, like the Mall of America, those postings were of dubious legal force, although I don’t plan on being the test case); Sandy Hook, being a school, was “gun free” by federal and state law, backed up by potential felony charges.<\/p>\n

Which did those kids a lot of good, didn’t it?<\/p>\n

Anyway – a salute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was five years ago yestarday that Jacob Roberts – a loser and delusional narcissist – walked into the Clackamas Mall in Portland Oregon with an AR15, a pistol and a couple hundred rounds of ammunition, apparently intent on giving his pathetic excuse of a life a big finish. He murdered two Christmas shoppers –\u00a0Cindy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[346,265],"class_list":["post-65398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament","tag-a-good-guy-with-a-gun","tag-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65398"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65406,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65398\/revisions\/65406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}