Few mass shootings in the U.S. end the way this one did in Oregon: an armed civilian at an elementary school opening fire to stop the gunman. And this time, even the Associated Press had to say so.
What Happened in Bend
Three students and a teacher were killed in the attack at Silver Rail Elementary School. The suspect, a teenage gunman, forced his way inside a school attended by the two daughters of 36-year-old Kaylub Giamanco, a Bend-area carpenter driving past at the wrong moment.
According to Newsweek’s reporting and the account from Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz, Giamanco saw the shooter’s initial fire, grabbed his legally carried handgun from his vehicle, and walked into Silver Rail. Inside, Krantz said, Giamanco found a teacher fighting the attacker and fired on the shooter multiple times, ending the threat before officers made entry.
His mother, Kenda Freeman, told reporters it was her son. His brother said Kaylub concealed-carries daily.
That’s the whole ballgame, folks. A good guy with a gun, legally armed, who recognized the moment for what it was.
Even Trump Weighed In
President Donald Trump called Giamanco a “great hero… who took care of business,” and later told reporters at the White House, “thank goodness for a man that had a gun and knew how to use it.”
The Numbers the Gun-Control Crowd Hates
Here’s where it gets interesting. The AP’s Bend coverage finally cited numbers that have been sitting in the open for a decade: the ALERRT Center at Texas State University tracks what it calls “active attack” incidents — attacks in which the aggressor uses a firearm, blade, or vehicle — and the data runs through 2025.
Of the 634 cases ALERRT has studied, 374 ended before police arrived. Of those:
- 29 ended when an armed civilian shot the attacker
- 31 ended when civilians subdued the attacker without shooting — tackling them, taking the weapon, physical restraint
“They recognize they may be the only way to stop it before law enforcement arrives,” ALERRT spokesperson James Keith told the AP about the role of civilian intervention.
Sit with that for a second. In the majority of these attacks, the thing is over before the first badge shows up. And in roughly 60 of them, it was an ordinary person — some of them armed, some of them not — who ended the threat.
What Took the AP So Long
The data has been sitting there the whole time. The ALERRT numbers aren’t a 2A-outlet talking point; they’re the operational research the people who train law enforcement on active-shooter response actually use. TTAG covered the time-to-effective-resistance framework and the Bend case last week, and SAF’s Kostas Moros laid out the full policy response a day later. It took a father in Bend walking into an elementary school to end the shooting himself for the AP to finally publish the civilian-intervention data in black and white.
Three children and a teacher are still gone. Kaylub Giamanco couldn’t change that part. What he could do, he did. And every anti-gun organization that has ever argued that a good guy with a gun is a myth should spend some time with his name.
