In Rockledge, Florida, at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, the 25th of November, 2017, two armed citizens stopped a mass murder in progress. Police Chief Joseph P. LaSata of the Rockledge Police Department credited the intervention of the armed citizens for stopping the murderer.
The murder and gunfight started in Schlenker’s parking lot. The suspect opened fire on a 25 year old employee, paralyzing him. He shot and killed 50-year-old Roger Lee Smith, who had been employed at the shop for numerous years, as Smith came out the door to the parking lot. Then two armed employees, who had concealed carry permits, intervened. From floridatoday.com:
“The manager, who was a concealed weapons permit holder, came out and engaged in gunfire in the parking lot,” La Sata said. “The manager fled back inside the building, being chased by the gunman. Another Schlenker employee, who also had concealed weapons permit, engaged in gunfire with the suspect.”
Rockledge Chief Joseph Lasata (from the transcript of this video from wesh.com):
Mr. Baily had multiple magazines on his person. He was intent on doing harm. The employees stepped up and prevented customers, employees, and other vendors who were in the business at the time from sustaining further injuries. They did a good job.
The murder suspect, Robert Lorenzo Bailey, Jr, 28, of Cocoa, is in critical condition at the Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melborne. None of his history has been released.The suspect has not been connected to Schlenker Automotive.
This is the second time in three weeks armed citizens have intervened in a mass murder, preventing further murders from taking place. The first was Stephen Willeford, an NRA instuctor who grabbed his AR-15 and engaged the mass murderer at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas on November 5, 2017.
We do not know the names of the two armed citizens who stopped the casualty count at two in Rockledge, Florida on 25 November. We know they had concealed carry permits, and that citizens who carry guns legally are extremely law abiding.
When armed citizens intervene, lives are saved. Those who want a disarmed population use the effectiveness of interventions to claim they do not occur. As only one victim was killed before the murderer was stopped, some will say it was not a mass murder, therefore no one can say a mass murder was stopped by an armed citizen.
Here is a list, with links to more than two dozen cases where armed citizens stopped mass killing: Mass Killings Stopped by Armed Citizens, Updated
©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
Impossible.
Fake News.
We all know that normal people are not capable of self defense with guns.
There must be a mistake.
Just wait for the cops, they are trained professionals.
Civilians will just make it worse.
Oh, and you’ll shoot your eye out.
+1… Only Gen Stanley McCrystal are professional enough to do what these two guys did! Just ask him, he’ll tell you all about it! *sarc
These two conceal carriers are serious heroes. This shits becoming common enough now, where I think I’ve made up my mind and will be switching from a .38 snub nose pocket carry, to something a bit more effective. Unfortunately I live in Florida so I can’t just open carry something I already have 😡.
As I understand it, Florida does not consider printing nor unintentional exposure to be a crime. If that is indeed the case, why not carry a full-size semi-auto pistol (with double-stack magazine for serious capacity) in your favorite caliber? So what if it prints and some people notice.
As for caliber, if you liked .38 Special, consider 9mm Luger. First of all, .38 Special and 9mm Luger bullets are almost exactly the same diameter (only 0.002 inches difference). And you can get similar bullet weights at somewhat higher velocities in 9mm Luger. I really like Hornady’s Critical Duty 135 grain cartridges in 9mm Luger which claim a muzzle velocity of about 1,000 fps from a four-inch barrel.
Of course a lot of people (like me!) prefer .40 S&W in semi-auto pistols for increased bullet diameter, weight, and penetration. Or you could even step all the way up to .45 ACP. Whatever floats your boat!
The Supreme Court recently refused to hear the appeal of a man who innocently had his T-shirt ride up and expose his CC in Florida.
So yes, you can be convicted of accidental exposure in Florida.
http://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2017/11/28/u-s-supreme-court-rejects-challenge-to-floridas-open-carry-ban/
10MM.
If you like the platform, I can’t recommend stepping up to a .357 magnum enough. But you’re either going to have to endure a lot more recoil or a lot more weight. A good leather belt and my 36oz 3″ GP 100 carries nice though and the recoil is quite manageable. If you c an tolerate the recoil, the full pressure stuff is very potent.
I’m having the same dilemma, I love my LCR but I think my GLOCK 27 Will soon be my everyday companion because of situations such as these.
Funny. I was just wondering if my Glock 27 is enough.
This is coming out of left field for me. I lived in Rockledge for about a year. Nice place, bedroom community and the walmart was very, very nice. So nice that I worked for them and made friends with my co-workers. Not the kind of place this should have happened, can’t help but wonder what went wrong.
People said almost those exact words after the Ludy’s massacre a few years(decades) back.
No mass murder – democrat vultures went to bed hungry.
And here’s why we have such a problem getting the message across: If an armed citizen stops a criminal, the body count is rarely beyond the single digits – Sutherland Springs was an extreme outlier, in many ways. Many armed defense scenarios are not mass shootings because… wait for it… they were armed defense scenarios.
I daresay this type of thing is likely more common than the media will ever let us know; I’ll be gracious and say it’s because the data doesn’t exist since so many shooters are stopped before they get to the “mass” part.
I think John Lott covers this in either the “War on Guns” or “The Bias Against Guns,” but I’m not sure.
I have been going to that car shop since I moved to Brevard county. I was wonder if they knew if I carried when I drop my car off for auto work.
This was a perfect example of what it takes to stop a mass murderer before he can run up a body count. Because the armed manager and other employee belonged at the business, they immediately understood what was wrong and what needed to be done. No chance of innocent people getting shot due to misidentification. As usual, the second responders (police and paramedics) showed up in time to haul away the dead and wounded and begin an investigation.
Whatever the problem, there is an almost irresistible temptation to implement some sort of magic bullet in the vain hope that will eliminate the problem once and forever. Gun control is not the only example. Reality is that these problems can only be handled one at a time as they occur. When the problem is violent crime, it takes someone already on the scene who has the necessary tools and skills to put down the criminal. I’m pleased that the police chief gave credit where it was due.
“[T]here is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
Thanks, Dean. A little pleasant news was nice this evening.
I bet the local PD had to watch hours and hours of surveillance video to see what happened before they got there.
Actually, the Rockledge Police department is right down the street.
I think 31 is making fun of the cops who claimed that concealed carriers who drew while retreating made it impossible for investigators to tell who was shooting in some WalMart security videos.
Yep
Not a word about it that I can see in the libtard cucked news media either. This is the first I’ve heard about it.
Wait, the left says this never happens, there are no good guys with guns. Did they lie? Again? Still?
When the left says something never happens, what they mean is their masters haven’t told them what to think about it yet.
When the left says this never happens, it means this is something they would never do themselves for anyone.
When the left accuses anyone of anything, it means they themselves have already done it or dreamed it:
Russia collusion
Sexual harassment
Gun Violence
Discrimination: Any kind
Voter fraud
Racism
Listing all the leftist hypocrisy would run the risk of filling up the Internet.
notice all the MSM coverage…
“The murder suspect, Robert Lorenzo Bailey, Jr, 28, of Cocoa, is in critical condition…”
“It’s like I tell all of my boys. Always put one in the brain!”. -Johnny Caspar
There’s your obscure movie reference for the day.
Well good, still won’t change the Cocks not Glocks crowd tho. Way more bad guys now then in the 1800’s, and anyone not incarcerated should be able to carry any kind of firearms they can afford, in any manner they desire to carry it. It would all work out if the government wasn’t in everyone’s business. Drug stores should be a place to purchase whatever anyone wants without a prescription, you wanna OD on oxy’s, help your self. It would all work itself out. A person should be able to walk into a gun shop lay their money down and walk out with whatever they had the cash to buy. I buy that gun, go rob a bank, get shot full of holes, done deal, problem solved. Crime will never stop,neither should crime fighters. Not to rag on the police officers on here, but when’s the last time you’ve actually stopped a crime, I’m not talking DUI’s and jaywalking, I’m talking in the shit before the shit started flying.,.,,,,, Excuses , can’t be everywhere, short staffed, donuts were on sale, whatever. ,( poor cops, they do catch hell don’t they) .
And yet again we don’t hear about the prevented mass murder because, well, prevented. In related news, self defense with guns doesn’t work. We need to improove NICS because it absolutely works and ban bumpfire assault chainsaw attatchments!
The most common situation whenever a crime is committed is, “the police are only minutes away”.
They usually arrive after the crimes have been committed and become historians. They gather information, evidence, interviews and file their reports.
I am not denigrating police officers, that is just the way it happens. In fact, they cannot be everywhere all the time.
This case is a good example; criminal arrives and initiates his crime. There were legally armed citizens who interfered with the criminal intent and ended it early. Made for an easier job for the police.
It does not fit the narrative of the left, “the government will take care of you”, so it isn’t reported.
“This is the second time in three weeks armed citizens have intervened in a mass murder, preventing further murders from taking place”
This is at least the third time in three weeks. There was another post on TTAG I think under a daily digest that was very similar to this one. The guy shot two employees outside the business and then followed the manager back in where another employee that was armed ended up shooting the attacker. If I remember correctly that one was at a automotive store also.
If only the socialist party/news media/hollywood had it’s way, ban all firearms/other deadly weapons, make the firearm free zone signs bigger, these incidents would cease.
There is a far higher rate of armed defense than is even reckoned by those in which gunfire was exchanged. I personally have prevented at least 5 armed criminals from proceeding further than threatening.
Such events are rarely even reported at all, as there’s simply no sensational story. If a bad guy pulls a gun and a good takes it from him and tells him to go away, there’s not much of a story there.
Still waiting on the story where those two guys mistake each other for the shooter and kill each other, or the police show up and kill the both of them.
Is business slow?
Unfortunately in the case of Rockledge , My Brother was shot and killed dead before the police were even called .The shooter had a carry permit