What happened yesterday at the Greenwood Park Mall in suburban Indianapolis was every gun control advocate’s worst nightmare. No, we’re not talking about the obvious horror of a crazed wacko walking into a mall with a rifle and indiscriminately opening fire on innocent people. We’re talking about the reason why the shooting and the casualty count wasn’t far worse than it was.
As has been reported, the shooter, who killed three and wounded two more, was stopped by a 22-year-old man who was carrying a firearm. The Indianapolis Star reported it this way . . .
A lone man with a long gun killed three people before an armed bystander killed him in the Greenwood Park Mall food court Sunday evening, according to Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison. Two people were injured.
“It appears that he had a rifle with several magazines of ammunition, entered the food court and began shooting,” Ison said.
The “good Samaritan” who shot the man with the rifle was a 22-year-old man from Bartholomew County, Indiana, Ison said.
Those sneer quotes around “good Samaritan” were a particularly nice touch, don’t you think?
The un-named 22-year-old hero was carrying his gun in violation of the mall owner’s conduct policy. But he clearly saved lives and prevented a terrible situation from becoming far worse than it already was.
Greenwood’s mayor had this to say about the man’s quick action.
[S]omeone we are calling the “good samaritan” was able to shoot the assailant and stop further bloodshed. This person saved lives tonight. On behalf of the City of Greenwood, I am grateful for his quick action and heroism in this situation.
Somehow, though, the man’s heroic actions didn’t please everyone. Newsweek made sure to point out that yesterday’s shooting came just two weeks after constitutional carry became the law in Indiana, clearly implying causation for the shooting. Besides the fact that the Greenwood shooter used a rifle — not a handgun — does anyone think that the shooter waited until the concealed carry permit requirement was off the books to embark on his killing spree?
‘Good guy with a gun’: 3 killed in mass shooting in Indiana, armed onlooker saves the day https://t.co/YySX7hV85C @wionews Usually when firearms are used in self defense, no shots are fired. In this case, there’s a dead Perp. Good. #txlege
— Jerry Patterson (@Patterson4TX) July 18, 2022
All of the people who make it their business to tell us that defensive gun uses are incredibly rare and the idea of the “good guy with a gun” is a dangerous, deluded fantasy were quick to jump in as well.
Apparently the lives saved by good guys with guns — however many there are — don’t really matter. It’s almost as if they’re disappointed by yesterday’s outcome because their narrative would have been better served by a higher body count.
Ordinary citizens armed with guns stop mass shooters in about 3 percent of cases. No thinking person would describe that as an effective solution to mass shootings https://t.co/N0Z1wZcPEp
— Mark Follman (@markfollman) July 18, 2022
The fact is, people stop crimes and save lives using firearms every single day. The number of assaults, robberies, rapes and murders prevented is somewhere between 500,000 and 3 million, depending on who’s doing the counting. The CDC itself used to acknowledge DGU totals of between 60,000 and 2.5 million…until they wiped that off their web site recently under political pressure from the Biden administration.
The truth is, the civilian disarmament industry can’t acknowledge the huge multiple of times that guns are used annually in this country to prevent crimes and save lives compared to gun-related deaths. It directly counters everything they’re trying to do.
Here’s what we’re not going to do: continue to uplift the NRA myth of a “good guy with a gun.”
Let me be clear: If more guns made us safer, America would be the safest country in the WORLD.
We need sensible gun laws, not vigilante safety nets. #GreenwoodMall #GunReformNow
— Kris Brown | President, bradyunited.org (@KrisB_Brown) July 18, 2022
In a world with zero bail laws, prosecutors who don’t prosecute, and cops who don’t protect civilians, if the idea that the average citizen is his own first responder really takes hold, that’s going to make it far more difficult for the gun-grabber community to sell the idea of “gun safety” through gun-free zones, waiting periods, magazine capacity limits and semi-auto firearm bans. They absolutely can’t have that happening.
What took place yesterday in that Indiana mall was the result of one man with a gun stopping a killer. While that certainly doesn’t happen in every similar situation, the infrequency doesn’t devalue the lives that were saved when it does. And it demonstrates for more Americans, once again, that when seconds count, they are the people best able to defend themselves and save lives.
