One important way for Anti-Freedom True Believers to harden their faith in the failed policy of gun control is to always frame the debate in such a way that your opponents cannot win.
Wilcox, 31, was inside the Wal-Mart store when the Millers entered firing and ordering everyone to evacuate. Wilcox, who carried a gun, decided to confront the shooter, apparently unaware that Amanda was with Jerad. After he walked past her on his approach toward Jerad, Amanda fatally shot him.
During an ensuing gunfight with police, Amanda turned her gun on her husband and then herself. Whether they might have killed others had Wilcox not stepped forward — a decidedly brave if ill-advised maneuver — we can’t know. What we do know is that a civilian, perhaps emboldened to heroism because he had a gun, is dead.
See we can’t tell if he potentially saved any lives, but since he is now dead, rather than recognizing him as the selfless hero that he was, instead he is a failure and that failure is BECAUSE he had a gun. Nice, huh?
There’s also these stories that the antis spin away into Catch 22 land.
These are all stories where a person had motive, opportunity, and intent to commit mass murder, except they were stopped by an armed citizen. Now Antis will tell us that Concealed Carry holders have NEVER (ever ever) stopped a mass shooting, and their definitions carve out the Catch 22. If a citizen stops a person initiating a mass shooting BEFORE they kill anybody or only one or two victims, well it isn’t a mass shooting, then is it? If the Citizen stops a person AFTER they have shot several people, well didn’t didn’t PREVENT the shooting entirely, so really they did more harm than good, and if a shooter is confronted by an armed citizen and chooses that moment to end their own life, well that it probably purely coincidental! The person with the gun did NO good, they were just THERE.
They need to bend reality to make their failed ideals seem legitimate.
“If a citizen stops a person initiating a mass shooting BEFORE they kill anybody or only one or two victims, well it isn’t a mass shooting, then is it?”
What really irritates me is that they will try to say this even when the murderer was stopped while reloading. Like he wanted to make sure his gun was topped off when he surrendered, or something!
Obvious lies, but that’s really all they have, isn’t it?
Another oft noticed use of this argument occurs when discussing guns and mental health. ‘Obviously crazy people oughtn’t have guns, and one way we know they are crazy is that they have or want guns!’ Often this will include enough layers of ‘obvious’ ‘reasonable’ and ‘common-sense’ to imply that questioning any of the assumptions makes you opposed to obviously reasonable common sense. Its argument by shame and tautology.
I only read the headlines about the Vegas shootings. Seems like a real moral muddle. I’d like to see a true crime journalist put together something in book form, maybe with the police report and a discussion of concealed carry/tactical issues.
I read the linked Kathleen Parker piece. Her column seems sketchy and ill-informed. If she’d made some connections between the training of the law-breaking killers, the training of the policemen who were murdered, and the training of the concealed-carry Good Samaritan who was murdered, maybe that would have given her the beginnings of a credible essay.
Concealed carry in Ohio does not give the permit-holder, as Ms. Parker writes, the right to “use the gun as one deems necessary.” That theory is actually the one used by the Millers in Vegas, and by murderers elsewhere. I’ll defer to real experts on a lot of gun issues, but Ms. Parker is definitely not one of them. Weer’d, Jake, and Wolfman have pretty much nailed it.
I think because the Left and the MSM are so hungry for a violent gun nut who could be squinted at and called a Conservative/tea party member/ ect they’ll do all they can to publish manifestos, and other documents that may be found to show the couple’s motives and plans.
We saw from the Santa Barbara killer’s screed he wasn’t that interested in guns and preferred knives as killing implements, and made it clear that Police interaction was his end game. We also saw his plans failed miserably. I suspect their plans were NOT to just kill two cops and themselves. Either they planned on killing more people before ending their lives, or they planned on escaping to do more “hits”.
Either way it really sounds like brave Mr. Wilcox got inside their OODA loop.
Don’t forget that they’ll also call shootings where one or two people die a mass shooting as well.
And when pointed out on this they’ll go all wounded-fawn.
I can’t really criticize Mr. Wilcox’s decision. Odds are when some nutcase shows up and starts shooting the place up there’s only one of them. Best to focus on that one person and stop them as fast as possible. But if there’s two that gets you shot in the back. 7/10 times this would probably have ended up with Wilcox stopping the shooting right then. This time was one of the other three. Probably a good decision based on the information he had when he made it. Hero? Yeah. A perfect one? Unfortunately not.
Honestly, most cops who were operating solo would have fallen victim to the same situation, especially since SOP for an active shooter scenario is “immediate armed response, no delay for backup” after Columbine.