In mid-October an apparently mentally ill sixteen-year-old entered an elementary school in Bend, Oregon and murdered three children and an adult and wounded two more victims. His murder spree was cut short when a thirty-something father of two young students there happened to be passing by, saw the gunman approaching the school, and stopped his vehicle and ran in with a .40 caliber pistol. He chased down the gunman and ultimately killed him. The mass murderer still had 44 live shotgun shells to feed the 12 gauge pump gun his mother had purchased for him.
The first mainstream news broadcast I saw on the incident was on ABC Morning News, and when they referred to the young dad as an “armed hero” my first thought was “Damn, maybe there’s hope for mainstream news after all.”
Note the solid points in favor of armed citizens by the pro-gun spokesman, in contrast to the ridiculously false assertion by the anti-gun spokesman that for every case where a Good Guy With A Gun stops a life-threatening crime, there are many more when they shoot an innocent victim by mistake. Such a statement begs the question, “If your cause is righteous, why do you have to blatantly lie?”
We are told that the armed hero is grieving because he could not stop the murderer in time to save all the victims. As details of the investigation emerge, it is quite likely that we’ll discover the totality of the circumstances didn’t allow him to stop the murderer sooner. His legacy will be the many lives he saved.
Here’s a clip from News Nation, which appears to have tried to position itself between CNN and Fox News as being non-political. I’ve been a bit skeptical about that, but they took a big step toward living up to their billing when they offered this point/counterpoint on the issue:
Or watch video here.