Not long ago, a young man turned into a mad dog mass murderer at an Idaho fast food joint, shooting multiple people until he came under return fire from two of his victims. One was an off-duty Idaho State Trooper and another was a 24-year-old armed citizen. Neither hit the killer, but they put enough fear into him that he changed channels and fled, killing himself when responding police closed in on him.
There would have been four potential victims returning fire on him, but one was a former cop carrying a pistol with an empty chamber who was shot down by the murderer before he could rack a torpedo into the launch tube. Lesson: carry a gun that’s ready to shoot, and if you’re not comfortable with an autoloader in the chamber, consider a revolver. Another was a courageous young woman who picked up the pistol the killer had started with and dropped when it jammed, but couldn’t clear the malfunction and get the thing to work against its vicious original owner. Lesson: if you’re in a situation where a mass murderer is doing his thing, make sure you can get a picked-up gun up and running. These comments in no way denigrate the bravery of the citizen-rescuers mentioned.
Neither the trooper with his compact semi-automatic pistol nor the armed citizen who fired from a distance estimated to be as much as 90 yards on a moving target were able to score a hit. Nonetheless, their gunfire appears to have interrupted the murder spree and greatly reduced the casualty count. In the gun community, a lot of keyboard commandoes questioned the armed citizen’s choice of weapons: an FN 5.7mm pistol with a silencer.
A full-time caregiver for a handicapped relative, the citizen in question had chosen the suppressed weapon with subsonic ammunition at least in part because he knew if he had to fire in proximity to his mobility-challenged charge, he didn’t want to deafen the patient. Some “net ninjas” questioned his choice of weapon.
The criticism could induce vomiting. Each of the above-mentioned people are heroes who went toward the danger instead of away from it, and in doing so profoundly mitigated the danger and the casualty count.
Their courage vastly outweighs the criticism of those who weren’t in the line of fire. Those four people are heroes, all, in this writer’s opinion. Learn the lessons, but don’t crap on the heroes who delivered them.