Common Sense with Paul Jacob

File this under “Good Guy with Gun”:

BEND, Oregon — A hero dad was driving home for his lunch break when he heard gunshots and ran into an Oregon elementary school special-education room to stop a crazed teen’s deadly mass shooting, according to a report.

Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter and father of two girls who attend Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, was heading home from his break Thursday around 1 p.m. when he heard gunfire coming from the area around the school, said his brother, Kyle Giamanco, to NBC News.

Giamanco, who owns a concealed weapon, bravely pursued teen gunman Griffin J. John into the school building’s special-education room and fatally shot him, his brother said.

Jared Downing and Zoe Hussain, “New details revealed about hero girl dad who stopped Oregon school shooter Griffin J. John during his lunch break,” New York Post (October 16, 2026).

Much has been made that, to stop the malefactor, Mr. Giamanco had to disobey the “gun-free” policy of the school:

Paul Jacob has covered many “good guy with gun stops mad killer on the loose” stories. It is important to acknowledge these stories, though the hero in this case wants no recognition.

The shooter, a 16-year-old, shot and killed three students along with a teacher. The gunman had stolen his mother’s shotgun, using the firearm to get into the Silver Rail Elementary School on Thursday. Details on the two survivors, a student and a teacher, have not yet been released, though both are reported alive but still in hospital care.

People often complain about money in politics. In Maine, a campaign managed to take politics out of money in politics. The Oregonian explains: “You might have recently seen a political advertisement about Maine’s Senate race.

That’s because the advertisement mistakenly played in Portland, Oregon, instead of Portland, Maine.
The advertisement, paid for by Republican PAC Defending Main Street, decries “Taxin’ Troy Jackson,” the Democratic candidate facing off against Susan Collins.

Meanwhile, north of the Columbia, political advertising goes on as usual. A “statistical dead heat” race between incumbent Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Trump-backed Republican challenger John Braun shows both candidates walking a fine line, trying to ply partisanship in their favor, but still trying to distance themselves from perceived craziness within their respective parties (or so says public radio).

But if you want old-fashioned negative campaigning, a Perez attack ad against Braun is pure perfection:

A very simple pitch. Effective? Seemingly.

Yet challenger Braun says the ad is misleading. The ad’s charge is he didn’t call the son of a worker who died on the job — of a company Braun runs; but this is the result, says Braun, of the fact that he talked to the son in person more than once at the job site.

This is an ad that could backfire. Unlike the Maine ad running in Oregon, which just fizzled into nothing but laughter.