In Indianapolis, a 20-year-old man opened fire in Greenwood Park Mall and killed three people.
The Sunday shooter might have killed many others, his apparent plan, but another young man shot and killed him early in his rampage.
“The real hero of the day,” said Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison, “is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began.”
The 22-year-old man with a gun is Elisjsha Dicken. Careful observation that Dicken was carrying a firearm lawfully was perhaps necessary to preempt concern about any legal jeopardy for him.
Indiana’s concealed carry law had only recently been liberalized.
But if I’d been there that day, perhaps spared by Dicken’s quick action, I suspect that my only thought would have been: “Thank God he was there, had a gun, and knew how to use it.” And if it turned out that my savior was carrying unlawfully, well, so what?
Alive is alive.
This sentiment, however, is not universally shared. Folks who support citizen disarmament are unsurprisingly uncomfortable with honoring someone who does precisely what those of us who support citizen armament expect armed citizens to do: save lives when needed.
Leah Barkoukis, writing at Townhall, notes that some leftist Twitterati objected to Dicken’s carrying a gun into a mall that declares itself to be “a gun free zone.” A few even demanded prosecuting Mr. Dicken!
Understandably, mall spokespeople have evaded discussion of using their creaky legal grounds to do anything so preposterous.
As anyone with sense knows, making a large public venue “gun free” is not an effective way to keep people safe. As Mr. Dicken demonstrated.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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6 replies on “Two Shooters in a Gun-Free Zone”
Law-abiding citizens have many enemies that must be kept at bay, as does this country. They don’t have the courage, training or desire to save the situation themselves but are perfectly willing to go after the people that do, who are their real adversarial targets. Some of them even turn out to be Soros ‘appointed’ DA’s.
Mr. Dicken’s actions do not fit the preferred narrative. The disarmers would have preferred that this incident could be used to argue civilian weapons should be banned or severely controlled by law to “prevent” mass shootings, regardless of their knowledge and understanding that criminals and deranged individuals pay no attention to the law.
In the case of deranged mass shootings, it defies common sense (pun intended) that an incident would start in the presence of police, who therefore must be anticipated to be “only minutes away when seconds count”.
Had the shooter not been present and active Mr. Dickens would have passed through the mall unnoticed.
Mr. Dickens was not the bad guy, he prevented additional death and injury because he was exercising his right to be able to defend his life, and heroically undertook the defense of the lives of others at great risk to himself.
For that he will suffer not only the wrath of the the foolish (only because they were not in the mall and benefited by his actions), but also the trama that visits all right thinking persons who are forced into committing a justifiable homicide.
Here is a FWIW:
The people who want to disarm American citizens
are the same people who praise Ukraine for giving machineguns
to their civilians.
You can’t make this stuff up.
40 to 50 yard shot and stopped him with the first round.
That’s gun control.
I’m glad Mr. Dicken happened to be trespassing (“entering another’s property without right or permission”) and saved the day, and hope that the mall will reconsider its policy rather than holding him accountable for the trespass, but there’s no question that trespassing was what he was doing.
Property rights don’t magically disappear just because you don’t like the owner’s exercise of those rights.
It would be one thing if owners or lessees of private property pominently posted signs that said “Firearms Prohibitted”. Another is they promised to provide gun-free zones and kept those promises. But to post “Gun Free Zone” and then utterly fail to keep mass-shooters off the property should be treated as a civil tort.