An armed citizen takes down active shooter. Proving that lawful CCW saves lives. When seconds count, the cops are minutes away.
EDIT: This is especially interesting. The Tesla hate is a probable link to ANTIFA
Footage from the scene shows a white male shooting up Teslas near the In-N-Out Burger," wrote the Idaho Tribune of one viral video.
Been hearing about this briefly as I’ve been running around this weekend. Don’t know for sure if the civilian responder with the pistol actually “downed” the active shooter, but I bet pistol shooter at a very minimum distracted the perp and probably saved some lives.
Let’s see if the anti orgs mention civilian responder AT ALL if they ever comment on this.
Not much news coverage. The restaurant’s press release implies the shooter killer himself after being engaged.
Twin Falls is my home town. I still have family there (all safe). I’ve eaten at a few of the establishments in that mall. So this was a shocker.
There still don’t seem to be a lot of details available, though there is a press conference scheduled for 2 pm mountain time today. As noted above, it does not appear that the armed citizen hit the shooter, but videos do show that the citizen and the shooter engaged each other with a number of rounds while each jockeyed for position and/or cover. This absolutely gave time for many people to get out of the immediate area and undoubtedly saved lives. The armed citizen then assisted an In and Out employee in moving the employee who had been shot to a place of safety, remaining with her until the EMTs arrived. I suspect that was the employee who was later confirmed as one of the dead, but those reports calling the armed citizen a hero are correct.
Most news reports I’ve seen from sources around the country do mention the armed citizen, but last night I made the mistake of reading some of the comments…and I should know by now to never read the comments. A lot of rhetoric about this being inevitable, even common, in the lawless west with lax gun laws and everybody carrying weapons. Idaho, for those who care to look it up, consistently ranks among the 5 states with the lowest violent crime rates in the nation. That sent me looking for the mass shooting data. Wikipedia, recently updated, states that this is just the 4th mass shooting in state history. The worst one previously had three fatalities, one had two, and one had no fatalities at all, but two wounded. Wikipedia apparently uses the Bloomberg ‘definition’ of a mass shooting. Most Idaho residents would also add the 1992 Ruby Ridge debacle to that list, and while the FBI sniper was charged with murder by the state of Idaho for killing the wife and 14-year-old son of the suspect (who was later cleared of all charges), the Feds refused to file federal charges or allow extradition of the agent. But I digress…
Anyway, I expect the liberal press to double down in the coming days on the narrative that our high rate of gun ownership here is to blame, even though 8 TOTAL mass shooting deaths in the state’s history, while tragic, would be considered a slow weekend in Seattle. Chicago’s six month total, Jan 1 to June 30 of this year, is 686 shootings, 210 fatalities.
I grieve for our victims, and for their family and friends. But the discussion that will follow this tragedy should not be about why this happened in a state with such a high rate of gun ownership. The discussion should be about why such events are so very rare in states like Idaho.
UPDATE: The news conference gave the name of the shooter as Chad Williams, 24, no further detail given at this time, other than he acted alone. Shooter was engaged by both a private citizen with a handgun, and an off-duty State Trooper who happened to be on the scene, but Williams was reported to have died from a self-inflicted wound. Three innocents died in addition to Williams, and 7 were wounded. Two of those were treated and released, three are hospitalized in stable condition, two remain in critical condition. The news conference also made mention of another officer-involved shooting that is being investigated, but gave no detail, so we’re waiting to hear more about that.
I was about to post that same link about the local hero who returned fire. With a suppressed FN five-seven, no less. It’s worth a read.
There are already a bunch of sources selling t-shirts and hats.
,Salinas further detailed the years of training that prepared him for this moment. As a healthcare worker and a full-time caregiver for his wheelchair-bound brother, he began preparing after a 2021 Boise Towne Square mall shooting. He reasoned that he and his brother would be the “soft targets” that a shooter would go after…
Gotta love Attorney General Labrador. Wish more states had one like him.
Just for fun, I pasted the text of his statement into ChatGPT, and asked it to re-write the statement in the style of NJ’s anti-gun AG. The result seems about what you’d expect in NJ, which is to say you might be better off if ChatGPT replaced your AG. Or maybe it has.
What AI thinks NJ AG Davenport would have written in response to the Idaho shooting:
Saturday’s shooting at a crowded Twin Falls In-N-Out is a tragic reminder that firearms continue to threaten public safety—even when they’re used to stop an active shooter.
While Jordan Salinas and an off-duty police officer confronted the gunman, we remain deeply concerned that an armed, law-abiding citizen was able to possess and successfully deploy a firearm in public. No one should have to witness the unsettling reality of a legally armed civilian saving lives when a more robust regulatory framework might have prevented such an uncomfortable outcome.
Although the shooter’s attack was interrupted and innocent people escaped, this incident reinforces our longstanding belief that the real lesson is the urgent need for additional restrictions on firearms, expanded sensitive-place designations, enhanced permitting requirements, and whatever other measures can be enacted before anyone concludes that an armed citizen made a meaningful difference.
We are relieved that lives were saved, but we caution the public against drawing the wrong conclusion from the facts. Public safety is best served by policies, not by ordinary citizens successfully exercising constitutional rights in ways that complicate our preferred narrative.
The last sentence says it all.
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