Tragedy inspires partisan political finger-pointing in today’s polarized America, but it often also inspires acts of heroism by ordinary people. The latter can be more than a little inconvenient for media organizations attempting to promote a narrative that government is always the entity to which otherwise helpless citizens must turn in times of trouble. Such is the case with the July 17 mall shooting in a suburb of Indianapolis, IN. An armed civilian, 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, engaged the heavily armed active shooter, killing him and potentially saving a great many lives.
Five people were shot by the assailant in the food court of the Greenwood Park Mall. Three of them died and two were wounded. Now the left-wing, anti-gun media reluctantly report what they have, for many years, refused to acknowledge: that a law-abiding civilian, carrying a handgun in public, was able to stop what could have been a massacre.
Anti-Gun Narrative Killed in Mall Shooting
A pesky additional fact is that the alleged shooter, a 20-year-old man named Jonathan Douglas Sapirman, used a .223 caliber rifle – likely a variant of the dreaded and supposedly invincible AR-15 – but was neutralized by “good Samaritan” Dicken, who had only a pistol. One of the many hysterical and entirely untrue talking points employed by journalists who constantly push for a new “assault weapons” ban is that, against the allegedly brutal and ruthlessly efficient killing-machine that is the AR-15, a handgun is utterly useless.
As any close-quarters combat instructor will attest, tactics and movement, speed, aggression, and accuracy are the elements of victory in a gunfight, regardless of the weapons used by the combatants on either side. The notion that any one type of firearm – especially among those available to civilians – is so lethal that it renders the carrying of any other kind of weapon pointless is something only the uninformed would believe.
For sure, the media are having a hard time spinning the Indiana mall shooting to fit the anti-gun narrative. Of particular interest was one Newsweek headline that declared, “Indiana Shootings Come 2 Weeks After Permitless Gun Carry Law Introduced.” Obviously, the intended implication is that Indiana’s decision to drop the permit requirement for concealed carry somehow facilitated the deadly attack. There is no possible connection. While the shooter did have at least one handgun, he switched to using a rifle almost immediately. The change to the law had no bearing at all on rifles. This is quite apart from the fact that dangerous individuals, intent on mass murder, generally don’t check to see if they are complying with firearms regulations before setting off to carry out their deadly rampages.
(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
As for Dicken, the switch to permitless carry would have enabled him to take action on Sunday night even if he had not already had a concealed carry permit. So, the idea that Indiana’s removal of one regulation enabled the mall shooting to happen is not only ridiculous but is, in fact, a total inversion of reality. Dicken’s action proves why civilians should be less hindered in the exercise of their constitutional right, not more so.
An interesting and important side note is that, according to a Fox News report, Dicken was violating the “gun-free zone” policy of the Greenwood Park Mall. Anti-gun leftists sprayed Twitter with statements of outrage that Dicken, undeniably the hero of the day, had been dubbed a “good Samaritan” – even by representatives of the Greenwood Park Mall, whose “no guns” policy he disregarded. Had Dicken honored that policy, he would have been unarmed and unable to prevent what could have escalated into a mass murder.
The moral of the story, in this case – and many others never reported by the establishment media – is that trying to prevent law-abiding citizens from carrying guns rarely saves lives, if ever, while guns in the hands of responsible and proficient citizens can and do prevent the shedding of the blood of innocents.
