A few months ago, my friend – veteran US Navy SEAL and NRA Commentator Dom Raso – made a video called “Radical Islamic Terrorists Targeting Gun-Free Malls”.

In the video, Raso warned of an impending radical Islamic terrorist attack on a gun-free mall here in America.  Referring to a potential terrorist, Raso said, “That’s exactly why he’s looking for gun-free zones in states and cities where politicians have reduced our Second Amendment freedoms. He wants to produce mass chaos, mass panic; he wants to immediately assume control over everyone in the building. So of course he is only going to consider malls that prohibit his targets from carrying firearms.”

Yesterday, Media Matters’ guns and public safety program director Timothy Johnson used one of three domestic terrorism attacks from this past weekend to attack Trump… and to amp up his hoplophobic claim that “the NRA does the leg work for terrorists”. What Johnson fails to mention in his article was that Raso’s warning was warranted and the NRA was right.

Johnson, who previously spent time at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence Legal Action Project and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and has a degree in art history, tried to politicize the terrorist attack and use it to call out the NRA, saying:

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump recently suggested that “freedom of the press” should be limited because of the existence of magazines that show terrorists how to build bombs, but had nothing to say in July when the NRA released a video in which they cased an Oklahoma mall to demonstrate how to carry out a successful terrorist attack.

Despite Trump’s recent comments connecting terrorism and “freedom of the press,” Trump was not as critical in July when the National Rifle Association, which has endorsed Trump for president, released a video where an NRA employee cased a real shopping mall in Oklahoma to show how to carry out the “perfect” mass shooting terrorist attack.

In the video, released as part of an online series, NRA News commentator Dom Raso warned of a hypothetical, forthcoming mass shooting at a shopping mall carried about by “a radical Islamic terrorist” who “is looking for gun-free zones in states and cities where politicians have reduced our Second Amendment freedoms.”

Interesting. When the NRA released the video, the media (with Johnson at the helm) accused Raso and the NRA of fear-mongering, lying and even helping terrorists. But when a radical islamic terrorist attacked a gun-free mall in St. Cloud, MN this weekend – making references to Allah as he stabbed a half a dozen innocent people – Johnson and his media pals were unable to report that it was a good guy with a gun who took down a terrorist in a gun-free zone.

…and that Raso and the NRA were right all along.

The Crossroads Mall website states::

Examples of specific activities that are prohibited include but are not limited to: 

• Disruptive profanity, vulgar or threatening language
• Unnecessarily blocking walkways, roadways or storefronts
• Running, horseplay or disorderly conduct of any nature
• Excessive loitering
• Operating unauthorized recreational and/or personal transportation devices in the shopping center
• No firearms or illegal weapons

The mall is a privately owned property. Guests who do not act responsibly may be asked to leave. If they refuse to leave the property, they may be arrested and prosecuted for criminal trespass.

The policy does not make any exceptions for off duty police officers.  As a privately owned property, the Mall may exclude off duty officers as they are not acting in an official capacity.

Pointing out how criminals and terrorists think and identifying weak spots in our own communities isn’t “helping the enemy” or “fear-mongering”, it’s simply informing people that they need to avoid these areas until they are no longer weak spots. The fact that 40% of criminals state they wouldn’t commit a crime on a victim if they thought they were carrying a gun and a whopping 60% of criminals said they wouldn’t commit a crime on a victim if they knew they were carrying a gun tells us that criminals are more likely to commit crimes where people are not allowed to carry guns. The fact that all but two mass shootings in America have taken place in gun-free zones should drive that point home.

The NRA and Dom Raso aren’t the problem – the gun control bus driven by the media is.