Ryan Petty's Coverage of Bend Shooting a Must-Listen

Bearing Arms contributor, fellow member of the Board of Directors of Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and “Parkland father,” Ryan Petty filled in for Mark Walters on Armed American Radio earlier this week, and did an excellent job of covering the recent shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon. Petty came to the table with facts, no fanfare, and tossed all speculation while he covered what was factually known at the time of the broadcast.

“I'm going to be very careful about what's confirmed versus what speculation, because those families that are grieving this Monday deserve that and nothing less,” Petty said while opening. “Three minutes. That's how long it took.”

During the hour-long broadcast, Petty started at minute one and delivered a full and accurate timeline of the course of the event. The police response he described as “the fastest three minutes you'll ever see from any police department in America” and that’s all while the violent encounter was ended by an armed civilian and an unarmed teacher.

“At 12:59 Pacific time last Thursday, somebody called into 911 to say a kid with a shotgun had just shot at his truck outside an elementary school in Bend, Oregon,” Petty explained. “At 1:02 p.m. the first police officers pulled up on scene.”

Petty continued to give a play-by-play of the event, acknowledging that in the three minutes of carnage, “three kids and a 25-year-old teacher were killed.” Talking about what happened wasn’t to serve as a “political talking point,” Petty said. But rather to put into perspective what was “standing in between that gunman and every other child in that building.” 

“There were three people: a guy in a pickup truck, a teacher with a cell phone, and a dad with a 40-caliber pistol in his truck,” Petty said.

Drawing from official statements and press releases, Petty delivered the timeline from the first sight of danger through and to the neutralization of the perpetrator.

“A disarmed teacher in that classroom, I'll point out, threw the only thing she had available, which was her cell phone, at him,” Petty said. “She then tackled him and fought him for the gun.”

What happened was something that defied all the rhetoric that the anti gun caucus has been preaching for years. The alleged “safe haven” that was created via policy to keep law-abiding gun owners from being able to legally carry firearms on that school’s grounds did not keep the victims of this massacre safe. What it did do is force a man to make a decision to break the law that ultimately saved the lives of countless other people.

“Meanwhile, that dad took out his 40-caliber pistol,” Petty said. “That, in the words of Bend Police — and this is important because the police made this very, very clear in their statement — they said he took out that 40-caliber pistol that was legally secured in his vehicle.

“He went in through the doors the shooter had blown open, found the teacher in a physical fight with the gunman and fired, hitting him multiple times.”

Petty reported that by 1:02 PM the officers arrived and “moments later” an officer reported back that “the suspect has been shot by a community member.”

“When officers found the shotgun was a Maverick 88 pump-action 12-gauge, the shooter still had 44 rounds on him,” he said. “44 more rounds.”

Further on in the show Petty discussed the aftermath, the response from the anti gun lobby, as well as how making that school a certified “gun free zone,” or “sensitive location,” did nothing to stop the murder of four innocent lives.

The entire episode is available in podcast form right on Walter’s Armed American Radio webpage. If you want to hear the most sober and straightforward account of such an event that I’ve ever heard, this is something worth tuning into. You can also catch the rewind in the embed below.

Author's Note: Ryan, you did a great job behind the microphone, brother! Mark, your show was in great hands.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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