The mainstream media, for the most part, sucks. I'm not breaking news with this information, because most of you already know it. I only say "most" because I know good and well that if I don't, someone's going to seek me out to tell me that no, they don't think the media sucks, and therefore everything I say is completely invalid.
Whatever.
I give the mainstream media all the crap that I can, and for good reason. However, I'm also going to give them credit should they deserve it. I just didn't expect it to happen.
But, with the aftermath of the shooting in Idaho still panning out, I have to give them credit. They sat down with the armed citizen who engaged the shooter, and they did it in a pretty sympathetic manner.
A private citizen who confronted the gunman who killed three people and wounded seven others outside an In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho, is speaking out about his encounter with the shooter.
Jordan Salinas, 35, told ABC News he spotted the suspect aiming a rifle at passing vehicles before confronting him.
"I peeked around the right-hand side of that sign closest to the road, and that's when I saw the individual with his rifle pointed at the vehicles," Salinas said.
Salinas said the suspect appeared calm as he aimed at cars but that his demeanor changed once shots were fired in his direction.
"He seemed unusually comfortable aiming that rifle at those cars," Salinas said. "As soon as some rounds started coming at him, everything changed immediately. All that bravado he had immediately crumbled."
Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks says that Salinas and an off-duty officer engaged the bad guy, driving him off. Hicks credits both with saving a lot of lives.
Missing from the piece was any of the anti-gun fearmongering Cam wrote about on Monday. They tried desperately to downplay what Salinas did, even framing it as somehow irresponsible, because remember, boys and girls, it's better to let the rampage continue than to engage the bad guy so innocent people might escape.
Ugh. Sorry, some of those so-called responses still piss me off.
Anyway, back to ABC News. The piece is largely what news is supposed to be. The journalist talks to Salinas, reports what was said, adds some neutral background, and that's it.
It was a nice change of pace from what I expected, really.
As for what Salinas had to say about the incident, that's something we need to talk about. Salinas said that as soon as the killer met armed resistance, he crumbled. This reminded me of something our own Ryan Petty said last year when I sat down with him at the NRA Annual Meeting in Atlanta. He noted that the Parkland killer clearly had a plan, but part of it involved shooting through glass at fleeing students. The glass, however, wasn't exactly accommodating, which threw everything out of whack, so he just surrendered.
Mass killers may have meticulous plans, but they don't have any actual training. Upon meeting some hurdle they didn't account for, they seem to crumble internally. All their supposed "bad ass" energy evaporates.
That's what makes Salinas's comment interesting to me. This, coupled with what Petty told me, combines with numerous reports of mass killers taking their own lives when the police start to engage them, and it's clear that these "people" are only really dangerous when they have a massive upper hand. Meeting resistance throws everything into turmoil for them. Their brains, which aren't trained to deal with changing situations, freeze and, as Salinas put it, "All that bravado he had immediately crumbled."
What this tells me is that the answer to mass shootings is something we already knew. The answer isn't to try and wrap the universe in bubble wrap by stripping law-abiding citizens of their rights. It's meeting these killers with armed resistance. In the best-case scenario, you get White Settlement or Greenwood Park Mall, where the bad guy is dropped right there.
In others, you get Twin Falls, Idaho.
I'll take it.
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