VICTOR JOECKS: Las Vegas shooting stopped by good guy with a gun

A good guy with a gun just did something gun control laws couldn’t do — stop a would-be mass shooter.

Last Friday, a man walked into the Turnberry Towers lobby in Las Vegas carrying a rifle. He began shooting. Fortunately, he didn’t injure anyone before an armed security guard returned fire. He hit the shooter several times. Police also reported the shooter’s rifle appears to have malfunctioned after his first shot.

That doesn’t take away from the security guard’s heroism or the importance of what he did. Shooters can clear malfunctioning weapons. My drill sergeants in the Army pounded the acronym SPORTS into my head when my M-16 jammed. Using that process, it took me around three seconds to clear my weapon.

But this shooter never got a chance to fix and fire his rifle because of the security guard’s bravery, skill and firearm. That gun probably allowed the security guard to save lives.

This is far from the only example of the lifesaving benefits of a gun in the right hands. On Wednesday, police in Allen, Texas, released body camera footage of an officer responding a deadly mass shooting last month. The officer didn’t wait for backup. He ran toward the gunfire and engaged and killed the murderer.

Using a gun to save lives isn’t limited to law enforcement or security guards. Last July, Elisjsha Dicken was at a mall in Greenwood, Indiana. A man opened fire with a rifle, killing three and wounding two others. It could have been much worse, but Dicken was legally carrying a handgun. He used his weapon to kill the murderer.

Compared with shooters, heroes such as these don’t receive much publicity. They’re also extremely inconvenient to gun control advocates, who like to pretend they don’t exist.

“How the ‘good guy with a gun’ became a deadly American fantasy,” a 2019 PBS headline declared.

Everytown for Gun Safety asserts it’s a “myth” that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Rather, it says, “If more guns everywhere made us safer, America would be the safest country on Earth. Instead, we have a gun homicide rate 26x that of other high-income countries.”

You should be able to see that’s a non sequitur. These examples show a firearm in the right hands is lifesaving. In the wrong hands, it’s a deadly menace. Gun control advocates want to avoid confronting this paradox, because it turns the focus to human behavior.

Once you think about that, it’s easy to see why gun control laws don’t work. The Turnberry Towers shooter committed multiple crimes. A new gun law won’t stop someone who’s already willing to break the law. But if gun grabbers made it illegal for the security guard to carry a firearm, he presumably wouldn’t have had the gun he used to stop a potential massacre.

That’s the problem with gun control laws. The people most likely to abide by them are the ones most likely to use their firearms to save lives.

Victor Joecks’ column appears every Wednesdy, Friday and Sunday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.