As more details emerge about the Sunday mall shooting in Indiana that was stopped cold by an armed bystander, it’s becoming more and more obvious how little gun-control advocates really grasp the reality they’re living in.
In one of the most obvious examples, CNN’s Alyson Camerota probably thought she was being mean-girl smart on Monday when she closed out a report on the heroism that saved untold lives by asking a sneering question about what it all meant.
But all she really did was prove how right supporters of the Second Amendment really are.
As Mediate’s Kipp Jones reported Monday, the on-air moment came after a “CNN Newsroom” report that included video of Greenwood, Indiana, Police Chief James Ison describing how gunman Jonathan Douglas Sapirman emerged from a restroom to begin firing on customers in the food court of the Greenwood Park Mall in the city outside Indianapolis.
According to CNN, Sapirman managed to kill three people, including a husband and wife, before 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken managed to shoot him dead.
“He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun — was very proficient in that, very tactically sound, and as he moved to close in on the suspect, he was also motioning for people to exit behind him,” Ison said, according to CNN.
“Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen that took action very quickly within the first two minutes of the shooting.”
To any sane American — to any decent human being — the outcome would be considered both a tragedy and a triumph of the ethos of self-defense. Yes, three innocent victims are dead, and families have been ripped apart, but a good guy with a gun, after all, managed to keep things from becoming unspeakably worse.
But sane people (not to mention “decent”) are evidently not a priority at CNN, so at the end of co-anchor Victor Blackwell’s report, Camerota cut in with a snippy:
“I mean, but are we all supposed to rely on an armed 22-year-old in the food court?”
CNN’s Alisyn Camerota Reacts to Good Samaritan Who Killed Mall Shooter: ‘Are We All Supposed to Rely on an Armed 22-Year-Old?’ https://t.co/lhMf0R5RVS
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) July 18, 2022
It’s the sarcastic kind of question that could come from a high school sophomore, but it’s what passes for scintillating analysis at CNN.
The answer is obvious: No, in a civilized society, we’re supposed to reply on law enforcement to keep criminals from attacking innocent civilians. But criminals have the human agency to decide when and where they’re going to commit crimes. And, by a weird coincidence, those times and places tend to be times and places where law enforcement officers are not present.
So, logic dictates that even in a civilized society, any adult should be prepared to act in self-defense if it’s necessary. Sometimes, as at that Greenwood mall, that self-defense will require a firearm. And thanks to God and the Founders who ratified the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, there was a man with a gun who was on hand to put a halt to Sapirman’s killing spree.
Plenty of social media users understood the lesson, even if Camerota couldn’t or, more likely, deliberately refused to:
We’re not supposed to rely on 22 yr old armed citizens but because of the current state of the world and the anti-police/pro-criminal narrative developed and pushed by liberals and parroted by their state media, I’d be happy to know that citizen is there and willing to engage.
— usaiscraycray (@usaiscraycray) July 18, 2022
@AlisynCamerota no ma’am! That’s why every citizen should own one.
— Deanna R (@Dejana14) July 18, 2022
No we shouldn’t have to, but it’s great that there was one available.
— James Freeman (@Talk4info) July 19, 2022
The short answer, of course, is “No. you should rely on yourself and your own personal competence to defend yourself.” But sure- if you choose not to do the former, then you better hope there is an “armed 22 year old” nearby as intrepid and accurate as this man, to protect you.
— pipermcq (@pipermcq) July 18, 2022
Making her own position even worse was Camerota’s snide decision to refer to Dicken’s age, as though his 22 years automatically disqualified him in the eyes of the 56-year-old CNN talking head.
That didn’t fly so well either.
In a nutshell, yes.
Believe it or not, there are some very capable 22 year old individuals who can do the job. pic.twitter.com/TR9P6iea57— desertskies (@azdesertskies1) July 18, 2022
How old is the military recruitment age?
— Rob from Jersey (@NewJersey_Rob) July 18, 2022
What Camerota was driving at, of course, is that if gun-control fanatics had their way, no one would be armed but the agents of the government — exactly the situation the Founders were preventing by guaranteeing the citizens of the country they were creating the right to keep and bear arms themselves.
But a world where a government could be trusted with that power has never existed and never will — human nature being what it is.
And even if such a government were possible, that’s still no guarantee that a madman or a criminal would not avail himself of the kind of weaponry that could do mass damage to his fellows.
And as the pathetic police response in Uvalde, Texas, in May made clear, even relying on heavily armed law enforcement agents isn’t any guarantee that lives will not be lost.
Is the mainstream media deliberately downplaying the heroism that halted the Indiana mall shooting?
Regardless, in the here and now, the United States of the 21st century is a country with literally more guns in private hands than it has people. A National Shooting Sports Foundation report in 2020 estimated there are 434 million privately owned guns in the U.S., versus a Census-estimated population of 331 million in 2021.
That means that for now, and for the future foreseeable — long past the time when the quinquagenarian Camerota and the Gen Z Indiana hero she disparaged have shuffled off their mortal coils — guns are going to be part of the American life.
That means there are going to be bad guys with guns. That means there’s going to be a need for good guys with guns.
And if Americans like the insufferable Camerota aren’t willing to take up arms themselves, they better be praying there’s one around who is if they need it — of any age.
That’s just reality, whether Camerota, CNN or the American left can grasp it or not.
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