YOU'VE GOT THEM

Can you recall any stories of Billy The Kid defending his home, his family or others from the evils of miscreant wrongdoers? Billy was a quick draw gunslinger, a hot head and a murderer. Such accounts of personalities in the American Old West are the antithesis of one who carries a legally concealed firearm in the U.S. today. 

Every American citizen, man or woman, has a constitutional right to carry a concealed firearm for the purpose of self-defense or the defense of others.

With that right stands the responsibility to properly train in the safe operation and maintenance of the firearm. The responsibility to develop situational awareness and the emotional intelligence required to carry a concealed firearm is strictly the burden of the one who carries that firearm. When properly done, a well balanced, trained adult may stop an unbalanced, sick or crazed individual from harming or killing other innocent people.

Case in point; Eli Dicken, the young man who stopped the Greenwood Indiana Mall Shooter.

Around 4:55 p.m. on July 17, 2022, Jonathan Sapirman, a resident of Greenwood, walked a mile from his apartment to the mall, carrying a SIG Sauer M400 semi-automatic rifle, a  Smith & Wesson M&P AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle, a Glock 33 pistol, and over 100 rounds of ammunition. He went into a restroom near the mall's food court and did not come out until an hour and two minutes later, at which point he started shooting.

At 5:56:48 p.m. on July 17, 2022, the perpetrator began firing into the food court area of the mall. He first shot and killed Indianapolis native Victor Gomez, who was standing near the restroom entrance. He then turned and fired at a nearby table, fatally shooting Pedro and Rosa Pineda, a married couple from Indianapolis. He then continued to fire at mall patrons, wounding a 22-year-old woman and a 12-year-old girl.

Fifteen seconds after the shooting began, Elisjsha Dicken, a legally-armed 22-year-old man from Seymour, engaged the shooter in a gunfight. Dicken, a civilian bystander, was shopping with his girlfriend when the perpetrator opened fire. From a distance of forty yards, Dicken fired ten rounds from a Glock 19 handgun, hitting the shooter eight times. The shooter fired once, and attempted to retreat into the restroom, but instead fell to the ground and died soon afterwards.

Afterward, Dicken approached security guards at the mall, informed them that he had neutralized the shooter, and waited for police to arrive. 

*Henry McCarty, alias William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, was an American outlaw and gunfighter of the Old West who is alleged to have killed 21 men before he was shot and killed at the age of 21.