CCWer Responds to Wellness Center Shooting

From Dr. Campbell's Facebook page

A gunman shot two and then killed himself in an incident at a Summerlin Center for Wellness   Thursday afternoon. Thankfully, the wounds were minor and the killer did the right thing early on and ended his miserable excuse for a life before anyone else got hurt. This is a perfect example of why it is not inappropriate for medical office staff to be armed. Not all such shootings result in such limited casualties. As we have said time and time again, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Barricading the door, hiding, and praying only works if the killer does not find you or shoots through the door. Fighting is a much better option.

Chris Upshaw, a concealed carrier, posted on Facebook that he heard the shots from the neighboring Bagel Cafe (which prohibits customers' guns) and ran to the clinic to assist. He and another armed citizen entered the office with their guns drawn and found that the shooter had already killed himself. Upshaw and the other citizen unloaded the killer's gun and cleared the rest of the building. He reports the two gun shot injuries were minor ones, to a hand and to the other person's forearm. The third injury, a fall, came from the person who jumped out a window.

 

While this was likely not an attempted killing spree (see below), if the shooting continued, perhaps men like Mr. Upshaw would have been able to successfully intervene before police arrived and saved lives. Violence in medical facilities don't have to result in helpless victims at the mercy of the aggressor. In 2015, a robbery at a Las Vegas dentist's office was stopped from turning into something worse when an employee retrieved his gun from his car and shot one of the robbers, freeing two hostages when the surviving robber fled. In Pennsylvania in 2014, a doctor killed a patient that had come to the hospital with plans of going on a killing spree.

 Anti-gunners will count the shooter's suicide as "gun violence" in their statistics, perversely making himself into a victim so that they may push their narrative further. They will gleefully use this to say that licensed concealed carriers are violent and dangerous, despite CCW holders being more law abiding than police officers. If this incident paints armed citizens in a bad light, then likewise the actions of a lying reporter or unscrupulous media organization poisons the whole field of journalism.  If blame must be laid somewhere, let us examine if prescription drugs were a factor in the man's state of mind.

This is speculation: perhaps that his actions, causing only minor wounds to extremities followed by his suicide, were a monstrous way of acting out hidden despair, rather than a unsuccessful attempt at something worse. Or maybe acting thoughtlessly in whatever sad state he was in, once he realized the magnitude of what he had done, he chose to stop and kill himself. There is no honor in the act, but if it was self-punishment for crossing the line from otherwise normal gun owner, it says more for his character than the heartless mass murderers we have seen. 

This isn't a case of a failed system, but rather a case of unpredictable human factors that lead to tragedies. It is a perfect example of guns not causing violence, but a person. No law could have stopped this, no test could have predicted it. Making guns illegal would only leave many defenseless to criminals who illegally have guns or use knives. Perhaps a conversation needs to be had about the chronic prescription of opioid pain medication and the conditions that bring people to vicious desperation. What can be said is that had the gunman known staff in the office was armed, he may have been deterred from acting out, the thought of impulsive violence unthinkable even in a desperate state of mind.

Had this been more serious than it we speculate it to be, then we must be grateful it was not.  Like Friday's shooting rampage in the Bronx hospital (by a doctor, no less), there is no safe place. Gun free zones don't work and it is impossible to predict who will snap and become a killer. No antidote for preventing sudden, impulsive violence has yet been invented. It is a sad an unfortunate reality that it occurs, but the only thing one can do is prepare to defend themselves. Hopefully, Dr. Campbell and his employees will use this as an opportunity to become armed citizens and keep this from ever happening to them again.

There have been 20 mainstream media reports of defensive gun uses in Nevada so far this year amid the countless ones that go unmentioned and unnoticed. Let's hope that Dr. Campbell and his staff use this as a learning experience, as well as many others in the medical profession, to get armed. As far as gun violence is concerned, we must discuss why the violence occurs, not merely how to regulate the tools by which the violence comes by. Solutions only come by addressing the heart of the issue.

-GC

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