An Armed Citizen Just Prevented a Mass Shooting at a Walmart

By Augustus Lancaster & Steven Clyde

Some people (meaning leftists) are probably sick of hearing this phrase: “a good guy with a gun.” In other words, they find it inconvenient that so many instances like this occur in spite of their fallacious narrative. A CDC report even concluded that defensive gun uses range from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.

The recent events in Tumwater, Washington, a city 60 miles south of Seattle, added to these defensive-use statistics.

A gunman who opened fire inside a Walmart in Tumwater, WA and injured at least two people during carjacking attempts was fatally shot by one of two armed civilians on Sunday, June 17th, according to police.

Authorities received a call about a possibly drunk driver heading the wrong way on a main road near a local high school, said Laura Wohl, Tumwater police public information officer. As police sped to the scene, they received a second call about a carjacking with shots fired. When officers arrived, they found a 16-year-old girl with unspecified non-life-threatening injuries but no suspect. They quickly located the stolen car but once again no suspect. At about 5:30 p.m., they started getting numerous calls of shots fired in and around a nearby Walmart. It was confirmed that the man doing the shooting was the same person involved in the carjacking.

Caitlyn Wallner told the paper a similar story. She heard “pop, pop, pop,” and a man yelling “there’s a guy shooting. Everybody run.” “There were all kinds of people running out,” Robert Berwick, who was in the back of the store, told the Seattle Times. The action then moved into the parking lot. Witness Brian Adams told KING5 TV that “this guy was randomly firing” both inside and outside the store. He said he heard about 15 shots.

When the police arrived at the Walmart, they learned that a man had tried to carjack a parked vehicle, and shot a man inside the car twice. He then tried to carjack another, but two citizens in the parking lot drew weapons; at least one of them shot and killed the armed man. “He is a hero,” Adams told KING 5. “If this customer hadn’t done what he did, who knows what would have happened.” The Thurston County coroner identified the dead suspect as Tim O. Day, 44. No customers or employees inside the Walmart were injured in the shooting, according to authorities. Police said there are no other suspects in the carjacking incidents or reported shootings. Police have not released the identities of the armed civilians, but only that they were armed with pistols. Megan Chadwick, a bystander who huddled with her four children during the shooting, praised the actions of the men who confronted the suspect. “Those men who stood up, they are heroes to me,” she told KOMO.

The police had arrived, after the shooter had already been taken out. This was a possible mass shooting that was prevented by armed citizens. Yet this story’s evidence of why a well-armed society is indeed a safer society is going to be buried and blown off by people who don’t want to hear that. Had these brave men not been at this establishment at the right time, or worse; be prevented by law to possess pistols, we would have not only seen this guy get away but possibly any number of people that were in the store and parking lot getting hurt or killed. We call the police in these situations because they have firearms to neutralize the threat. Why demand there be a hazardous middleman of time by not allowing well-armed citizens to keep a component of security? A good guy with a gun took out a bad guy with a gun, and no leftist talking point about why guns are icky will change that.

Luckily for the citizens of that town, and unluckily for the criminal, there were two armed individuals who approached the thief, one of which shot the suspect before he could harm anybody else. Brian Adams, who was in the parking lot and was nearby when the incident occurred, called the two individuals who approached the gunman what they were: heroes.

More guns in the hands of private citizens have been shown time and time again to reduce crimes against individuals and their property.

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