Gun prohibitionists who moved swiftly to exploit Monday’s mayhem at Ohio State University are now eating crow, or at least should be, after their knee-jerk whines about “gun violence” were proven to be without foundation, and the only use of a gun was by a good guy who stopped the bloody car and knife attack almost immediately.
What happened on the OSU campus was a classic example of a “good guy with a gun” stopping a bad guy who had already injured nearly a dozen people, and was in the process of hurting more. Now would be a good time to remind anti-gunners that “if it saves just one life,” it’s a good idea to allow guns on college campuses.
That seems to be what many gun rights activists are saying on social media one day after a legal resident alien identified as Abdul Razak Ali Artan slammed a car into a crowd of OSU students, and then attacked them with a butcher knife. But he was stopped cold within a minute by a University police officer identified as Alan Horujko, according to The Lantern, the campus newspaper.
What is now known is that Horujko fired the only shots in the incident. Those shots may be responsible for the early alerts about an “active shooter” incident that raced across the news wires.
In the aftermath, California Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, perhaps best summed things up. Quoted by news services and the Seattle Times, Schiff said the incident “bears all of the hallmarks of a terror attack carried out by someone who may have been self-radicalized.”
And he added this:
“Here in the United States, our most immediate threat still comes from lone attackers that are not only capable of unleashing great harm but are also extremely difficult, and in some cases, virtually impossible to identify or interdict.”
Perhaps unintentionally, Schiff put the terror threat in its proper perspective. When authorities can’t identify the bad guys, such attacks can best be stopped if there is a good guy with a gun who can immediately fight back.
Had not officer Horujko been nearby to intervene and stop the threat, who knows how bad the carnage might have been?
Yesterday, almost by knee-jerk reflex, the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility released an e-mail that gasped, “We still don’t know all the details of what happened. But we do know this:
The threat of gun violence constantly grips our nation. It has become the norm. And it will only continue unless clear steps are taken to keep weapons out of dangerous hands. All too often, dangerous individuals have easy access to guns — and 90 people die every day as a result.”
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee reportedly tweeted, “Today is yet another was a sad day in our country because of a senseless shooting at an Ohio State University.”
By no small coincidence, Business Insider reported Monday that the FBI’s National Instant Check System conducted 185,713 “Black Friday” background checks. While that does not equate to as many gun sales, it does provide a strong indicator.
What happened Monday in Ohio might only add momentum to gun sales.
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