Narrative Fail: Legally Armed Civilian Shot El Paso Mall Shooter, Preventing More Casualties

By
Dan Zimmerman
-
74
Law enforcement agents are seen at an entrance of a shopping mall, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. Police say one person was killed and three other people were wounded in a shooting at Cielo Vista Mall. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

It happened again. A civilian carrying a concealed firearm stopped a shooting in an El Paso, Texas mall earlier this week. We know news like this will come as something of a shock to our friends in the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex, but…who are we fooling? That’s exactly why we wrote this.

Anti-gunners love to claim that people who carry firearms don’t use them to defend themselves or stop crimes…all evidence to the contrary. And they certainly don’t stop active shooters in public areas. They know this to be true because they say so, which is all the proof they really need.

So what has us here at TTAG Central Command puzzled is how they reconcile their views with incidents such as what happened in Indiana when Eli Dicken pulled a concealed pistol and stopped a mass shooting in progress last summer. Or, more recently, when something similar happened in El Paso when an argument — likely between rival gangs — escalated into a fight and then a shooting in a crowded shopping mall.

Even the anti-gun stenographers jernalizmists at CNN have been forced to report that . . .

A civilian used his legally licensed gun to shoot and wound a suspect in a mall shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left one dead and three injured earlier this week, police said.

Emanuel Duran, 32, shot a 16-year-old who is believed to have carried out the shooting at the Cielo Vista Mall, spurring chaos and sending many patrons running in panic Wednesday evening, El Paso Police said in a statement Friday night.

“As soon as the shooting ended, the 16-year-old suspect began to run and was pointing the gun towards the direction of bystanders,” police said. “As the suspect ran towards Duran and bystanders, Duran drew his handgun and shot the suspect.”

Ouch. Here’s the statement issued last night by the El Paso Police Department describing what Mr. Duran — who had a Texas LTC — did when confronted by a man with a gun . . .

The un-named wounded 16-year-old, who used a stolen gun to kill one and injure three more, was arrested. Duran helped a cop administer first aid to the shooter and the wounded.

The cognitive dissonance experienced by devoted hoplophobes at news like this has to be jarring and awfully difficult to deal with. Does smoke visibly trail from their ears? Do their little heads explode? We’re actually quite concerned for their mental wellbeing.

It can’t be easy to absorb the reality of these incidents conflicting with what they’re regularly told by all of the smartest people like the noted authorities like the New York Times, Kris Brown, and Ryan Busse.

We just want to take a moment to assure them that, if they’re having trouble coping, help is out there. It’s true that guns prevent crimes and save lives every day in America, but that doesn’t mean you should be ashamed, depressed, or suffer in silence. Please…if you’re finding the reality of civilian gun ownership difficult to cope with, reach out and get the help you need.

 

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74 COMMENTS

  1. Just to be fair,
    – It Happened Again. –
    Somebody with a gunm shot some people in a mall.
    WTF is happening, why all these random acts of violence?
    And the sad thing is it’s going to get a lot worse regardless of gunms.

    • “WTF is happening, why all these random acts of violence?”

      Well, my marsupial friend – us naked apes are just violent creatures. Us omnivores are often like that.

      I’ll bet you didn’t know that snakes, bird, and small mammals all think you’re a monster when you’re eating them!

      • If you were aware of the public school system’s pathetic indoctrination instead of using critical thinking skills; if you were aware of anti-social media’s and television’s effect on kids; if you were aware of the growing number of adult children (often narcissistic) having children and then leaving them in the hell of neglect and emotional dysregulation, if you knew the rapid decline in spirituality in the culture, much do to the effects of Marxism in the schools, businesses and cultureand even churches themselves, then you would understand why.

    • If you read the story, it wasn’t a random act of violence…it was gang violence. And there’s no law that the anti-gun crowd has proposed that would stop it, even if we passed an amendment repealing the 2nd. The issue is the left has been busily destroying every civil, religious, and cultural norm that would keep things like this from happening for about 40 years now and it’s finally coming home to roost.

  2. I hope the wounded 16 year old killer of one and wounding of 3 others get life in prison, but….we all know how the system works (fails) he won’t! He’ll be walking the streets in a short span of time…..

    • 16 is pretty much an easy threshold to charge as an adult in almost any state, especially for murder. We’re also talking Texas here, so 30 to life wouldn’t be a shocker.

    • Soros has set up, with the Marxocrats help, a DA system and judges that allow criminals to go free to continue to rampage the public leading to more violence. The violence is then sensationalized by the mainstream media that Soros owns. Then the Marxists and those who have been dumbed down in the schools with propaganda instead of critical thinking skills and inoculated with fear and call for gun confiscation, which in turn increases the violence. 1% of the U.S. counties account for 54% of gun related deaths.
      If you ever watched the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie that came out 20 years ago, the phrase, “We will follow Fearless Leader” in a catatonic monotone group voice says it all.
      We talk to each other on this and other sites and half the population doesn’t know we exist.

  3. Unfortunately scenarios like this are few and far between.

    According to the data, citizens stopped shooters 50 times in the 316 attacks. But in only 10 out of those 50 incidents did citizens actually stop the shooter by using a gun. The other 40 times, it was with their hands or another weapon.

    https://www.kxan.com/texas-mass-violence/do-good-guys-with-guns-stop-mass-shootings-heres-what-the-statistics-say/

    According to FBI crime analysis, of 110 active shooter events 49% ended before police arrived. Of the cases that ended before the police arrived, 67 percent (34) ended with attackers stopping themselves via suicide (29 cases) or by leaving the scene (5 cases). In the other 33 percent (17) of the cases that ended before the police arrived, the potential victims at the scene stopped the shooter themselves. Most commonly they physically subdued the attacker (14 cases), but three cases involved people at the scene shooting the perpetrator to end the attack.

    According to these numbers citizens with guns have ended a mass shooting 3% of the time.

    For the sake of fact checking we will use the FBI statistics, but several sources have documented up to 10 times where a mass shooting was ended by an armed citizen. Again, for statistical purposes we rely on the FBI as an authority. The bottom line is that armed citizens have certainly prevented more casualties in mass shootings, but the number is statistically very low and the majority of the time unarmed citizens subdue the shooter. Therefore, we rate the claim that more armed citizen’s equals less mass shootings as MOSTLY FALSE.

    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/2018/03/03/fact-check-armed-citizens-equals-less-mass-shootings/

    • You literally did not read the article and immediately spewed out a false narrative based on FBI statistics which Zimmerman above notes has incorrect and skewed data. It’s almost like you are that deep in cognitive dissonance that you can’t even come up with another viable argument. The cope, seethe is literally for you right at the end of the article.

    • @dacian

      Ya know, not counting the ones purposely excluded in the FBI data and your bogus basis links.

      It completely ignores and does not include that armed citizens also stop active shooters with guns simply because they acted in a defensive gun use manner without firing or without actually shooting or hitting the active shooter or would be active shooter. If they didn’t pull the trigger, even though brandishing and being able to engage repelled bad guy who ran off or committed suicide instead, its not counted as the law abiding armed citizen stopping the shooter.

      Then there are the ones that simply are not included in the stats: While the FBI found that 4.4% of active shooting incidents between 2014 and 2021 were stopped by an armed civilian, the number is actually more than ten times higher. Between 2014 and 2021, citizens stopped 104 out of 204 potential or actual mass shootings where we could identify that guns were allowed in the area. So 51% of attacks were stopped by people legally carrying concealed handguns. Again, the most recent data is most accurate, and for 2021, 58% of the attacks were stopped in areas where people were clearly allowed to carry.

      The numbers indicate If we didn’t have gun-free zones, we would have more people stopping these attacks.

      Then there is a very bogus study thing …. in the very biased Texas study…

      The Texas study numbers:

      * Of the 433 active shooter attacks in the study 249 ended before the police arrived.

      * In 64 of those attacks a bystander subdued the attacker 42 times and shot the attacker 22 times

      *12 of the shooting bystanders were citizens, 7 were security guards, 3 were off duty police officers

      so lets go on… with their numbers

      *In 185 of the 249 that ended before police arrived 133 of that 185 left the scene before police arrived and 72 committed suicide. The study does not tell you that of the 113 that left 108 of those left because an ordinary citizen (not security or law enforcement) with a gun brandished their firearm and repelled the attacker thus stopped the active shooter without firing a shot. This study also does not tell you that of the 72 that committed suicide 68 did so either while under fire by a citizen with a gun and they could not escape or keep firing being suppressed by the citizen weapons fire but were not hit by the citizen weapons fire or the citizen brandished and the active shooter simply stopped their attack and killed their selves when seeing the citizen brandish.

      some math: 185 – 72 = 113 attackers left to subdue but they departed the scene before being subdued and before police arrived …. so 249 – 72 – 113 = 64 attackers left to subdue on scene.

      This 64 is interesting because you will notice it includes two categories of defenders as if there are those with firearms and those without – those that shot the attacker (22) and those that subdued by physical force (42). Of those defenders that shot 12 were citizens, 7 were security guards, 3 were off duty officers. Its interesting because it does not mention that of those subdued by physical force that the shooter was stopped first in 18 of them by a citizen (not security or law enforcement) brandishing a gun but not firing but the attacker stopped their attack when confronted by that armed citizen then the attacker was able to be subdued by physical force.

      So of the 433 attacks in the study armed citizen (not security or police) stopped the attack …

      108 + 68 + 12 + 18 + 25 = 231 attacks stopped by an armed citizen (not security or police) with a gun

      Notice how the Texas study only credits an armed citizen (not security or police) with stopping the active shooter if they actually shot the attacker. This is the slanted biased part of such studies – they start by basically defining that an active shooter is only stopped by an ordinary armed citizen if the citizen actually shoots and hits the attacker and that causes the attacker to stop. They do not credit armed citizens that stop attacks by brandishing (and thus repelling) or firing on the attacker and suppressing the attacker so they can not continue but not hitting the attacker – these also stopped the active shooters.

      433 – 231 = 202 and of that 202 … 7 were shot by security and 3 were shot by off duty police. 7 + 3 = 10

      53.3% of these 433 active shooter attacks were stopped by ordinary armed citizens engaging with their firearm either by actively firing or by brandishing thus presenting a hard target defense capability.

      1.6% of these 433 active shooter attacks were stopped by armed security.

      0.69% of these 433 active shooter attacks were stopped by off duty police officers.

      The study uses only one one category of an armed citizen stopping an active shooter and that is only when the armed citizen actually shoots the attacker. It completely ignores and does not include that armed citizens also stop active shooters with guns simply because they acted in a defensive gun use manner without firing or without actually shooting or hitting the active shooter or would be active shooter.

      The FBI also uses the same thing, that a citizen with as gun only stops an active shooter if they actually shoot and hit the attacker and the attacker then stops. This is also the definition used by anti-gun. But police are credited with stopping an active shooter if they show up then act after the fact of the shooter firing.

      In other words there are a lot more active shooter type incidents stopped by ordinary citizens with guns than are credited to citizens with guns in the media and by anti-gun. This Texas study was just looking at 433 of them.

  4. If it does not fit their Gun Control narrative it’s kept out of sight and out of mind…Just like The Historic Truth About Gun Control is kept out of sight and out of mind by both Gun Control zealots and by so called frontline defenders of The Second Amendment. So called defenders who dare not say something that may interfere with stringing along their courtroom drama queen contributors.

  6. “Two random groups had a physical altercation that led to a gun being drawn in the food court of the Cielo Vista Mall, interim El Paso Police Chief Peter Pacillas said Thursday. The cause of the altercation has not been released.” — CNN

    CNN has three stories on their site, which concentrate on mass shootings and gun control rather than a detailed discussion of the incident.

  7. I almost believed this tale until you armed the shooter with a SHOTGUN(?) no way, everyone knows ALL mass shootings are done with scary black “assault” rifles… POTUS Braindead said so, (ask ANY progressive gun-grabber)

        • Named for Arkabutla creek from Arkabutla lake that was created by the Arkabutla damn… Thought everybody knew that…

        • I didn’t know that. I learned something new today. (And it is a funny-sounding name.)

          It makes sense, though. There’s a town near the intersection of Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia named “Kenova” — but it’s actually in West Virginia.

          The name may sound familiar, as it is close to the site where the Marshall University football team was killed in a plane crash.

        • Man with no name. Kenova is no where near the Virginia line. It is in western WV. And it is actually Ceredo-Kenova. Unless they changed it, again. It has been 40 years since I lived near there.

          Upon re-reading your comment you may have left West out when you mentioned Virginia.

        • ?
          I just thought it was a funny name nothing more
          Well muckraker:
          I was not referring to your “Arkabutla” comment, I was (if you note the position of the post) responding to the Man with No Name who appeared to be correcting my (less than serious) observation of the story.

  8. What’s going on? Have they stopped teaching, “shoot until the threat is ended.”? Why is the 16yo crazed shooter alive?

      • The kid was still alive. He had just shot at least four people. The threat is not ended until the assailant is deceased.

        • GeorgiaBob,

          Thats the old school way but under most states laws when you shoot someone in self defense or defense of others then the:
          “Until the threat is stopped” law kicks in.

          You don’t want be charged with Man 2 because you are having an adrenaline dump. Keep your head, they are locking up cops for doing their jobs.

          A mag dump is a combo of adrenaline and the perp going down.

        • they are locking up cops for doing their jobs.

          MOST of the cops I see getting locked up appeared to be a tad OVER enthusiastic about doing their job… If a bunch of “cops” are so intent on beating a guy to death that they ignored the cameras that they KNEW were on them then their dumb asses deserve to go to jail…

        • Bullshit fake MADDMAX,

          Some people just don’t comply. If they did they wouldn’t be dead. If a cop tells you to put your hands behind your back but instead you resist arrest and run away then you make a situation much worse then it should have been.
          That’s why “Terry Stops” are legal, just comply and don’t make a simple situation into a bad one.
          If you fight with the police you will lose every time.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdIB6UUs7aI

        • @Rob S

          “That’s why “Terry Stops” are legal…”

          Terry Stops are not always legal.

          A terry stop is another name for stop and frisk.

        • SCOTUS says differently regardless of what it’s called.

          Read Terry v. Ohio, it’s legal.

          “The current stop and frisk policy has been legal since 1968, when the Supreme Court ruled in Terry v. Ohio to allow police officers the flexibility to temporarily detain and search someone they suspect has done or is in the process of doing something illegal.”

          “That’s why “Terry Stops” are legal, just comply and don’t make a simple situation into a bad one.”

          You may not like it but that’s the law backed by SCOTUS.

        • @Rob S

          No SCOTUS does not say different. SCOTUS says in certain cases.

          No it is not a law backed by SCOTUS that Terry Stops are broadly and always legal as you imply.

          ‘Terry Stops’ refers to the lawful detention of a person, by law enforcement officers, for a brief period of time. That’s what SCOTUS backs, the key and operative words being “lawful” and “detention” and not “lawful” and ‘killing’. The standard for determining the “lawful” and “detention” for a Terry Stop is ‘reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity’. The ‘reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity (AKA “RAS”)’ standard requires: objective reasons, in the present tense – BEFORE a police officer can briefly detain a person under a Terry Stop and information police get after they implement a ‘Terry Stop justification’ can not justify the stop.

          Like I said, Terry Stops are not always legal.

        • @.40 cal Booger
          The stop was legal, the killing was not. A disorderly conduct charge is in the the same league, a judge gives cops a lot of leeway. It doesn’t justify killing someone for disorderly conduct.

          You are confusing the legality of a Terry Stop with obvious murder. Apples and oranges. A cop is going to have a valid excuse in a judges eyes 99% of the time for a Terry Stop but then when you kill someone because they didn’t comply, that’s a totally different thing.

          The murder was unjustified but the stop was. If the guy hadn’t run, he wouldn’t have been murdered.

  9. From the Sheriff Department’s statement:

    “a confrontation ensued between two groups near the food court area…”

    IF this turns out to be a “good guy with a gun” stopped a GANG-RELATED shooting, the mainstream media will drop this story faster than anything we’ve ever seen before!

  10. 16-year-old shooter? This wouldn’t happen if the minimum age to carry was 17 or if we had at least banned assault weapons/lapel pins.

  11. mental illness rages on killing and injuring and left wing ‘woke’ celebrates it by raging on about who and what didn’t do it.

  12. What?? 16 year olds can’t buy guns legally, let alone carry them. This can’t be true!

    Kudos to the armed bystander.

  13. If the good guy with a gun and the criminal are “the wrong” skin colors. This story will just disappear.
    The more guns in hands the of the law abiding in pubic. The better our society will be.
    And thank you to the good guy with a gun.

    • Find this week interview with the new Chief Cop from Minneapolis on “Firing Line” (PBS). The dumbass will set you straight on Right Think. Hard to believe he actually believes his BS.

      • I was a regular Watcher of Firing Line as a kid. I actually found the discussions very interesting. And I was concerned when the program was bringing brought back after the death of William F Buckley Jr. Because I knew being this was PBS, that it would become a left-wing crackpot TV show. And it certainly has. The host Margaret Hoover use to be on the Fox News channel. She called herself a liberal republican. And it really shows on this show that she’s hosting now.

        You’re right this Minneapolis Police Chief it is a great example of one of the worst types of police leadership. Get out of the major cities if you can. They will be the first to collapse.

        Thanks for telling me about this interview.

  14. I post the following when this subject comes up. It is not my article; I am only posting a link to someone else’s article and a short summary.

    Read or skim this article. Shooters stopped by civilians killed far fewer victims, because the stoppers were on the scene, whereas police had to be called, dispatched, arrive, coordinate, assess, and finally act cautiously. One begins to suspect there’s a reason Mother Jones and the police ignore shootings with fewer than 4 victims.

    https://dailyanarchist.com/2012/07/31/auditing-shooting-rampage-statistics/

    * I compiled and analyzed 100 shootings, noting my methodology, and I am now prepared to present my findings, complete with links to the data.

    ** The average number of people killed in mass shootings when stopped by police is 14.29

    ** The average number of people killed in a mass shooting when stopped by a civilian is 2.33

  15. It is head-buried-in-the-sand refusal to see reality that someone who buys and carries a gun for self defense isn’t carrying for self defense. Particularly when the whole world can plainly see a rise in crime while a major increase in gun buying over the last few years. But there are people that believe that the rise in crime is because of the increase in gun sales. These might be the same people that thing that the 1920’s gangsters existed BECAUSE of SBR’s and full auto Tommy Guns. Leftist liberals want to blame criminal activity on the gun and not the criminal. Firearms are NOT magical amulets that turn people into evil killers when held in hand. It does not work that way. This is not some Hollywood movie. It’s real life.

    The whole thing is so twisted, upside down, and backwards.

  16. I am extremely happy that CNN, either by deliberate or inadvertent decision, put the words “A civilian used his legally licensed gun to shoot and wound a suspect in a mall shooting” on their news.

    I dare say that this publishing is the most important of all the string of events surrounding the shooting. One small step…

  17. My problem is with the tone of the article. Instead of trying to appeal to our “better angels” you want to belittle us (those of us on the left who might actually be open to hearing your point of view) and continue to call us idiots. Sure, plenty on the left use this kind of hyperbole against you. But you will not convert others with this kind of tone. If you’re content preaching to the choir, that’s fine. But I came here looking for this kind of info, in part so I could present it to college students in criminal justice classes I teach. but the pro-gun bias is so strong I could not, in good ethical conscious, use this website as a source. I will have to find my data elsewhere.
    You could be trying to influence the debate in a positive way. This kind of writing will just keep the vitriol flowing.

    • I understand the assessment. I wonder if you go around admonishing the left wing propaganda outlets in the same way? Everyone’s sick and tired of their constant lies.

    • As long as the progressive left and the mainstream media continue their lie infused attacks on the 2nd Amendment and those of us who are lawful and legal gun owners you will be hard pressed to find a site that can give you what you want, but you might consider starting with pointing out to the class that groups like Everytown, Moms against guns and Giffords are more propaganda and lies than fact based information… It has been the goal of the political class to divide the country on every level possible for decades, but guns, race and climate seem to be the primary targets of interest currently. Good luck on your search for that balanced website don’t believe you”ll find it but good luck anyway…

    • what a load of BS.

      “You could be trying to influence the debate in a positive way.”

      We (as in the gun community broadly) tried that. We even wanted to have honest discussions on the matter, practically begged ‘please let us sit down and discuss this and come to a consensus for solutions.’ and we got “you’re going to do it our way and we will decide” from the gun control industry. We proposed solutions that work, we got “you’re going to do it our way and we will decide” from the gun control industry. We were met with rejection, vitriol, rhetoric by the gun-control industry and a bunch of liberal and left-wing people campaigning against us using lies and deception to appeal to emotion. In the courts for years we said ‘please, do not trample our rights’ and the anti-gun politicians and states and attorney generals and gun control industry said ‘your rights will be what we say they are and as we decide.’

      And now you say “This kind of writing will just keep the vitriol flowing” like its our fault in reference to an article outlining that one of the very lies of vitriol spewed by that same gun-control industry is again for basically the literal ‘hundredth of more times’ shown to be the lie and deception they spew in their vitriol and rhetoric.

      So, excuse us if we seem ‘reluctant’ to satisfy your desires to satisfy the gun-control industry now that they are loosing their war against us. The tyrannical enemy that persecutes and oppresses for the sheer joy and power of it does not get consideration in their desire to want to meet half-way or ‘discuss’ when they start loosing the war.

  19. Was it a legally armed citizen, or an off duty cop? Cause that’s how I saw it reported, an off duty cop.

  20. This is how the ‘Wild West’ got tamed. Enough ‘good’ guys killed enough ‘bad’ guys to bring civilization to the frontier. Needs to happen again.

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