David Koch must be having a nervous breakdown.
The Australian media, that was doing their best to spin the vehicle attack in New York a few days prior, went back to their usual schtick of trying to bash gun owners as soon as news broke of the horrific shooting by Devin Patrick Kelly, claiming the lives of 26 people at the Sutherland Springs Church in Texas on Sunday.
Kelly was disqualified from legally owning a firearm due to a dishonourable discharge incurred while a member of the USAF. It was revealed later that this was not uploaded into the NICS system by the USAF, therefore, gun control failed. Bureaucracy failing to deter illegal firearms? Sounds a bit like Victoria Police LRD’s ongoing investigation at the moment.
That also didn’t stop the usual calls for “muh gun control” from the usual outlets and talking heads. However, as the tragedy unfolded in the Sutherland Springs, there was another story making waves which the Australian media was doing their best to bury.
It was the heroic actions of two gentlemen – Stephen Willeford and Johnny Langendorff that wiped the snarky retorts of “where was your good guy with a gun” and Waleed Aly’s smug grin right away.
Watch the interview with Langendorff:
And the Texas Department of Public Safety:
The best part? Willeford was an ex-NRA instructor:
“Stephen Willeford, who is described as a former NRA instructor, grabbed an AR-15 when he discovered a man was shooting up the church and ran to the scene to stop him.
“I kept hearing the shots, one after another, very rapid shots – just ‘pop pop pop pop’ and I knew every one of those shots represented someone, that it was aimed at someone, that they weren’t just random shots,” Willeford told 4029 News. “He saw me and I saw him. I was standing behind a pickup truck for cover,” Willeford said. “I know I hit him. He got into his vehicle, and he fired another couple rounds through his side window. When the window dropped, I fired another round at him again.”
Willeford engaged Kelly and managed to hit him, forcing Kelly into his truck (where more firearms were stored) and a pursuit with Langendorff and Willeford ensued which ended with Kelly’s vehicle going off-road and being held at gunpoint until Police arrived. It is believed Kelly shot himself and died at some point towards the end of the pursuit.
That didn’t stop the Australian media trying to make this somehow about “muh gun control.” Newscorp’s Emma Reynolds tried to spin this into something about Chicago gun laws and completely failed to mention the FOID system and what is actually required to own a firearm in Chicago, as well as citing comedian Andy Richter as one of her sources. Jim Jefferies unavailable?
So to sum up: A mass shooting was committed by a felon with illegally acquired firearms that background checks failed to pick up due to a failure of bureaucracy, on a soft target and was stopped by a good guy with a gun (an AR-15 no less), who just happened to be an ex-NRA instructor.
Every Australian journalists’ head has collectively exploded. Not to mention Sam Lee and David Shoebridge.
Then there were the snarky retorts of “oh only after 26 people got killed”. What kind of morbid logic is this? So these guys should not have intervened and left Kelly to escape and continue the slaughter here or elsewhere? Or should they have just stood by and waited for the Police to turn up 30 minutes too late and screamed “your gun is illegal and murder is illegal” at Kelly until then?
That didn’t seem to work at the Lindt Café.
Most of these shootings and mass casualty attacks are complete ambushes – no-one is expecting them. Believe it or not, these are incredibly difficult to survive for even seasoned soldiers and police. The throng of armchair critics who moralise that in a situation like that they would prefer to be unarmed and have no chance to survive, is really quite ridiculous and quite frankly, aren’t to be taken seriously.
Imagine if someone like Willeford or Langendorff had been at Port Arthur: would you prefer they have not intervened?
This could’ve easily been 50 or 100 people killed going off what Kelly allegedly had access to in his vehicle. If this was Australia, chances are Willeford and Langendorff could have been charged with murder and been dragged through 2 or 3 years of legal battles.
Gun control didn’t stop Kelly, but it may have prevented Willeford from intervening. Some Australians need to have a think about that when it comes to self-defence. As we have said before, Australians honestly have no business lecturing Americans on self-defence, when we are a country that essentially punishes people for protecting themselves and doesn’t trust them with owning so much as a pepper spray.
Our sincere condolences to the victims of this terrible tragedy and we hope they are able to access the support they need. Our utmost respect and thanks to the heroic actions of Johnny Langendorff and Stephen Willeford for intervening and ending this abhorrent act.
Give these two guys a medal.
Give the Australian media their medication.
got my doubts abt the official story…. it might be true…but….these days..who knows?
the media simply cannot be trusted to report the actual facts….except…maybe….for sport and the weather…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4HEchh0XD8
You can watch Stephen Willeford describe it on alternative media (Louder with Crowder) via youtube.
You are missing the point, that you man who chased down that crazy gunman deserves all the praise he gets. In Australia we have very strict gun laws due to tragic mass shootings in Tasmania years ago. Automatic fire arms have always been illegal, the only people who can own guns are police, security agents and farmers but under strict control where they all strictly checked. Sure the criminals get hold of guns. But we feel much a safer place to live because there is a lack of guns. People arguments is guns dont kill people but people kill people. If there wss less guns around there still be killings, thatd the world we live in. But be less tragic shootings as we just witness in Texas. Can anymore explain why do people need automatic firearms anyway.
Lots of holes and wrong facts in your comments Terrance. 1 general public can legally own firearms with the correct license. 2 there is approximately 250000 illegal firearms in Australia. So please explain how strict gun laws have made any Australians safer?? Still approximately 250000 guns in the hands of criminals. I have yet to see a firearms commit evil all by them self. It’s a criminal and or a mental health sufferer that commits these atrocities.
“Automatic fire arms have always been illegal, the only people who can own guns are police, security agents and farmers but under strict control where they all strictly checked. Sure the criminals get hold of guns. But we feel much a safer place to live because there is a lack of guns.”
This post proves exactly that you don’t know what the laws are. Hunting, sports shooting, pest control, collecting, primary production are the five genuine reasons. There are also more guns in Australia than ever before and the already declining firearm homicide rate in Australia prior to 1996 is lower. More guns doesn’t equal more crime. It’s not even true in the United States where they have had a 49% reduction in the violent crime rate since 1991 and now have half a billion firearms.
Where did Rick Maddison, Man Monis, Farad Jabbar and Yacqub Khayre all get their illegally imported firearms from? Which background checks did they pass?
Why someone needs a firearm is an authoritarian strawman argument and not valid. Why do you need a vehicle? How can we trust that you won’t suddenly drive up on the footpath and mow down scores of civilians like what happened in New York last week?
If you’re going to wheel out the same bland talking points over and over without knowing what the laws are here in Australia and in the US then you’re just wasting your time.
Nailed the response
life is a dangerous business;
when you give the government the authority to ‘keep you safe’, you are abrogating yr own personal sovereignty to look after you and yours;
when you let the government intrude into yr life by ex post facto banning items that were, previously, legal, you have descended into tyranny;
especially when those items can be used for self-defence;
in that respect: AUstralia is now little better than North Korea;
other points
SSAA research indicates up to ten million “illegal”, un-accounted-for guns in AUstralia……
the 1996-1997 gun grab only got abt 10% of what they were after;
apart from a few urban hot-spots like Chicago, Detroit and LA, most of the US is safer than Australia…..
as safe, in fact, as Belgium;
every “mass shooting” in the US in the last 15-or-so yrs has had major questions ‘hanging over’ it and none have been properly investigated or brought before a judge and jury or a properly constituted inquiry…usually b’cs the alleged perp’ commits ‘suicide’…..
because of this and because of their relative rarity, they cannot be used as any sort of yard-stick to gauge the effectiveness or OTW of gun control…..
Australia got the NFA in 1996/1997 b’cs it was, @ the time (and, to an extent, still is), a small, mono-cultural, mono-ethnic, (mostly) mono-racial country with a small, tightly controlled media, with no real history of a US-style gun culture, with a weak if not non-existent gun lobby and with no history of armed rebellion against any government…….
as such: Howard et al felt reasonably safe in passing the NFA although they did suffer some major electoral repercussions because of it…..
Australian-style gun laws would not and could not work or be imposed in a country as large and as diverse as the US with such a solid history of gun owner-ship and with such a powerful pro-gun lobby….
to think that they could or would work there is the absolute height of madness and would, in all probability, spark a massive Civil War that would tear the US apart and ‘balkanise’ it…..
I think your key phrase here is “But we feel much a safer place to live because there is a lack of guns.”
aside from suggesting that you remove the “we” from that and substitute “I”, because personally I’d feel a lot safer if I could concealed carry, I would point out that your statement is about how you feel safer, not that you are safer – those of us who have done some detailed study of the subject know that, unlike in the movies, the police won’t kick down the door and save the day at the last second and damn what the captain says about waiting for back up! – 95% of the time they will turn up after a neighbour reports screams or a wierd smell and then it is time to draw the chalk outline. the other 5% of the time, they will arrive, establish a cordon, await the higher ups who will take charge of negotiations – by which time the crim has already done whatever he was planning and may have fled the scene while the cordon is being established.
If you think laws prevent criminals getting guns, google “DIY sten gun”.
they knew that most people wouldn’t turn their guns in….
but…they got around that by making you have to produce a current, valid license to purchase ammunition…..
Ammunition isn’t tracked (it also lasts a very long time if properly stored), is there anyone out there who believes that criminals don’t have one or two ‘clean’ associates who can get that sort of thing for them?
Another example of laws that just disadvantage the law abiding.