OPINION:
The media hate to have to report incidents in which armed citizens intervene to stop ongoing crimes or to apprehend violent predators to hold them for the police. Reporters, anti-gun activists and liberal policymakers are loath to acknowledge that an armed citizen might be safer than an unarmed one.
In Traverse City, Michigan, at a Walmart last month, Bradford James Gille allegedly entered the store, pulled a knife and proceeded to stab 11 shoppers before heading for the exit and escaping. Mr. Gille, 42, with a record of previous assaults and drug use, was stopped within minutes by other Walmart shoppers led by two Marines, one of whom was armed.
Matt Kolakowski had stopped with family to pick up vacation supplies when he saw what was going on and ran toward the action while watching Mr. Gille stab two people. He later told police that he didn’t know quite what to do because he didn’t have a weapon. Two unarmed victims tried to stop Mr. Gille anyway. So, Mr. Kolakowski grabbed a grocery cart and threw it at Mr. Gille. Mr. Gille ran through the parking lot when another shopper, who Mr. Kolakowski later learned was also a Marine, pulled a gun, stopped the fleeing Mr. Gille and held him for police. Without Mr. Kolakowski’s quick thinking and training, Mr. Gille may well have escaped and local police would not have been able to brag that the suspect was in custody in a remarkably short time.
The second Marine, Derrick Perry, had a concealed carry permit and told Mr. Kolakowski that he was on his way home from the shooting range, still had his gun on his hip, and just happened to stop at Walmart to pick up something when the incident occurred.
The police did not initially praise either Marine. Early news reports said a crowd of Walmart customers detained the suspect. This is sadly how assistance from honest, armed citizens is treated by many law enforcement officials and reporters. As professor John Lott has pointed out in various studies, numerous mass shootings and other violent attacks have been stopped by civilian gun owners. Still, few get the attention they deserve, lest an anti-gun media provide evidence that civilian-owned firearms make the country safer.
Through his Crime Prevention Research Center, Mr. Lott and his in-depth analysis prove that the government and the media work together. This explains why the illegal use of firearms receives blanket media coverage but defensive gun use is ignored. Mr. Lott’s organization even gathers information by the month of crimes stopped or lives saved by legal gun owners acting in self-defense or defense of others. The reports invariably come from local news outlets but are largely unreported by regional and national outlets.
CNN was the only “mainstream media” network to report on the two Marines’ roles in stopping the attacks and apprehending the suspect. NBC, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post and others ignored their role. Anyone wanting early or more thorough coverage of their heroism had to tune into Fox, the New York Post or local Michigan television.
As time went on, however, Walmart customers posted recordings from their cellphones on the internet, essentially forcing the mainstream media to play catch-up.
These individual witnesses are changing the equation. Mr. Lott is convinced that the misreporting pattern is intentional. The FBI defines the cases it counts narrowly to exclude many incidents in which firearms are used to stop crime or what they call “active shooters.” What’s more, the bureau does not do a thorough search but merely a Google scan, which means the Feds miss many incidents that aren’t covered by a firearms-hostile media. This was compounded during the Biden administration when, in response to anti-gun activists, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped reporting such incidents.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams mused that New Yorkers would not be so afraid of crime if the media would stop covering it. By overlooking the actual data and by enabling biased reporting, anti-gun activists are creating the fantasy Mr. Adams wants.
This has terrible public policy implications and sends a message to all of us, like those two Marines or to the New York subway rider who stopped a mass shooting but was prosecuted on felony charges, that getting involved is not worth it. Fortunately for their fellow shoppers in Traverse City, Matt Kolakowski, Derrick Perry and others are still human enough to be heroes.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.