Why have you not heard of Elisjsha Dicken? It’s pretty simple. Dicken does not fit the political narrative of mass shootings.
In case you’re wondering, Dicken is the legally armed gunman who took down a shooter long before the police arrived Sunday night in Greenwood, Indiana.
He’s 22 years old and by all accounts saved dozens of lives when a gunman opened fire at a Greenwood shopping mall. He has been hailed a hero by local police.
“I will say his actions were nothing short of heroic. He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun, was very proficient in that, very tactically sound. As he moved to close in on the suspect, he was also motioning for people to exit behind him. He has, to our knowledge, no police training and no military background,” investigators said Monday.
Consider how remarkable a human being he must be, but take a quick look at the front pages of The New York Times, ABC News and the like. You’ll see no mention of Dicken. In fact, they barely cover a shooting where a man with an AR-15 tried to kill dozens.
Mass shootings with AR-15s, we’re told, are an enormous threat. How one was stopped would certainly seem to be news.
CNN believes AR-15s might be the single biggest threat to national security since Russia got a nuclear weapon. How to stop active shootings is critical. What happens when someone stops it? Do they cover it? No.
During a news conference 24 hours after a shooting in a mall, CNN was doing a live shot criticizing police in a different shooting, all while the police in Indianapolis were talking about how a mass shooting was stopped.
It shows what the political class in America thinks about. They don’t really want to stop mass shootings. They want an excuse to ban guns. Guns are the problem, they say, not the people who use them.
How do we know this? From the Brady Project that wants to ban most guns, their executive director says: “Here’s what we are not going to do: continue to uplift the NRA myth of good guy with a gun. Let me be clear: If more guns made us safer, America would be the safest country in the world. We need sensible gun laws, not vigilante safety.”
In other words, the guy who potentially saved hundreds of lives, by the police’s account, is a hero, but to the political class in America he’s a vigilante. He’s worthy of scorn.
This may not really be about saving lives as much as it is about the political argument of taking away guns and anything that challenges that narrative. Is it not news because it’s not politically helpful?
Think about the past mass shootings: Buffalo and Uvalde, President Joe Biden showed up. Highland Park, Vice President Harris showed up. Mr. Biden won’t go to the mall in Indianapolis. He won’t give a speech about Dicken and he certainly won’t present him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
I don’t even have to ask the question. You know it’s not going to happen.