Saving Lives at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon

On October 15, I published a post arguing that true “sensitive places” where guns are banned must have armed protection.  The same day, a murderer broke into a “gun-free-zone” school in Oregan and began shooting children and teachers.  A dad of two girls at the school just happened to be driving by and grabbed his pistol, rushed into the school, and “neutralized” the killer with several shots.  He was a concealed pistol licensee.

Silver Rail Elementary School is a public school in the Bend-La Pine Schools District with roughly 400 students, kindergarten through fifth grade, and approximately 40 staff members.  It is located in Bend, Oregon.  On October 15, a 16-year-old former special-needs student threw a shotgun over a fence outside the school and then scaled the fence.  A passerby verbally confronted the teenager, who fired three shots at his truck.  The driver called 911 at 12:59 p.m.

Kaylub Giamanco, a concealed pistol licensee, was also passing by when he saw the intruder shoot at the truck and then shoot the glass panes on two double doors to get inside the school.  He reached for his .40-caliber pistol and rushed in through the same door.  But the killer had already shot and killed three boys and a teacher and wounded another boy and a teacher.  Another teacher threw a phone at the suspect, tackled him, and attempted to disarm him.  As they struggled, Giamanco entered the room and shot the teen several times, killing him.

The killer fired as many as 15 rounds from a Maverick 88 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, which his mother had legally purchased.  He had 44 more shotshells on his person and in his backpack.  His devastation would have been far worse had not Giamanco intervened.

Besides a round in the chamber, the Maverick 88 shotgun holds either five or seven rounds in the magazine, depending on the model.  Manufactured by Mossberg, the shotgun is typically used for protection and for hunting.  It would not be an “assault weapon” under any of the laws that ban them, which exempt pump-action firearms.

Police arrived on the scene at 1:02 p.m. after being advised that the suspect had already been shot by a community member who had pursued the gunman.  An armed citizen had ended the tragedy minutes before police could arrive.  For the above, see ABC news account here.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek reacted to the event as follows: “To the community member who heroically intervened to stop further loss of life: Your actions carry a heavy emotional burden, and I just want you to know that my thoughts are with you as well.”

Just last year, Governor Kotek signed S.B. 243, the Community Safety Firearms Act, which her press release said “will help prevent mass shooting events in Oregon.”  “This matters to every parent dropping their kid off at school,” in her words.

As revised by S.B. 243, Oregon law makes it a felony to possess a firearm in a public building, but if the building is a school, it is an affirmative defense that the person has a concealed handgun license, in which case it is a misdemeanor.  ORS 166.370(1), (3)(g).  However, a district school board “may adopt a policy providing that the affirmative defense … concerning persons licensed to carry a concealed handgun … does not apply to the possession of firearms on the grounds of the schools controlled by the board.”  ORS 166.377(1).  A board that adopts the policy must “Post a clearly visible sign, at all normal points of entry to the school grounds subject to the policy….”  Id.

The only effect of this policy is to criminalize a concealed handgun licensee from possession of a handgun at a school.  It was already an offense for a member of the general public to possess a firearm at a school.  Given that murder was already illegal, one would not expect a person intent on homicide to be dissuaded by a sign.

Only 25 of the 197 school districts in Oregon have adopted this policy, one of them being the Bend-La Pine School District.  That policy prohibits school staff members, such as the teacher who threw her phone at the attacker, from being armed even if they are concealed pistol licensees.

It also means that the brave community member who entered the school and ended the carnage would have violated the law, but for a “choice-of-evils” justification defense.  It was an emergency measure to avoid an imminent injury of such gravity that the desirability and urgency of avoiding the injury outweighed the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to be prevented by the statute defining the offense (ORS 161.200).  Likewise, his use of deadly force was justified as the defense of third persons from what he reasonably believed to be the use of unlawful physical force (ORS 161.209).  Those two provisions were held to warrant an adequate jury instruction in State v. Taylor (Ore. App. 1993), which was a self-defense case.

The lessons to be learned here are timeless.  Thomas Jefferson and other of our Founders recognized the wisdom of Cesare Beccaria, who wrote in On Crimes and Punishments (1764):

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.  Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity … will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.