After School District bans licensed pistols, license holder saves children.
On October 15, I spoke about the idea that truly sensitive locations—places where gun restrictions are meant to be strict—must still have capable protections in place. That same day, a shooter broke into a school that was designated a gun-free zone in Oregon and opened fire on students and staff. A father of two girls who attended the school happened to be driving by, retrieved his handgun, rushed into the building, and terminated the threat with multiple shots. He held a concealed pistol license.
Silver Rail Elementary School is a public institution within the Bend-La Pine Schools District. It serves roughly 400 pupils from kindergarten through fifth grade and employs around 40 staff members. The campus sits in Bend, Oregon. On October 15, a 16-year-old former student with special-needs needs approached the property by tossing a shotgun over a perimeter fence and then climbing over it. A passerby confronted the teenager verbally, who then fired three shots at the passerby’s truck. The driver immediately phoned emergency services at 12:59 p.m.
Kaylub Giamanco, who also carries a concealed handgun license, happened to be nearby as the intruder began firing at the truck and then shattered the glass panels of two double doors to gain entry to the school. Giamanco reached for his .40-caliber pistol and rushed inside through the same doorway. By that point, the shooter had already shot and killed three boys and a teacher and wounded another boy and a teacher. In the midst of the chaos, another teacher hurled a phone at the assailant, tackled him, and tried to disarm him. As the two wrestled, Giamanco entered the room and fired several rounds at the teenager, killing him.
The assailant discharged up to 15 rounds from a Maverick 88 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, a firearm his mother had lawfully acquired. He was carrying an additional 44 shotshells on his person and in his backpack. Had Giamanco not acted, the scene could have been vastly more catastrophic.
In general terms, the Maverick 88 holds a capacity of five or seven shells in the magazine, depending on the particular model. It is manufactured by Mossberg and is commonly utilized for personal protection and hunting purposes. It would not be classified as an “assault weapon” under the laws that ban such firearms, since it is a pump-action design.
Law enforcement arrived at the scene at 1:02 p.m. after receiving notice that a member of the community had already shot the gunman. An armed citizen had effectively ended the attack mere minutes before police could reach the location. For further details, see the ABC News account linked here.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek issued a statement in response: “To the community member who heroically intervened to prevent further loss of life: Your actions carry a heavy emotional burden, and I want you to know that my thoughts are with you as well.”
In the previous year, Governor Kotek signed Senate Bill 243, known as the Community Safety Firearms Act, which her administration described as a measure that “will help prevent mass shooting events in Oregon.” She added that the issue concerns every parent dropping their child off at a school.
As amended by S.B. 243, Oregon law makes it a felony to possess a firearm in a public building, but when the building in question is a school, possessing a firearm can be justified as an affirmative defense for someone who holds a concealed handgun license; in such cases, the offense becomes 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 this policy must “Post a clearly visible sign, at all normal points of entry to the school grounds subject to the policy….” Id.
The practical effect of this policy is to criminalize possession of a handgun by a concealed-weapon license holder at a school. It was already unlawful for the general public to carry a firearm in a school setting. Considering that murder remains illegal, a determined would-be perpetrator would not be deterred by a sign alone.
Only 25 of Oregon’s 197 school districts have adopted this policy, including the Bend-La Pine School District. The policy also means that the courageous community member who intervened inside the school and ended the carnage would have been violating the law, had there not been a justification defense in place. It was an emergency measure designed to prevent an imminent, grave harm, such that the urgency of averting the harm outweighed the goal of avoiding the prohibited act (as described in ORS 161.200). Likewise, his use of deadly force was considered justified as defense of others from what he reasonably believed to be unlawful physical force (ORS 161.209). These two provisions have been interpreted to support an adequate jury instruction in State v. Taylor (Ore. App. 1993), a case centered on self-defense.
The timeless lessons from this incident are clear. Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers drew on the insights 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.
