Those of us who carry handguns on a daily basis need to remember that, no matter what our training, getting involved in a gunfight involves risk and does not always end well.  This story is taken from my book, Surviving a Mass Killer Rampage: When Seconds Count, Police Are Still Minutes Away, and is told in more detail in Thank God I Had a Gun.

Having a gun is not always a guarantee of success.  On February 24, 2005, Mark Wilson was in his apartment overlooking the courthouse square in Tyler, Texas.  Wilson, 52, was a Navy veteran and former owner of a shooting range who had a concealed handgun license.  He watched as a forty-three-year-old Mexican legal immigrant ambushed his recently divorced wife and twenty-one-year-old son as they were about to ascend the courthouse steps.  The gunman was shooting a MAK-90, a Chinese-made semi-automatic AK-47-style rifle and he was wearing body armor.  He hit and killed his former wife and wounded his son, then he started shooting at law-enforcement officers coming out of the courthouse, wounding one badly.

Mark Wilson when he owned On Target indoor shooting ranger in Tyler, Texas.
(Photo courtesy of Lock & Load Indoor Shooting Range.)

Wilson grabbed his Colt .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol and headed down stairs.  The lightweight Tactical Officer’s Model contained a magazine holding eight Hydra-Shok hollow-point rounds plus one in the chamber for a total of nine.

A witness said he saw Mark Wilson wearing a red shirt taking cover behind the gunman’s pickup.  As he watched, Wilson took aim at the gunman who had his back to him while still loosing off rounds in the direction of the courthouse.  The killer was backing up towards the open driver’s side door but was still close to the tailgate.  Wilson aimed over the truck bed using a two-hand hold.  He fired several fast shots at the gunman knocking him down.  Wilson turned away and started to walk towards the sidewalk.  He could not see the shooter because he was on the other side of the truck.  Wilson was probably trying to go around the front of the pickup where he could check on the gunman while using the engine block as cover.

Unaware of the gunman’s body armor, Wilson may well have thought he had killed the gunman or badly wounded him.  But as he turned away, the witness watched in horror as the killer scrambled up and fired at Wilson hitting him in the back on the right side.  Wilson fell face down alongside the pickup with his head against the curb.  The gunman stepped around the back of the pickup and fired another shot hitting Wilson in the back of the head, killing him.

The gunman was later killed by police.  Mark Wilson was called a hero and a plaque was erected to him on the courthouse square where he fell.  He was as much a hero as any law-enforcement officer or soldier defending the country.  What he tried to do was what any warrior would have done.

But have we lost our warrior ethos?  Have we become a nation of cowards?  Have we become brainwashed by big government, big media, and big academia into believing that personal risk is unacceptable in a civilized society – that dignity and self-respect must bow to safety at all costs?  Jeffrey Snyder in his excellent 1993 article,  “A Nation of Cowards“, certainly thought so.

As he pointed out, if we do not fight crime on a personal level we are abdicating our personal responsibilities as citizens and condoning evil.  And yet for decades, we have been told by big city police departments to give the criminal what he wants.  Do not resist because you might get hurt.  We have allowed our schools to demonize firearms, which are the most effective weapons for personal defense.  With zero tolerance policies, we have brainwashed our kids that violence, even in self defense, is wrong.  We have been encouraged to rely on authority to protect us.

As we have learned from Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook, relying on law enforcement to save us hasn’t worked out too well.

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