By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The tragedy of the deaths and wounding of students and faculty of Umpqua Community College was without doubt a terrible event. We first and foremost must center our prayers and attention towards the victims and their families who have endured suffering and pain that we hope to never experience ourselves.
But if anything can be praised it is the police, emergency crews, and community members who took upon the risks and the responsibility to protect the victims and provide at least a measure of comfort to the survivors and those who did not make it. One person in particular truly caught my attention and I am sure everyone else as well. He is Chris Mintz, who undoubtedly saved several lives but as a result became one of the shooting victims himself.
His actions are truly heroic as you may certainly agree.
Chris Mintz was attending class at Umpqua Community College when he heard shots ring out in an adjacent room. Instead of running for safety, the ten year military veteran went toward the scene, directing people away from the danger. He found and walked toward the shooter, trying to prevent him from entering another classroom by blocking the doorway. He attempted to calm the shooter by talking to him and trying to buy time and life for the other students. Mintz certainly knew the great risk of facing this armed attacker alone and it did not go well for him.
Chris was hit multiple times from gunfire and went down. As the gunman walked toward him, Chris told his assailant that today was his son’s birthday. Showing no mercy his assailant shot him again.
In all Chris was shot seven times trying to protect others. Authorities credit Chris with delaying the shooter and in doing so likely saved numerous lives. Though exact details of the events are still in flux with reporting information, it is clear Chris Mintz’ actions were heroic and lifesaving.
Police arrived six minutes after the active shooter dispatch went out. Every second in distraction of the shooter helped law enforcement arrive and be able to more quickly confront the gunman, who then committed suicide.
A hospital spokesperson stated that Chris suffered hits to his hands, arms, back, stomach and both legs were broken. Despite this he is expected to recover but he will need extensive rehabilitation.
I cannot stress how brave his actions were and how inspiring his story can be for many.
His cousin sponsored a GoFundMe petition to help defray the costs of his medical bills. Social media took hold and contributions from seventeen thousand donors rapidly poured in. Initially ten thousand dollars was requested in the fund drive, but in the first twenty two hours over half a million dollars poured in from grateful citizens. It is certainly enlightening.
I have to stress that Chris Metz was not the only victim and that others suffered as much or worse as lives were tragically lost. Other victims now have similar pages started but have not yet garnered such large donations. Those also deserve contributions as well. Since it is only the beginning of such things I will at a later time attempt to compile a list of other victims’ pages or sources where funds may be directed in their direction.
UPDATE:Officials announced the shooter committed suicide during the shout-out with police.
By Darren Smith
Sources:
CNN
Chris Mintz GoFundMe Page
Northwest Cable News
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
To Comrade Steven Colbert and the rest of you nuts,
the American Founders kept and bore arms to conduct violent revolution against the British Empire.
The Revolutionaries considered that the government had become tyrannical and oppressive.
They were ready to quickly form a militia with arms sufficient to oppose the British Army because they kept
and bore arms.
2014 – Deaths due to terrorism = 18
1970 – 2014 – Deaths due to terrorism = 3,521
2015 (to date) – Deaths related to gun violence = 9,940
And America yawns while it throws a trillion dollars fomenting terrorism abroad…
… Even committing acts of war crimes including bombing hospitals and use of torture.
How well your tax dollars are spent depends on who you elect to spend it…
Petticoats…
I hear waistcoats will be coming back into fashion
2nd Amendment –
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and
bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
__________
For those of you in Rio Linda,
It is necessary for the people to quickly form an effective militia to provide security for a free State.
The people must keep and bear arms to be ready as “Minutemen.”
The right to keep and bear arms to be ready at all times shall not be infringed.
__________
Attempts to nullify the 2nd Amendment are acts of subversion and treason.
__________
The people have the right to keep and bear cars.
They may need to drive to their militia staging areas.
35,000 highway deaths last year. Oops.
__________
The people don’t have the right to keep and bear babies.
Women have a right to work 50 hrs. a week instead because Gloria Steinem, the 19th Amendment and
Planned Parenthood order them to.
No births. No nurturing. Just careers.
How’s that national “death spiral” from a declining birthrate?
Elspeth, perhaps you should watch the video above your comment.
It’s a complex issue. I sympathise with the father of the shooter. I am from Australia and the majority of the population does not think about acquiring a gun. Most of us wouldn’t want it any other way. You get use to the idea that guns are not a part of the culture in general. Once they are part of the culture they are damn hard to get rid of . It’s a bit of a losing cause trying to get rid of them in the US. I also get the fact that a big part of it for US citizens is that guns are a protection against state tyranny. And with a president like Obama, I think I would probably want a gun. For Obama there has to be another motivation besides trying to cleanse society from the scourge of guns. Although, someone please explain why you need a semi-automatic for general use. That one I do not get!!
We have another Brit lecturing us on guns. The guy hasn’t seen his son in years and is blaming the US. Guns are illegal in his homeland, he should have returned there w/ his son years ago.
David, do you seriously think that the 2nd Amendment lovers would EVER give up their guns, even if abortion were to be outlawed as an exchange for it? Never, not on your life, would not happen. The guns will win over the fetuses every time with those who truly feel their guns may be taken away.
I’ll just copy and paste this here…
http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2615/7549/original.jpg
Max-1, it sounds like you want to make a trade. How about all the women stop murdering their unborn babies and all us men will give our guns to the government. Does that sound like a good trade to you? Considering the millions of lives that would definitely be saved by this trade, I’m in. How about you?
I read the comment that there is no definition of Arms in the 2nd Amendment.
What little improvements we have made to the governance of society over millenniums, has sadly necessitated weapons. A knife for the Magna Carta, guns for our Bill of Rights and a civil war for slavery. Is that simple enough for you.
When a Constitutional right can be abrogated simply by nine Judges refusing to hear an appellate case, how can I trust our liberties to be protected in any other way. We should surrender our guns and hope government corruption and tyranny miraculously vanish. Many societies that have given up their arms have suffered with increased human rights violations and horrible atrocities. Hopefully I do not really need to name the countries where this has happened in the twentieth century alone.
There are those that appear to know it all and think they can socially engineer society. You are almost always wrong. If you were right, we wouldn’t have 1/3 of our population living at or near the poverty line and an military industrial complex so massive that it costs $600,400,000,000 annually.
Logically, it appears that it is the governments that should be banned for they have killed far more people than their civilian Citizens have. That’s right, socialist philosophy does not recognize reality and instead wants to redefine what I our founding fathers meant by Arms so it will meet their agenda. To hell with human rights and the poor who are used as disposables in they alleged democratic empire building.
I’m glad you can find readings that provide you solace and convince the choir.
As for Gary Wills, when I see his name as author, I am immediately able to escape reading further, given that he is reliably wrong. Few authors are that consistent.
For those interested in some scholarly history on the second amendment, I would recommend reading “To Keep and Bear Arms” by Gary Wills. I know it will put some second amendment worshipers into a state of frenzy, but it’s a good read:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/sep/21/to-keep-and-bear-arms/
philly T Thanks for that excellent article which disposes of the nuts who think that the 2nd Amendment means that it exists to overthrow the very government it has established. Washington himself used the army to crush the Whiskey Rebellion, and the 2nd amendment did not act to stop that action against a part of the citizenry which felt they had the right to overrule Congress. That should have put an end to the debate. I have yet to see any gun rights nuts refer to that use of military force and I have yet to see them denounce that. Does the right to keep and bear arms allow for the rebellion?
I think that fact that Henry denounced the 2nd Amendment says it all. As Wills pointed out, Henry hated the 2nd Amendment since he thought, rightly so, that it would diminish opposition to the ratification of the Constitution, something he hated. So our current gun rights nuts are in the old tradition of Henry and the anti-Federalists. Some things never change, except for the hypocrisy of using bad legal reasoning to try and destroy the Constitution by other means.
The individual right to keep arms as Wills pointed out can be found in common sense, tradition, and common law, and it does not have to rest on the dubious claim of the 2nd amendment. Otherwise, one would think that individual ownership of a 105 howitzer is supported by it, along with machine guns, and fighter bomber jets fully armed. I would love that to be the case since I am a pilot, and I was denied my right to fly for the military because I am too tall. I should have flied a discrimination lawsuit back in the 60s I guess.
The numerous dictatorships that have arisen have not succeeded or failed because of anti-gun laws. Weimar Germany allowed many guns, and once the Nazis came to power, they still allowed for the right kind of people to be armed. Then one can see that arms played NO part in the overthrow of the Eastern European dictatorships either. The lack of arms on the part of the great mass of the people did not save those regimes. The Hungarian revolution of 1956 would have been crushed in any case since they were vastly outgunned by the Red Army and individual arms made no difference. So the fact is that arms are not needed to overthrow a government that is tyrannical as we saw in eastern Europe. The real hatred the guns nuts have is that they are losing the political struggle, and wish to have recourse to arms to force the majority of US to yield to their view of a society. Democracy or representative government be damned.
Thanks for posting about the heroic actions of Chris Mintz. I hope folks will take a minute as I did, to contribute to his fund.
Thanks also to Annie for pointing out the FACT that there was at least one trained, experienced, armed man on campus, veteran John Parker, who had the wisdom and experience to stay and protect the group he was with. There are no reports of Mr. Parker having been arrested for carrying a concealed weapon on campus.
The NRA wants us all to give up on the idea that we could aspire to be like Australia, where people gave up their guns and they are doing just fine. Don’t give up hope. Americans will get tired of the slaughter eventually.
“That is the story here, not right, left BS”
Yes, because there is only one way to interpret a story, and that, oddly enough, is your way.
Pro tip: don’t read poetry, the Bible, novels, editorials, financial reports, or anything where you might have to interpret or read between the lines.
TV shows from the 70s, IKEA instructions, calculus books, and the ingredients on cereal boxes are probably safe.
Hey dumb asses, this is about Mr. Mintz.
Life is nothing more than a series of choices.
Here’s the thing, Mintz did not choose to do what he did, he would have had to choose otherwise to to acted as he did. That is the story here, not right, left BS
If you guys were in my foxhole I would shoot you so your gun would not run away.
Blah, Blah, Blah all the time.
Yep, can’t take it anymore.
Only 39% of meteorologists believe in Global Warming. Even the cult leader and John Kerry only lie w/ the standard 97% which is fiction. I guess it’s who can lie the biggest w/ the “99%”. we just read here. You only got 1% to go. Hell, go w/ 100% and end the lying game. But, don’t go to 102%, even some of the lemmings might get suspicious.