Normally I'd say you'd no doubt heard about the spree killing in Twin Falls Idaho, over the weekend.
I suspect there's a reason for that. We'll come back to that.
First, the specifics - at least, as far as we know them at this point.
In a Sunday afternoon press conference, Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said Williams acted alone. Two other people — an off-duty state trooper and an armed citizen — "actively engaged" Williams "by returning gunfire towards him.".
Hicks said authorities believe the pair helped drive Williams from the scene "preventing further casualties."..Not many details have been released about the suspect. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Hicks said. The motivation behind the shooting remains under investigation.
So - an off-duty cop and a good guy with a gun, you say?
Apparently so:
🚨 JUST IN: This HERO is being praised nationwide after he got out to fire his gun at the active shooter in Twin Falls, Idaho, catching the criminal OFF GUARD and likely saving lives
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 2, 2026
FEARLESS PATRIOT.
That American deserves a medal! 👏🏻🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/XmWEVv6q3s
There are some who are trying to minimize what the armed citizen/s did by pointing out that Williams shot himself.
he suspect in a fatal shooting at a fast-food restaurant in Idaho died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said Sunday, crediting an off-duty officer and a citizen with firing shots that diverted him.
Investigators are confident that the gunman, identified as 24-year-old Chad Williams, acted alone during the shooting Saturday in Twin Falls, Police Chief Matthew Hicks said at a news conference.
In all, three people died and seven others were injured at the recently opened restaurant in the southern Idaho city of about 56,000 people. Authorities said Sunday that two of the injured were treated at a hospital and released, three were listed as stable, and two were in critical condition.
The view betrays ignorance of the subject; after Columbine, the Secret Service studied spree killers, and found that any kind of lethal-force resistance tends to knock them out of their state of near-reverie that so many of them have in common; with their plans derailed, they usually give up or, frequently, turn their guns on themselves.
It wouldn't have happened without the armed resistance.
🇺🇸 This is Jordan Salinas, the armed civilian who engaged a gunman in Idaho yesterday, forcing him to retreat and saving countless lives.
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 2, 2026
The shooter opened fire with an AR-style rifle at the In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls around 2:30 p.m.
3 people died, including the shooter. 7…
Now, if there's a place you can go to find instant experts on every subject, it's the Internet. And on few topics are there more instant experts than armed self-defense:
A civilian pulled out a gun and returned fire at a mass shooter outside an In-N-Out in Twin Falls, Idaho.
— Ezequiel Aguilar (@EzequielAguilar) August 2, 2026
I need you to think about that for a second.
What’s behind that shooter? Families. Kids. People hiding in cars. A missed shot doesn’t stop — it keeps going.
This isn’t a… pic.twitter.com/P7cygrt1IW
Ya think?
This is the sort of stuff that gets drilled into the head of everyone who takes any armed self-defense training. You are responsible for everything that every bullet you fire does; if you hit the bad guy, great. If you hit an innocent bystander, you've got a big problem on your hands.
Of course, there are people out there who just aren't on Team Good Guy:
This Jordan Salinas idiot is not a hero.
— Man of the Library 📚 (@ManOfTheLibrary) August 2, 2026
X is buggin. Use logic and stop following the herd for once. Jesus Christ we have an intelligence crisis in America. 🤦🏼 https://t.co/MKRst8Kca1
Right.
Clearly we'll have a better country if people leave spree killers to themselves.
My condolences to the victims. And a note - as John Lott showed, intervention by armed citizens ends an extremely disproportionate number of spree kiillings. Which is still a tragedy and an atrocity, but let's keep it in perspective.
