WASHINGTON: Few mass shootings in the US end like the deadly attack on an Oregon elementary school: with an armed civilian opening fire on the gunman.
President Donald Trump joined others Friday in praising a father of two girls who confronted a teenage gunman during the attack at Silver Rail Elementary School, which killed three students and a teacher. Kenda Freeman said her son, Kaylub Giamanco, intervened by firing his own weapon after the shooting began at his daughters’ school in the town of Bend.
“It’s a terrible thing, but thank goodness for a man that had a gun and knew how to use it,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter who had a .40-caliber pistol legally stored in his vehicle, entered the school, heard shots and fired his gun after seeing a teacher fighting with the shooter, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said.
Cases like the Oregon intervention remain rare, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University.
The ALERRT center tracked what it calls “active attack” incidents where the perpetrator used firearms, blades or vehicles from 2000 to 2025.
Out of 634 cases studied, 374 ended before police arrived. Among those, 29 ended when armed civilians shot the attacker. In another 31 incidents, civilians subdued the attacker by some other method, such as wrestling them to the ground or removing the weapon.
“They recognize they may be the only way to stop it before law enforcement arrives,” said James Keith, a spokesperson for the center.
The heroic “good guy with a gun” who can stop an attack even before law enforcement can arrive has long been a rallying cry by gun rights advocates, arguing that armed citizens can act as a first line of self-defense and public protection. In some cases, the person who intervenes has had law enforcement or military training. Other times they are just people who reacted in a moment of chaos.
In some states, lawmakers have sought to put armed citizens in position to head off an attack as soon as possible in some public spaces.
Texas created a school marshal program in 2013 to allow trained teachers and staff to carry concealed firearms on campus. It expanded safety programs and requirements for armed security and personnel at schools after mass shootings at a high school near Houston in 2018, and at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in 2022.
Texas has some of the least restrictive gun control laws in the country, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The group rates Oregon among the strongest.
Some prominent examples of armed citizens who confronted gunmen to help stop mass shootings:
Twin Falls, Idaho, In-N-Out
A gunman killed three people and wounded seven more at an In-N-Out Burger on Aug. 3. Law enforcement authorities said the gunman may have killed more if not for an off-duty officer who was a customer at the restaurant, and an armed civilian who exchanged fire with the gunman.
Jordan Salinas said he didn’t hesitate to grab his gun and confront the gunman when he saw people fleeing the restaurant and heard gunfire. Under return fire, the gunman retreated and ultimately killed himself.
“He did not like it when bullets started flying both ways,” Salinas told the Idaho Statesman. “There’s a task that needs to be done, and we’re the ones who need to do it.”
White Settlement, Texas, church shooting
In December 2019, a man wearing a disguise and a trench coat pulled out a shotgun and killed two people during a Sunday service at West Freeway Church of Christ before he was killed by Jack Wilson, a 71-year-old firearms instructor who had also been a reserve sheriff’s deputy.
Wilson stayed calm as worshippers scrambled for cover.
“The only clear shot I had was his head because I still had people in the pews that were not all the way down as low as they could. That was my one shot,” Wilson said in 2019.
Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting
A gunman killed 26 people at a small-town church in 2017. Stephen Willeford, a former National Rifle Association instructor who lived across the street, grabbed his rifle and ran in his bare feet to open fire at the attacker, wounding him.
The gunman fled and Willeford flagged down a passing driver. The two men chased after the gunman, who eventually killed himself.
“I kept hearing the shots: pop, pop, pop” when the gunfire started at the church, Willeford said in 2017. “And I knew every one of those shots represented someone, that it was aimed at someone.”