I have a new hero today, and one whose recovery I will be following closely over the next few weeks.
It is this man, Chris Mintz, who in the midst of a shooting rampage at his local college, decided that nothing was going to stop him from taking down the shooter.
He lived this out, in true hero style, by continuing to pick himself up and attack the young man determined to create as much carnage and loss of life as he could, and got shot five times in the process.
Five.
Times.
Can you imagine having the tenacity of will it must have taken for this young man, this Chris Mintz, to put himself in the line of fire again and again in an attempt to stop the shooter from killing more people?
It sobers me.
It awes me.
It shows you with crystal clarity the character of this young man.
We don’t know much yet about the shooter, but we do know enough to horrify us. We know this was premeditated. We know that he sought out people who identified themselves as believers in Christ. We know he probably had previous extensive contact with many of those people at the college, and used that to his advantage.
We also know he was twisted, hateful, and blood-thirsty
What a contrast to the hero of this story, who is the father to a six year old boy, who was willing to give his life to save the lives of many others, and who was just going about his day when all hell broke loose.
We need more heroes like Chris Mintz. We need more people willing to stand up and do whatever it takes, in the worst situations, to stop things like this from happening.
Because, to be honest (and you all knew I was going to go here), controlling guns is not the answer to the solution. To control guns is to take guns from the people who use them in good faith, who train themselves, and who, under our constitutional law, should keep them. No criminal is going to willingly obey the law, that is exactly why they are called criminals. They choose not to.
And, this was a gun free zone. It was why Chris Mintz did not have a gun. It is why the ten people who are dead, and the twenty people who are injured did not have a gun.
They were obeying the law.
And they paid for it with their lives.
I just wanted to honor a young hero who should be honored, and put his name more in the eyes and hearts of people than the evil-hearted person who did this for his five minutes of glory.
He has taken enough from others.
And I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
 Edmund Burke”
Blessings to you and yours,
~Heather <3
I agree with you 100%. What is so sad is the only place you hear about him is on Facebook. He didn’t make our news at all.
I completely agree with you. Some news outlets would not report that the shooter was seeking out people who identified themselves as Christians. They only reported that he asked what their religion was before he shot them. Thank God this young man was there and thank God he survived.
for every (need to come up with a word for evil, hatefilled, degenerate, monster) there are many heroes. There are also many cowards that are not going to do anything but hide or defend the shooters actions. I completely agree with your summation of this. If only media lauded heroes over villians.