Walmart Shooting Stopped by Armed Citizen in Oklahoma, days after Constitutional Carry Restored

Image from ABC, text and green added by Dean Weingarten




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On Monday, 18 November, 2019, at about 9 a.m., a man, confirmed as Yayo Varela, Jr. killed two people in the Walmat Parking lot in Duncan, Oklahoma.

A witness at the Walmart double murder in Duncan, confirms the murderer was stopped by an armed citizen.  The murderer killed a man and a woman in a parked red sedan in the parking lot. The woman is reported to have worked in the Walmart in question.

A witness told ABC news:   "He told him to stop, then after that, he did stop, and then the gunman turned the weapon on himself."

The Daily Mail has reported the woman was the estranged wife of the murderer. From the dailymail.co.uk:

A man shot and killed his estranged wife and her new boyfriend in a Walmart parking lot in Oklahoma before turning the gun on himself when an armed citizen intervened.

According to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, a man wearing all black opened fire outside the supercenter in Duncan, which is located at 3393 North 81 Highway. Duncan is about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City.

Officers from the Duncan Police Department said the wife and her boyfriend were found dead inside their car. 

So far, it is impossible to know if this was the start of a mass public killing. Some mass killings have included domestic killings. Both domestic killings and mass public killings are often stopped with armed intervention, often by privately armed individuals. It is common for both domestic and mass killers to commit suicide when confronted with armed force.

The windshield of the car shows nine bullet holes, three on the driver's side, six on the passenger's side.

The FBI, which only recently started tracking intervention by armed citizens,  states that concealed handgun permit holders stop 8% of active shooters. The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) reports the FBI only catches one half of the incidents.

In the United States, people with carry permits are now over 18.66 million. That is over 7 percent of adults in the United States. The number of people who can legally carry handguns is much larger, because sixteen states now have Constitutional Carry.

Oklahoma restored Constitutional Carry in their state 17 days before the Walmart killing.

Constitutional Carry is the right to carry loaded handguns in most public places. It is the state of the law which existed when the Constitution was written and when the Bill of Rights was ratified. It remained the state of the law for forty years until the original writers of the Constitution were dead. The last of them, Jame Madison, died in 1836. 

Vermont always had Constitutional Carry.

15 States have passed some version of Constitutional Carry since 2003.

• 2003, Alaska restored Constitutional Carry to the exercise of Second Amendment rights.
• 2010, Arizona restored Constitutional Carry.
• 2011, Wyoming restored Constitutional Carry.
• 2013, Arkansas passed Act 746 into law. It is effectively Constitutional Carry. Some county prosecutors have threatened prosecution. None has occurred.
• 2015, Kansas, and Maine became Constitutional Carry club members.
• 2016, Idaho, Missouri, West Virginia, and Mississippi became Constitutional Carry states.
• 2017, New Hampshire, and North Dakota restored Constitutional Carry.
• 2019, South Dakota and Oklahoma, and Kentucky have restored Constitutional Carry.

No increases in murder have been noted as Constitutional Carry has been implemented in the 15 states.

Constitutional carry has been gaining in popularity. Several states are likely to restore Constitutional carry in the next few years. Those include Montana, Indiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Utah, and Iowa.

©2019 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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