Editorial illustration
The stories we don’t tell often say as much as the ones we do. When a madman opened fire at an In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho this weekend, killing two innocent people and wounding seven others, the mainstream narrative could have followed the usual script—another mass shooting, another round of calls for gun control, another opportunity to paint law-abiding gun owners as the problem. But reality, as it often does, refused to cooperate with the agenda.
Police have identified the shooter as 24-year-old Chad Williams, who authorities say acted alone in the Saturday attack. After murdering an employee and a customer, Williams turned his weapon on himself, dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Three people lost their lives in total, with seven more injured—two remain in critical condition as of this writing.
Here’s what the headlines won’t emphasize: the massacre was stopped by an off-duty state trooper and an armed citizen who returned fire. Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks didn’t mince words during Sunday’s press conference, explicitly commending “the actions of the off-duty officer and the citizen and their heroic action to stop this incident.” Their return fire, Hicks stated, “helped drive the suspect away from the scene, preventing further casualties.”
Let that sink in. While politicians in Washington debate restricting magazine capacities and banning cosmetic features on firearms, ordinary Americans—one in law enforcement, one simply exercising his Second Amendment rights—were the difference between a tragedy and an outright massacre. The FBI has committed its “full weight of resources” to the investigation, with Salt Lake City Special Agent in Charge Robert Boles deploying “every investigative and intelligence tool at our disposal.” But no amount of federal resources can replace what those two armed individuals did in the moment.
Chief Hicks described the incident as one of the most “chaotic” situations his department has faced—a scenario unlike anything many officers experience in their entire careers. Yet in that chaos, when evil showed its face, good men were ready. Isn’t that the story worth telling? The In-N-Out president said his “heart is broken” after the attack, and rightly so. But perhaps there’s some comfort knowing that when darkness descended on Twin Falls, the light didn’t wait for permission to push back.
The investigation continues, with multiple agencies now involved. But the lesson is already clear: the best response to a bad guy with a gun remains a good guy with a gun. No legislation pending in Congress would have stopped Chad Williams. But an armed citizen and an off-duty trooper did.
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