(ZeroHedge)—Three children and one adult are dead following an active shooter situation at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon on Thursday afternoon. The suspected active shooter is also dead after an armed civilian chased the shooter into the school and killed him.
The shooter was reportedly a 16-year-old boy, though no details on identity or motive have been releases yet. He was armed with a long gun; an anonymous law enforcement source told the Associated Press it was a pump-action shotgun purchased legally by his mother.
Police responded to the school at about 12:59 p.m. after receiving a report that an unknown man had shot into a car. Deschutes County 911 dispatchers received multiple calls reporting that someone had entered the school and started shooting. By the time they arrived, the assailant was already dead.
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Unfortunately, three children (ages 5, 8, and 11) and one teacher were killed before the shooter was stopped. A 7-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher were also critically injured. Both were transported to St. Charles Medical Center in Bend.
Victim names have not been officially released.
While the identity of the shooter is still under wraps, commenters are already suggesting that the attack might be yet another case of a transgender lunatic on a rampage. It should be noted that the state of Oregon has one of the highest rates of teens and children undergoing transgender treatments in the US.
If this is the case, then the incident may be buried by the establishment media. It might also be sent down the memory hole because of the successful intervention of an armed citizen. The narrative for decades within the media was that armed civilians rarely if ever stop violent crimes.
The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) has repeatedly examined the definitions used by the FBI to categorize civilian interventions in violent crimes, and they found significantly higher numbers of such cases than the FBI had reported. In other words, the FBI was suppressing the actual data on civilians saving the day, often with their own firearms.
One recent CPRC count identified 615 active shooter incidents from 2014–2025 and concluded armed citizens stopped 225 of them (about 36.6%). When limited to locations where civilians are legally allowed to carry (i.e., excluding gun-free zones), the rate rises to roughly 52–53% (and higher in some recent single-year examples).
CPRC attributes the gap to the FBI missing or overlooking numerous incidents and occasionally misclassifying civilian interventions (for example, listing private armed citizens or volunteer church security as professional security guards). They argue their expanded list still uses the FBI’s core definition and that media coverage tends to under-emphasize successful civilian interventions.
While gun control advocates often cite mass shootings as a reason for banning of weapons (or outright confiscation), these incidents account for only 2% of all gun deaths in the US on average. The majority (around 60%) are suicides, and 35% are homicides.
Around 20% of US counties account for 90% of all homicides in the country. Of these counties, the vast majority are controlled by Democrats. Among the worst 1% of US counties (about 31 counties, holding ~20% of the population and ~41% of murders in recent data), the CPRC lists political leanings as 21 Democratic strongholds, 6 leaning Democratic, and 4 swing or Republican-leaning.
In other words, the counties with the most aggressive gun control advocates and laws in the US are also the places with the most gun violence. Perhaps it’s because law abiding citizens in these places are far less likely to carry, which emboldens criminals to commit more violence.
