Lone Gun Shop in Thousands Oaks Receives Unbelievable Response After Shooting, Owner Stunned
After every tragic crime, the left reliably plays the only tune they seem to know: Guns are to blame.
Yet more and more, people aren’t accepting that narrative. In the city of Thousand Oaks, California — the location of a recent mass shooting — many residents aren’t blaming firearms for crime. Instead, they’re buying one themselves.
On Wednesday, a shocking incident rocked Thousand Oaks and the nation. A 29-year-old man walked into a popular bar and opened fire with a handgun, leaving 12 people, including a sheriff’s deputy, dead.
California has some of the strictest gun laws in America, and the bar was already a “gun-free zone.” None of this, of course, stopped the madman, and it seems that even on the west coast people are embracing self defense over gun control.
According to USA Today, VC Defense — the only gun store in Thousand Oaks — has seen an influx of people who want to purchase firearms in the wake of the mass shooting.
“(Brandon) Simone, 35, is a single father who previously vowed never to have a gun in the same home as his kid,” explained USA Today about one of those new customers. “But while his teenage son Ethan skateboarded outside, he asked the shop’s owner what he needed to do to buy a 9-millimeter pistol.”
The national newspaper also profiled a young woman named Molly, who expressed the same thing. The tragic shooting motivated her to understand guns, not reject them.
“For John Von Colln, VC Defense’s proprietor, the duo were among an unusually steady stream of customers that day,” USA Today explained. “Many of them expressed the same sentiment: they had come to the gun store because no place feels safe anymore, and they felt ill-equipped to confront the next mass shooter or armed home invader.”
A USA Today reporter named Gus Garcia-Roberts stayed inside VC Defense for several hours, noting the kinds of people who came in. What he saw won’t surprise most conservatives, but it does go against the frequent narrative. Gun owners don’t fit the liberal redneck stereotype.
“Some were small business-owners suddenly feeling vulnerable. Many were first-time buyers suddenly seeking weapons for self-defense,” stated the national newspaper.
“A banker wearing business casual, designer glasses and a gold Rolex inquired about concealing a sidearm under a tucked-in dress shirt,” it continued.
A firearms trainer and former corrections officer named Mike Rowan confirmed that despite the image projected by the media, gun owners come in all types.
“Rowan described a discreet, and distinctly Californian, clientele,” wrote Garcia-Roberts. “They pull up to his range in Priuses and Teslas and never tell their friends they own a gun.”
“I get a lot of closet liberals, people who normally would never want anything to do with a firearm, and I train them and they secretly own firearms,” Rowan said.
As the reporter pointed out, VC Defense was busier than ever, and a lot of its new patrons kept bringing up the same topic: How California’s laws failed to stop the bar attack.
“As new customers cycled through the store, the constant chatter—besides general expressions of hatred for the shooter—was about the six unarmed, off-duty law enforcement officers who were reportedly at the bar during the shooting,” the reporter wrote. “Their lack of weapons was a presumed consequence of a California law barring firearms in bars.”
Every sane person is saddened and outraged when an incident like the Thousand Oaks shooting happens. But there are two ways to respond: Pretend that more laws in an already law-filled state will stop the next crime, or face reality and become responsible and prepared to face threats.
It’s refreshing that more people are deciding on the latter. Violent crime will never be eradicated, but it can be opposed and stopped when it happens.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
