I used to be an Army pilot, and I maintain a small plane today. In early August of 2019, one of my adult kids and I flew to Dayton, Ohio, to spend the weekend walking around the Air Force museum. Theirs is likely the greatest collection of vintage warplanes in the world. As quality time with the family goes, it was epic.
In the evening we went into Dayton for dinner and a movie. These were the days before Covid, so we could just wander about taking in the sights without worrying about contracting some ghastly disease. Ohio enjoys concealed carry reciprocity with my home state so I packed a nice carry gun, in this case a Springfield Armory Hellcat charged with fourteen SIG SAUER 147-grain V-Crown 9mm hollowpoints. The trip was great, and we made it home without incident.
One Week Later…
One week after we had been strolling around the Oregon Historic District in Dayton, Connor Betts was hanging out in a nearby bar with his 22-year-old sister Megan. He had been texting a former girlfriend earlier in the evening and seemed to her to be fairly normal. After a couple of hours in the club, Betts disappeared. He returned in short order wearing body armor and some kind of creepy mask while carrying an AR15 pistol.
For reasons that are not well understood, Betts then opened fire on the revelers in the street outside Ned Peppers Bar. In thirty seconds he fired forty-one rounds. In that half-minute, he killed nine people and injured another seventeen. One of the dead was his sister Megan. One of the severely wounded was his best friend Chace.
At the first sounds of gunfire, the partiers in the streets fled indoors through any handy doorway. People streamed into establishments around the neighborhood trying to avoid Betts and escape his rampage. Betts made a beeline for Ned Peppers, now packed with terrified people.
There were several Dayton police officers nearby when Betts opened fire. They responded immediately, running to the sounds of battle. Miraculously, the cops engaged Betts a mere 32 seconds after he fired his first shots. An autopsy determined that Betts had been hit by thirty rounds fired by police. He collapsed at the threshold of Ned Peppers and died at the scene.
The Gun
Much hay has been made over the details of Connor Betts’ firearm. A no-frills Anderson Arms AR15 pistol with an 11.5-inch barrel and unremarkable round forearm, the gun featured a flat top upper and a red dot sight. Betts fed his gun via an imported 100-round drum magazine. Betts’ AR also included a Shockwave Pistol Stabilizing Brace (PSB).
Betts had no criminal record and bought the gun legally from a supplier in Texas. The weapon transferred to him via a local FFL. When Betts was gunned down by the Dayton cops he dropped a thirty-round magazine onto the ground.
PSB’s are curious things. Initially developed by Alex Boscoe of SB tactical to aid disabled shooters in running heavy handguns one-handed, these accessories have spawned an entirely new genre of firearms. By including a PSB on an otherwise unremarkable AR or AK pistol, these short-barreled weapons become easier to operate despite their stubby barrels. These weapons also transfer like regular handguns rather than heavily regulated short-barreled rifles. PSBs have subsequently been fitted to shotguns and pistol-caliber weapons like the CZ Scorpion EVO and SIG MPX as well. There are estimated to be in excess of four million brace-equipped handguns in circulation in America. At the time of this writing, Connor Betts’ shooting was the only example I could find of a PSB having been used in a crime.
One subsequent headline screamed, “Dayton Shooter Used Gun That May Have Exploited an ATF Loophole.” The presupposition on the part of the less durable members of society that a guy who would willingly undertake mass murder might somehow inexplicably be motivated to adhere to gun laws seems utterly bewildering to me. However, in the aftermath of the Dayton shooting the loudest voices on the Left were screaming not about the psychopath Connor Betts but rather for enhanced restrictions on firearms. There was relatively little furor over what might have been practically done to stop the deranged shooter himself.
The Shooter
Connor Betts never was quite right. A bully in high school, Betts was bipolar and carried a diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He also admitted to hearing voices, though apparently he had not been formally diagnosed with schizophrenia at the time of his crime.
Betts took rejection poorly. While at Bellbrook High School he kept a list of girls who had spurned him and anyone else he perceived to have slighted him in some way. He told friends he intended to rape the girls and kill the boys on his list as the opportunities arose. He also told fellow students he intended to shoot up his school. Betts was suspended for a year as a result in 2012 and subjected to a police investigation. He worked at a local gas station as well as Chipotle.
Betts was an avid supporter of Antifa and regularly retweeted posts espousing extreme left-wing, anti-police views. He was a vocal supporter of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. He was tepid toward Kamala Harris based upon her historical connections to Law Enforcement. On his Twitter bio he described himself as a “Metalhead Anime-fan Leftist.” He wrote, “I’m going to hell and I’m not coming back.” He often used the hashtag #HailSatan.
Betts was the lead singer in a pornogrind metal band called Menstrual Munchies. His lyrics orbited around violence, gratuitous gore, and necrophilia. His music glorified sexual violence.
A former classmate of Betts had this to say about him, “Connor Betts was a psychopath…I remember when he threatened to shoot up our school and had a hit list of people that he wanted to kill. I’ve worked with him, too, and he scared the employees on a daily basis.
“Everyone who knew him knew he had issues. I would tell people all the time to just stay away from him because he’s threatened to kill people. When the customers didn’t tip him, he would threaten to go to their house and kill them. I thought he was just all talk but then I would be at work by myself with him and hear him chanting things that sounded like he was worshiping the devil. I would be calling his name for him to stop and he wouldn’t answer.”
Ruminations
This devil-worshipping Antifa loser exhibited all the hallmarks of a dysfunctional mass shooter from an early age. He was aggressively investigated by Law Enforcement fully ten years prior to his murder spree. He was being treated for serious mental health issues and was the lead singer in a band that screamed about killing women and then copulating with their corpses. And the primary problem is that he had a pistol brace on his firearm? As a society could we really be that naïve?
Hating the cops is both in vogue and in the news these days. However, Connor Betts’ final moments were captured on surveillance footage from outside the Ned Peppers Bar. The Dayton PD simply could not have been any faster. They were on-site and engaging less than a minute after the first shots were fired. They killed this guy literally seconds before he made it into a bar packed with terrified humanity.
When Betts was shot he presumably had 59 rounds left onboard his weapon and carried his next 30-round magazine ready to go. I think this may be the finest example of tactical police work I have ever seen. It is literally impossible to determine how many lives were saved by the bravery and selflessness shown by Dayton’s finest that fateful evening. And yet the Left persists in denigrating police in general while minimizing the importance of the services they provide.
I was walking these same streets with my child a week prior to this event. But for the grace of God, we weren’t there when Connor Betts detonated. There are some 400 million firearms in America. If all guns were outlawed tomorrow under pain of death, psychopaths like Connor Betts would still be armed a century from now.
I don’t carry a gun to prove anything. If I’m doing it properly nobody will ever know. I carry a gun because my family and I share the world with anarchist Satan worshippers who are lead singers for pornogrind bands that celebrate murdering people and then desecrating their corpses. Some people study the Dayton shooting and see a desperate need for more gun control. I narrowly miss experiencing the same thing and give thanks that I live in a place where I don’t have to walk among such predators unarmed. Had I been there that fateful night I likely would have been killed along with the rest of them. However, I would have nonetheless had the means, the skill, and the will to fight back.
Something about this doesn’t add up. Reddit has the Dayton PD report(long, 100+ pages).
Betts fired 41 or 43 shots (accounts vary). The cops fired 65 shots and one shotgun blast.
The report recorded 69 gunshot wounds to the victims and the coroner reported Betts was struck 30 times by bullets. Body armor would have negated many of them, but one cop emptied half a mag from an AR patrol rifle.
So, we have 107 or 109 bullets(shotgun pellets would be, maybe 9-12 pellets) and there we’re 99 bullets that struck either the suspect or the 26 shooting victims.
The unanswered question is how many people were struck by police fire?
Guns are not the problem. The problem is courts without justice, schools without prayer, homes without discipline, hearts without God and politicians without a soul.
After a shooting spree, Leftists always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.
What DIDN’T stop today’s shooting:
— A pistol brace Law
— An assault weapon ban
— A Law requiring micro stamping the bullet and casing
— A 10 round magazine ban
— Universal background checks
— The Law requiring an exhaustive application process to obtain a permit to purchase a handgun
— The Law requiring handgun registration
— The Law requiring licensing of handgun owners
— The Law limiting approval of Concealed Carry Permits
— Refusal to honor Out-of-State Conceal Carry Permits
— Federal Law prohibiting anyone under 21 possessing a handgun
— The Law carrying a concealed weapon without a permit
— The Gun-Free-Zone Law
— The Law against discharging a firearm in public
— The Laws against murder
What DID stop todays shooting:
— An ARMED person engaging the criminal
Any Questions?
I just shot coffee out my nose.
Thanks a lot Gus!
The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese killed fewer people than the number killed on 9-11-01. The Japanese undoubtedly expended thousand of rounds of rifle caliber ammunition along with hundreds of armor piercing bombs and specially modified torpedoes. Do you know what the difference was with the more lethal 9-11 attack? Not one single gun OR bullet was used on 9-11! Why has no one mentioned this?
Do you know why the AR or AK rifle is used in mass shootings as compared to any other center fire caliber semi-auto rifle? Because unlike WWII semi-auto rifles, the AR and AK semi-autos can accept High Capacity Magazines. Should we ban rifle mags holding more than ten rounds? What do you think?
.There was another shooting on the East coast involving an AR pistol. It was several years ago. The shooter was killed by police in the case. Then after Dayton the grocery store shooting in Colorado.
Thanks for the article, Will. It’s so insanely elementary that even a young child can comprehend the issue. “Criminals”, by very definition, do not abide by laws and regulations. The idea that additional laws and regulations will somehow magically cause criminals to adhere to them, is beyond laughable… but here we are.
Wow, the liberals sure showed up to comment. Had it not been for insane strict gun laws, an armed citizen could have stopped him before the police did.
What part of “Shall Not Be Infringed”
Are you not understanding?
Agreed people like this shouldn’t have weapons. People like this should be eradicated before they do these horrible things.
The vast majority of mass shooters are registered Democrats.
So from what the previous comments suggest, Democrats shouldn’t be allowed to have weapons. Yeah, read this again. I am a supporter of the constitution and all of its amendments, like your freedom to come here and make comments.
I’m well past the half way point in my life and my ve never seen a firearm jump up and start shooting by itself.
It’s always in someone’s hands. Every 2A supporter is ok with background checks. But there’s no telling when someone will just snap and start shooting. That’s where an armed society step in. The solution isn’t less guns, it’s more guns. That would even the playing field and make these shooting less appealing to the insane.
Dr. Motown – if we did passports that had to presented before purchasing firearms that would work.
Since Dominion already knows who we voted for, we just ban anyone who voted for Biden from gun purchases. Anyone under the age of 60 who got the Covid shot should be be banned. Any parent that allowed their children to get the jab should be banned too.
This psycho was Antifa and an avowed leftist, he would have been stopped. Red flagging works since nearly all gun crimes are committed by people raised in commie democrat families.
What drives guys like me crazy is that outside of places like GunsAmerica we can’t even have the conversation. Here we have a guy who wears a dress and a gimp mask while singing about necrophilia, and we can’t assert that this is innately wrong policeable behavior without being labeled some kind of trans-hater. We can’t even make suggestions regarding how this problem should be addressed without being accused of bigotry. Meanwhile, the knee-jerk reaction on the Left is to restrict magazine capacities and infringe upon our rights in ways that will never touch the Bad Guys. There are 440 million guns in America. Gun control in any guise will never, ever work. That ship has sailed. As re: pistol braces, the barrel length restrictions in the NFA are arbitrary, unconstitutional, ineffective, and ridiculous. You can leave the shop with a Glock that’s 8 inches long and will hide in your pocket, but slapping a 14.5-inch barrel on your Modern Sporting Rifle is a felony. By attacking the tools and ignoring the behavior the Left is griping about the fire while spraying it with kerosene.
“the barrel length restrictions in the NFA are arbitrary, unconstitutional, ineffective, and ridiculous.”
Yes
With all the insanity the left promotes nowadays, it is quite easy for a Conner Betts to slip under the radar. This is what you get when medical professionals join the ranks of leftist ideology in saying these nutcases shouldn’t be locked in a hospital because it somehow violates their rights! Conner Betts needed a frontal lobotomy from an early age. Guess he finally got his just rewards from the fellows that are so maligned today until you need them….
“It’s like calling an AR a deer rifle.” Obviously you have no understanding of the AR.
In fact, an AR is a deer rifle. An AR 10 is a terrific platform for big game.
“NO ONE uses them as as ‘braces’ unless it’s for a photo op” A ridiculous assumption and sophomoric anti gunner hyperbole.
Dr. Motown is spot on with his comments… To answer Dano’s query about ‘what we should do’ about these psychopaths’, I would answer -as a retired 10 years long school employee who’s ‘seen it all’, I encountered multiple children with behaviors very much like the subject.
Not a thing was ever done about any of them but push them through ‘the system’. To AVOID ‘an incident’. I will tell you that the attitude of school administrations, school boards, and school personnel is simple: its ‘all about’ “don’t make waves”, CYA and dodging any ‘issues’ all the time, 24/7/365. All in the interest of keeping that lucrative job. The “education” SYSTEM is corrupt and broken; chock full of passive socialist ‘progressives’ from top, to bottom -often with a mindset that harbors deep sympathy with those like the subject in question. He just went a lot further than their inner cowardly selves would have ever let them.
What SHOULD have happened with the ‘subject’s dangerous behavior way back when he was in school would have been to remove him immediately, and deposit him in a COMPETENT mental hospital for a -full- examination-, then without letting him leave,…TREAT his so-obvious mental illness -up to, -and if found ‘impossible to fix’, maybe even including the classic frontal lobotomy. CERTAINLY NOT to ever turn him loose into society again. I mean, as radical as that might sound to the sensitive around us,… -there might still be nine people still alive wouldn’t there? But, the ‘society’ we all live in today would never let that happen.
The responsibility for all these killings can be traced directly back to… guess who? Those that refuse >responsibility< and choose to blame others for it all instead. The same kind of people who populate the schools… Need I name names? That's it, ….in a nutshell
Well said.
The most popular device in the Mid-East is IUD’s, you know bombs. They say you can pick up an AK-47 pretty easy. Still, bombs are the most popular. You can make one with stuff you can find at any builders supply or dollar store. The detonators a little harder, not much.You know, you can set them off using cell phones. Just dial the right number. Several in minutes.
You’re not going to stop someone from killing. Banning guns could make things worse. With home aid explosives it could have been hundreds killed. No background check, no red flag law could have stopped it. Only thing that would work would be to lock them away from society
For F*ck’s sake it’s IED’S dipshit, IUD’s are female contraceptive devices to keep them from getting pregnant. If you’re going to be an idiot, go do it somewhere else where normal people can’t see or hear you do it.
Peter Rogerson – Are you saying the NFA laws are stupid or are you saying if this psycho had registered his AR15 as SBR the outcome would have been different?
Nice try Commie gum grabber.
Dano – Nice try gun grabber. So, people who believe in protecting our 2A rights are now fanatics? Nice.
How about we prosecute people who violated existing gun laws. Instead of punishing the entire country, how about let’s try your red flag plan in one place first and measure the results.
I recommend we take Dano’s suggestions and implement them in Chicago since there is mass shooting nearly every weekend in that city.
Dano, did you know that black on black crime is major problem and this story is an outlier?
LOL no one seriously believes that braces were designed as anything but a work-around of the law, to allow for short-barreled rifles. NO ONE uses them as as ‘braces’ unless it’s for a photo op or the feds are watching. It’s like calling an AR a deer rifle.
For the sake of argument, let’s say you are right. Let’s ignore that the situation with non-handicapped individuals flocking to arm braces was not spurred on by the ATF provided letters stating that it was acceptable and perfectly legal to shoulder an arm brace.
Did the arm brace cause this psycopath to break the law and resort to mass murder? No. Did the arm brace give this psycopath a tactical advantage that allowed him to murder more individuals before law enforcement could take him down? Arguable, but perhaps. Could this psycopath have had a perfectly legal pistol buffer tube on his weapon and swapped it for a true rifle brace just moments before his rampage, and would that have provided him with the same, or likely better, tactical advantage to commit mass murder. Without question, yes.
The issue is with the law breaker, and not the “tool” that is used to commit the violation of law. The reason we have so much division in this country over guns is that “The Left” shortsightedly seeks to ban the tool, and “The Right” correctly points out that the “tool” has a useful place in society that is not only necessary but also constitutionally protected. The right to bear arms is Biblical. Had Davis not had a sling, he surely would have met his end at the hands of Goliath. Guns are the great equalizer in a world as crazy as this, and the saying that “an armed society is a polite society” has tremendous merits.
The only way that the “pandemic” of mass shootings and murder will be properly thwarted is if “The Left” and “The Right” pull their heads out of their butts and begin working in unison towards the same goal. The goal needs to be very narrow and specific… something like “Our mutual goal is to develop a reasonable and rational system to best keep tools of destruction out of the hands of predictably disturbed individuals.”
I attempted to choose very carefully selected words in this draft goal. Notice that “tools of destruction” is not specific to guns. It applies to firearms but can also be applied to explosives, vehicles used for destructive purposes (running over crowds), or even small hand tools. (A friend of mine’s mother and little brother were walking out of an ice cream shop and smashed over the head with a hammer by a deranged man who wanted their cones. That man had been in the area and causing problems for weeks leading up to the crime.)
Keeping these tools out of the hands of “predictably disturbed individuals” was also a careful selection of words. The laws need to be written and revised in such a way that they give law enforcement the executable power to take actions beyond simply “talking to” individuals who exhibit patterns of disturbed behavior. This is the most difficult part of finding a solution to the problem, because there will never be a 100% foolproof way for the politicians to get this right. The laws need to be carefully measured to prevent these laws from negatively impacting ordinary citizens and from being used as a “backlash” tool against innocent people. Much like TSA gets wider latitudes post 9/11 to screen and pull aside airport travelers, law enforcement needs wider latitudes for tracking disturbed behavior and for “piecing together” the breadcrumbs between cyber activity, real world interactions, and reports from witnesses who report disturbed behaviors coming from these individuals. There needs to be a hard and fast solid line to prevent abuse of this system, but a well developed system of this nature is the only path that would continue to protect the 2nd Amendment rights of law abiding Americans and would have a productive impact on the mutually desired goal of preventing these senseless mass homicides.
So if the US has a people problem what is the solution? Many 2a fanatics are against background checks or any other way to control who can access weapons. For example, this guy seems like a perfect candidate for a red flag law application, especially given LE’s knowledge of the risk he presented. I read almost every article on Gunsamerica and it is always the same hatred of people who are arguably trying to find any way to reduce the epidemic of gun deaths and injuries in the US, albeit in nonsensical ways like banning guns. You say we should be doing something, but offer nothing in terms of solutions. Real background checks for gun and ammo purchases including some measurable way to test and assess competency and institution of red flag laws would go a long way in reducing gun violence but also protecting 2A rights for the overwhelming majority of citizens.
Red Flag laws will get abused and you know it. The left is unhinged, period. The left are the ONLY ones that act like petulant children. If I have a “Fuck Joe Biden” flag hanging on the wall in MY garage, any loser leftist could walk by, see that and get triggered as they do, and report me to the FBI. We all know that wouldn’t end well for me under Red Flag laws in this current administration. I pose no threat to anyone who isn’t a threat. I am, however, able to rationalize that Joe Biden is ALREADY the worst President we’ve ever had. Under Red Flag laws, merely expressing this (or any other descending opinion) would almost certainly have me investigated at minimum, and my guns taken from me as a probability. Beginning to sound a lot like Russia and/or China, dont ya think? In fact, it’s borderline Nazi Germany where Hitler got people to gladly turn their neighbors (Jews) in due to the fear they had been brainwashed with.
We are not universally against background checks. That’s horseshit. We are against MORE regulation, because further ATF regulation would do jack shit to keep this from happening. See the author’s point in this very article: the outrage over a fucking “pistol brace” when regulation on that brace would quite obviously have had zero impact on this situation. It’s a juvenile argument void of all logic. Criminals break laws. It is not, nor will it ever be impossible to obtain a firearm if you want one bad enough. Criminals sell guns illegally to other criminals. That’s just how it is. For starters, anyone identified as an Antifa sympathizer should be put on a list of mentally unstable people who cannot legally own a firearm. I know, I know, more mind-blowing logic.
The problem with a Connor Betts is this: the current NICS doesn’t have a way of knowing about his psychopathy; hence his background check is clean. I know, someone will say “he can be normal one day and flip out the next,” or “he could use a knife to kill people,” which is true because life is unpredictable. BUT, I think every law-abiding gun owner wants to see firearms kept out of the hands of the truly insane.
This is not the case here, though. The dude should have been put on a no-gun list the second he was investigated for threatening to shoot up his school. It’s not to say that it would have kept this from happening, because as we logically know, if someone wants a firearm bad enough, they are going to get one.