New details emerge about Kaylub Giamanco, who went on to elementary school campus and shot Bend suspect dead
New details are emerging about the parent who fatally shot the 16-year-old shooter who killed three children and a teacher in Oregon last week.
In a 2018 Facebook post, Kaylub Giamanco, the 36-year-old carpenter who shot and killed the shooter, said he had gone through “military shooting drills” with veterans who fought in Iraq.
Last week, not only did Oregon's restrictive gun laws fail to stop a shooter intent on killing innocent people, but a passing good Samaritan had to violate those laws to end the murder spree. Fortunately, authorities don't appear intent on prosecuting Kaylub Giamanco, father to two girls who attend the school, for ignoring the ban on guns on school grounds to save lives. But the law is clearly more of a threat to people with good intent than it is to those bent on doing harm. Such laws should and must be defied, but lawmakers need to remove these legal minefields before they do more damage.
A Hero Dad With a Gun Stops a Murder Spree
"I want to start by thanking and praising the quick thinking and courage of the Silver Rail Elementary School staff and parents—and the first responders who rushed to the scene," Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek commented in a press release after the attack by a 16-year-old shooter at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon. "And to the community member who heroically intervened to stop further loss of life, your actions carry a heavy emotional burden—and my thoughts are with you."
That community member was Kaylub Giamanco, who had two daughters at the school. He was reportedly driving past when he saw the shooter approaching Silver Rail with a shotgun in hand. Giamanco parked his vehicle, grabbed his firearm, and followed the shooter, who had blasted his way through the facility's locked doors.
The shooter murdered four people, but Giamanco was able to kill him before he did any more damage. In the incident, the murderer obviously violated the law. But so did Giamanco.
Restrictive Laws That Had To Be Ignored
"Oregon gun laws are rated as the 12th strictest in the nation according to data collected by gun violence prevention group Everytown for Gun Safety, but they didn't stop the shooting of four elementary school children and two teachers at a Bend elementary school on Thursday," wrote Lillian Mongeau Hughes of The Oregonian. (Reports say three children and a teacher were murdered, with two others injured.)
The gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety boasts that "Oregon has passed a broad range of gun safety laws in recent years, including a requirement that guns be securely stored whenever they are not in their owner's immediate control, a prohibition on guns at the state capitol, and a law that gives universities the authority to prohibit guns on their grounds."
The similarly restriction-oriented Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives Oregon an A- for its laws, ranking the state 11th out of 50. The group notes that the state "allowed local governments to limit firearms in government buildings."
Of specific interest in this case, the state adopted a law in 2021 that, among other things, says "the governing board of a community college or a district school board" may adopt policies banning guns on school grounds, even for those "licensed to carry a concealed handgun."
Importantly, the Bend–La Pine Schools, which include Silver Rail, mandate that "no person on grounds of the schools controlled by the Board of Directors for Bend–La Pine Schools (including in school buildings) shall bring to, possess, conceal or use a weapon or firearm at any property under the jurisdiction of Bend-La Pine Schools, any activities under the jurisdiction of the district, or any interscholastic activities administered by a voluntary organization (i.e., Oregon School Activities Association). This prohibition includes those who may otherwise be permitted by law to carry such weapons or firearms."
The prohibition applies to the Silver Rail murderer, though it was unlikely to be a concern to a person already intent on slaughter. It also applies to Giamanco, who stopped the attack and who must now—probably successfully, given the case's high profile—rely on the authorities to not enforce their own laws.
A Long History of Defensive Use of Firearms
Giamanco is by no means alone in taking the initiative to stop an attack. I've written in the past about Jordan Salinas and others in the Twin Falls incident, as well as Elisjsha Dicken at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana. The actions of bystanders are crucial given the evidence that would-be mass murderers must be countered with defensive force within the first 30 seconds to avoid a double-digit body count.
There were 634 active attacks in the United States between 2000 and 2025, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University. ALERRT defines an "active attack" as an incident in which "an individual or individuals is actively killing or attempting to kill multiple unrelated people in a public space." Of those, 374 were resolved before police arrived, with 29 concluded by civilians shooting the perpetrator and another 60 attackers otherwise subdued by civilians.
That's certainly not a full count of actions by armed citizens to defend themselves and others. The 2026 National Firearms Survey finds that "guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 2.2 million incidents per year. In most defensive incidents no shot was fired (76.3%), about half (50.8%) involved more than one assailant, and in 70.6% of incidents respondents report that the defensive use was successful, such that no crime remained to be reported to the police."
Undoubtedly, many of those incidents aren't reported to the police because people who have just averted a threat to themselves or others don't want to get entangled with a legal system that is all too often hostile to self defense. If all has ended well, why risk arrest for violating a law that would have prevented you from defending yourself or that you may not even have known about?
As The Oregonian points out, Oregon's "strong laws" didn't stop the shooting. Those laws ban murder, of course. They also specify that "guns be locked, stored in gun safes or in specialized gun rooms as a way to keep children from accessing firearms," according to the report. "Police have not said if those laws were violated." They also ban guns on the grounds of schools with restrictive policies.
Authoritarian Laws Don't Deter Evil and Should Be Defied
The thing about criminals, though, is that they don't obey laws. That's especially true of those who plan murder sprees they don't intend to survive. The consequences the perpetrators anticipate involve death, and if that's not a deterrent, the potential prosecution of their moldering corpses holds little weight.
Unfortunately, legal peril can be a deterrent to good people who intend no harm. The threat of authoritarian laws and malicious prosecutors who enjoy state protection could convince some people to leave the means of self defense at home. Fortunately, Kaylub Giamanco wasn't one of them.
Giamanco's example at Silver Rail Elementary School is one to be emulated. If we're to protect ourselves, our children, and our neighbors, we have a right and a duty to defy laws that seek to disarm us and put us at the mercy of human predators. But we shouldn't have to suffer the threat of such laws to exercise our natural self-defense rights. Given the inability of weapons restrictions to deter crime and the harm they pose for good people, government officials need to eliminate these embarrassing restrictions and get out of our way.
Immigration agents descended upon Oscar Belgal, a Dominican immigrant, along a strip of small stores in New York as people made their way home from work or accompanied their children after school.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a food delivery driver in North Austin, Texas, was shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents while he was making a delivery on Sunday, September 20. Garces Perez, who survived the shooting but is now partially paralyzed, says his car was rammed by a large black unmarked truck.
ICE claimed they attempted a traffic stop and that Garces Perez fled, but the DoorDash driver and his lawyers’ account contradict this report, saying after he tried to U-turn and pullover, ICE agents rammed his vehicle again, and then an agent got out and aimed his weapon through the passenger side of the car and shot Garces Perez in the back of his neck.
CBP revealed on Tuesday, September 22, that the officer that fired the shot was not wearing a body camera, despite the agency’s body-camera requirements.
“I am not doing well due to the gunshot wound and I have not received the medical attention that I require,” he said through a translator at a press conference in Austin. After receiving no pain medication at the hospital, Garces Perez said that in ICE custody, he was forced to sleep on the floor and repeatedly asked for medical care while in severe pain.
His attorney also said he developed paralysis on his left side.
Local community demands ICE out of Austin
Within hours of the shooting, protests erupted in Austin. Hundreds of residents flooded the streets demanding ICE out of their neighborhoods.
Organizers have connected the shooting to a growing number of fatal and nonfatal encounters involving immigration agents, including the killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Ruben Ray Martinez in South Padre Island.
“We cannot be silent as ICE is shooting and killing our neighbors!” a statement by the Austin branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation said.
Protests have continued across Austin on Monday and Tuesday. Student walkouts were also seen on Tuesday, September 22, by students across Pflugerville, Texas, north of downtown Austin, as well as Navarro Early College High School.
DHS defends the shooting and promises to investigate
After the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security quickly claimed that Garces Perez was an “illegal alien from Venezuela, who illegally entered” the United States.
Garces Perez’s lawyers have refuted these claims, saying he entered the country through CBP One, the US border processing system. “He had a work permit. He was seeking asylum.” They said that a notice of hearing was sent to an old address, despite Garces Perez updating his address with the immigration court. “He didn’t know he had a hearing. So he didn’t go and got a deportation order in absentia, which is a very common thing.”
According to reports, DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are leading an investigation into the ICE shooting of Wilber Rafael Garces Perez.
Austin police and the Travis County district attorney’s office have also said they intend to investigate the shooting. But their investigations come amid strong criticism of federal officials’ handling of previous ICE shootings in Texas. In Houston, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare has said federal officials did not provide his office with information about the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. He is taking his own investigation to a grand jury to force the release of more details.
ICE violence continues in the US
The Austin shooting follows a series of fatal encounters involving federal immigration agents this year, including the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.
As federal agents continue to face scrutiny over deadly encounters in Texas and other states, Austin residents and organizers say they will continue protesting and organizing until ICE is out of their communities.
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