Illegal Concealed Carrier Stops Mass Shooting: What Should Happen?

Over at the AR15.com bulletin board, user jasonTTKA brought up an interesting scenario that I felt would make a great discussion. Here is the hypothetical that he threw out there:

This completely hypothetical. Say someone was carrying a concealed firearm without a valid carry permit in an area that is illegal to carry a firearm. While they are there someone else comes in and starts shooting people. The person without a permit draws, shoots and kills the shooter, thus stopping a mass shooting. What would happen to the person carrying illegally?

And here are the poll results so far:

I think it all boils down to the location in which something like this would occur. For someone in a gun friendly state, they may get a fine for carrying without a permit. In a not-so-gun-friendly state, they may be spending years behind bars.

That was the ‘what would happen’ answer. How about the ‘what should happen’ answer?

In the thread, some cases are brought up where slaps on the wrist were indeed given. The consensus after reading the comments seems to be this: If the person could legally own the gun in the first place, then they should not face any charges.

While we would never encourage anyone to break the law by doing something such as carrying concealed when they legally aren’t allowed to, this is certainly a worthy debate.