CNSNews.com) - Many people are expressing relief that a volunteer security guard used her own gun to stop a man on a shooting spree Sunday. "She probably saved over 100 lives," the Brady Boyd, the pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, said on Monday. The female guard, a church member dressed in plain clothes, killed the gunman after he opened fire at the mega-church. Boyd said she "rushed toward the attacker and took him down in the hallway" as he entered the building. The shooting erupted around 1 p.m., at the end of a service, when 7,000 people were either inside the New Life Church or just leaving. "He was just walking and shooting," the Denver Post quoted one witness as saying. The gunman, still unidentified, shot at least eight people, killing two teenage sisters, the pastor said. The girls were 16 and 18 years old. Their father, also shot, is listed in father condition. The gunman is believed to be the same young man who shot and killed two people earlier the same day at a missionary training center in suburban Denver. In that case, the gunman opened fire, reportedly after he was refused permission to spend the night at the missionary center. The gunman was described as skinny, in his 20s, about 6 feet tall and dressed in black, police said. KUSA-TV reported that the gunman was wearing a "tactical helmet and body armor." The church's pastor said the New Life Church "prepared in advance" for a possible attack, after hearing about the shooting at the missionary training center.
First of all, I'd really like to know this woman's name, as her conduct puts her right up there with Liviu Librescu and Joel Myrick. She deserves some major recognition.
Second of all, I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out the absurdness of the argument we often hear from the "antis" about how having armed good guys (or girls, as the case may be) around will make things worse. All this talk about the danger of crossfires leading to more deaths is pure BS. The simple fact of the matter is that a bullet aimed at you is far more likely to kill you than a bullet aimed at someone else. Thus, if the perp is allowed to carry on with impunity, you're going to have more people get shot, and they will get shot in worse places. If you shoot back at the perp, sure, there are more bullets flying around in that moment, but they don't have "your" name on it they way the perp's bullets will, and there is also a very good chance that the whole incident doesn't last as long as the perp was counting on. Those "extra" bullets tend to incapacitate the perp (as in this case), or at the very "worst," pin the perp down, preventing him from effectively engaging other innocents.
Alternate Link (The CNS feed will probably be gone in a few hours.)
3 comments:
Ken, Everyone Knows that if guns were disallowed, this guy wouldn't have had one, so nobody would've died.
Duh.
Amazed at how quickly an armed security guard is turned into an "Armed Civilian", when a political point needs to be made.
The categories of relevance to the political controversy over firearm ownership are the police and military on one hand and civilians on the other. I didn't draw that line, I've just taken it as it is.
Now, if you want to get more specific than the relevant categories, that's fine. But you chose only to be specific about her line of work, but omitted other specifics. Like the fact that she is not employed by the government, but by the church, and as a private civilian, had to apply for and obtain a CCW license. So, if you want to go into specifics, there are some that tend to make her more "cop-like" and some that tend to make her just like any other licensed civilian. You've chosen to only fixate on those details that sort of help your political point, and I only say sort of because it's more of an attempt to mislead. So, who is the one playing semantics for political reasons here?
Post a Comment