Guns Save Lives--UPDATE
An undercover female guard took the sociopath down with her gun in the Colorado shootings. He still managed to kill two people in the church, but it would have been more, no doubt, had he not been stopped.
UPDATE: Well, my impression was that the "undercover" woman was actually a plain-clothes security guard. Turns out that she was just an attending church member with a CCW permit.
More:
Directly from the head pastor at New Life Church, the “security guard” who stopped the shooting was an unpaid volunteer, not a police officer, and “used a personal weapon.” The CNN link confirms the information I just received in an email from a source at New Life Church.The killer "hated Christians".
So the facts are now that a concerned, armed citizen, acted to in defense of the lives of others and risked her own life by moving rapidly to the shots and engaging the gunman. This woman is truly a hero, and deserves the highest congratulations we can offer.
The press needs to get this shooting right, for once. There are benefits to carrying a concealed gun, legally. The bad guys always conceal theirs.
H/T Glenn Reynolds
3 comments:
Well it seems that this lady had something much more than just a CCW: experience as a police officer.
Much of the time I see & hear comments about these incidents such as "why didn't someone do something" or "I would've done X or Y..." I'd suggest that:
* In our "civilized" society, we are subtly conditioned to not take matters into our own hands.
* The element of surprise works against us. Unless you have some type of combat training, just seeing someone with a gun in his hand - in real life - causes your brain to ask WTF?? and reboot itself to understand the very unusual situation. As a pilot, I am constantly training to recognize & react to various averse situations so that I am not a victim of this paralysis and it is the same for those in law enforcement. I suspect this might be why the lady responded as she did while others who were armed (apparently) did not.
* If we do find ourselves in a situation where someone is shooting, we are much more likely to subconsciously see ourselves as bystanders than as targets. If we knew that the shooter's goal was to target us and that it wasn't just some gang-related squabble then I bet we would be more likely to respond with force. The VT shootings come to mind here: most of the victims probably did not understand what was actually going on until it was too late.
Carrying a concealed weapon (legally of course) changes the way you think. Instead of being passive, you get active (since you have to be active to put the gun on your person to begin with). A person with a CCW tends to be more aware of threats and has something to answer a threat with.
Being an unarmed victim-in-waiting tends to color your perception of things.
Grab your guns kids, there is crazy everywhere. Carrying does not make you paranoid, just prepared.
Cheers,
Your Well Strapped Little Brother
Reading about the shootings at NIU yesterday, I am reminded of my earlier comments here about how victims are unable to take quick action in these cases.
Pertinant quotes from Chicago Tribune article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-niu_eyewitness_webfeb15,0,116554.story
Time stopped. There was no fear, no panic in the half-full room—only an icy moment of bewilderment.
"Nothing seemed out of place," said junior Doug Quesnel, 22. "It was weird he walked through there, but nothing seemed wrong until the shots went off."
"It was just surreal," said Sweeney, 22. "Even when the first shot was fired I couldn't believe it was happening. It didn't seem to register with anyone."
Harold Ng, 21, a junior in communications, said the danger didn't register even after the firing started .
"I was still in the dream state and I didn't think it was reality. It was like a video game," he said.
Sheesh.
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