The woman that killed the Colorado spree-killer was a “security guard” in the same sense that I’m a “news reporter”.
She – former Minneapolis cop Jeanne Assam – is a citizen with a standard Colorado carry permit. She and other parishioners volunteered to watch over the church in the wake of news of an earlier shooting. She was not employed as a guard; she was, literally, a civilian from the congregation who’d volunteered to keep an eye on comings and goings at the sprawling megachurch in the wake of the earlier shootings at the missionary school.
David Hardy notes:
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… Ahab has confirmed the lady who brought down the killer was not a church employee, and was carrying her personal gun.
The media – nationwide and locally – seems to be making an effort to make Assam look like an “official” security guard rather than an armed citizen:
But the AP coverage describes her as “a member of the church’s armed security staff” and “the security guard.” Since it quotes the pastor much the same way as the CNS story does, it sounds like a report on the same interview or conference. And the Rocky Mtn News describes her as “a church security officer.”
They want to see a big herd out there.
This is a huge setback to the anti-carry movement.
UPDATE: Ms. Assam would seem to be a hero…:
Boyd said Assam was the one who suggested the church beef up its security Sunday following the Arvada shooting, which it did. The pastor credited the security plan and the extra security for preventing further bloodshed.
…but I’m just waiting to see how the Sorosphere and John Stewart titter over this bit…:
There was applause as Assam spoke to reporters and TV cameras saying, “God guided me and protected me.”…”I was praying to God that he direct me” in what to do in life, Assam said. “God made me strong.”
Any bets?
Me? No action on that bet. Too sure a thing. The only real question is “how scatological and insulting will they get?”
UPDATE 2: Greetings, CQ Readers. Ed was right – we talked about “Gun free zones” over the weekend on the NARN show, before the Colorado attacks. Ed notes:
And this is the folly of “gun-free zones”. Lunatics looking to kill people either will attack at places for which they have some animus (as in the case of the church) or where they can find a lot of unarmed people (as in Omaha). They don’t stop because someone puts up a sign designating a site as gun-free, any more than people stop taking drugs because a city puts up a sign that designates a neighborhood as a “drug-free zone”, as in my own neighborhood.
All that sign does is prevent the Jeanne Assams from being able to defend the defenseless. That’s all it does. It doesn’t make anyone more secure or safe, and it has the potential to make a lot of people into victims.
After the Virginia Tech shooting, people asked whether a CCL holder could have made a difference once the shooting started. Jeanne Assam answered that question on Sunday.
And I want to make sure that answer gets to David Lillehaug, former US Attorney for Minnesota, occasional DFL Senate candidate, and lawyer who – on behalf of a well-heeled left-leaning congregation in Edina, tried to get churches declared a de facto gun free zone without needing to bother to post any notices, and to exempt church parking lots from the state regulation that carry permittees are allowed to keep their guns in the trunks of their cars. He was behind the court case that led to the Minnesota Personal Protection Act’s temporary blockage at the hands of a DFL-pet judge for about nine months starting in June 2004.
Lillehaug leads the group that is, for me, the most insufferable pack of anti-gun zealots – the ones that wrap themselves in a suffocating mantle of misplaced piety, ignoring the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: “In order for (violence) to be justified, three things are necessary: First, the authority of the soverign [an archaic reference to Americans – we are all soveriegn, and at any rate the permit is a sign the government, acting on behalf of all of us sovereigns, thinks you’re capable of defending yourself]. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention”.
Does protecting the innocent – especially our children – from mass murderers fit these criteria?
If you say “no”, be prepared to withstand a rhetorical wolverine ripping at your logical butt.
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