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.
I kind of like the idea of Darth Lillehaug’s favorite church putting up a sign that says, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” and expecting us to understand what they mean by it.
I’m going to interpret that as an endorsement of Colt products . . .
The owner of the premises recognized the need for additional security in light of credible threats to its invitees and implemented the armed volunteer security guard program.
If that was reasonable and prudent for them, what about mall owners? Shouldn’t they implement similar programs? At the very least, shouldn’t they avoid making the problem worse by banning lawfully armed “volunteer security guards”?
The present state of the law may not extend premises liability that far. But with a few more law review articles and a creative plaintiff’s lawyer, the next gun-free-zone massacre may be the tipping point.
.
Joel: have you shot Peacemakers? I don’t count them as Blessed. For my hands, at least, they’ve got an awkward twisting recoil. There are many other better balanced products out there, at least for me.
Mitch: expect them to mock this detail on Assam, too http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=3980889&page=2.
Assam is a hero. God? Not so much. Looks like he was too busy directing the outcome of football games to jam the killer’s rifle before four of His flock were hit.
Well, at least AC agrees that Assam is a hero for packing heat. Baby steps.
nerdbert: Hey, I’m not endorsing them; Darth Lillehaug is. 🙂
Assam is a hero.
Is it just me, or does the time/space continuum feel all wobbly today?
It’s not just you, but do remember about the stopped clock and all.
A trained, volunteer security guard takes down an insane killer. I’m not sure how, in your fevered wingnut brains, you expect normal people like Angryclown to react to such news. But Assam was doing her job and saved lives. That’s a good thing.
A trained, volunteer security guard takes down an insane killer. I’m not sure how, in your fevered wingnut brains, you expect normal people like Angryclown to react to such news.
Well, flippancy aside, I’ll bet clown-money to dollars that plenty of people on the left – not necessarily The Clown, whom I know not to be a dickhead – to rip on her at some point.
But Assam was doing her job and saved lives. That’s a good thing.
At last, complete agreement.
Mitch:
“…The Clown, whom I know not to be a dickhead…”
Mitch’s judgment is from here on out very suspect.
I’m confused. If the church and the missionary program from which the killer was expelled *weren’t* gun-free zones, why would the killer have gone there? Didn’t he know that citizen-heroes were permitted to carry guns and were in a position to take him down?
He must have been attracted by the abortion-rights-zone, knowing that there wouldn’t be any fetuses in a position to defend themselves.
Still, I think it’s worth checking out whether he ever met with Saddam’s Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague.
/jc
It wasn’t her job.
She wasn’t an employee of the church, she wasn’t being paid.
It was an obligation she volunteered to take on, for no reason other than she thought it needed to be done.
This shooting makes me wonder how the Red Lake Reservation shooting would have turned out if the uniformed security guard (who was also an ex-police officer) manning the front door had been allowed to carry a weapon.
If Assam says that God was with her, then I tend to believe her. Despite Chuckles’ claim that Chuckles knows how God works.
I dunno for sure, but I asked God about that all this this morning — agnostics have been known to pray, even though we don’t tend to get answers.
Just got an email.
“Hey,” it said, “I sent you folks Samuel Colt, yea, verily, and John Moses Browning . . . “
“. . . 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”
A fine point & one that’s too often neglected.
The Founders wrestled with the concept of sovereignty and how they could could properly call the new United States of America ‘sovereign’ when it was formed by an act of rebellion against rightful authority of the British state.
They found the solution in the concept of individual sovereignty. We are all sovereign individuals who delegate to the state a portion of our powers because, in certain circumstances, men need to act in a collective fashion. Those circumstances are described in the constitution.
Hey, Mitch, I could play wacked-out Ron Paul supporter in your comments section. You got an opening?
Simply fabulous, joelr. 🙂
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