Yesterday, I noted that security guards are forbidden by Colorado Springs ordinance from carrying semiautomatic guns. Yet “Police investigators also said Wednesday that Jeanne Assam, the church security officer who shot and wounded [the murderer], fired a total of 10 rounds from her Beretta 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.” Presumably, had she been a security guard for hire, rather than a volunteer, she would have been breaking the law. (I haven’t read the ordinance, but I assume it applies only to guards for hire. I did check the map, and New Life Church is within Colorado Springs boundaries.)
Predictably, Democrats are already demanding bans of politically incorrect, ambiguously defined “assault weapons.” Gail Shoettler displays her ignorance in confusing semiautomatic guns with “automatic weapons.” She does not bother to define an “assault weapon.” She does not consider the fact that many criminals acquire guns illegally. And she does not bother to mention that Assam stopped the murderer with her semiautomatic gun.
Meanwhile, Mike Littwin opines, “Any fair reading of the small minority of people who use guns violently shows that they are rarely deterred by other guns.” In other words, Littwin looks only at cases of people who are not “deterred by other guns” to conclude that no criminal is so deterred. (He does not mention the fact that some criminals are not “deterred by other guns” because in some areas armed self-defense is outlawed.) And this is what sometimes passes for journalism in Colorado.
Yet the fact remains that the murderer was not able to fully carry out his plans because he met armed resistance. Otherwise, he might have killed many more. Even people bent on suicidal mass murder may think twice knowing they may be taken out by a petite woman with a gun.
Electa Draper writes for The Denver Post,
Many large churches have taken up arms. … Like New Life, which has a volunteer plainclothes security force of about a dozen, other area megachurches also employ security to respond to trouble in places where as many as 7,000 might be on campus at any time. … American Jews have long recognized the need for security at their synagogues, schools and community centers.
Obviously, criminals are not “deterred by other guns” that the do not suspect exist. Now, would-be criminals know that attacking people in a house of religious worship may not be quite as easy as they might have imagined.