Last week, the nation was rocked by another mass shooting that resulted in the death of five employees and the injury of two more at the headquarters of an Annapolis Newspaper, the Capital Gazette.
I will not name the shooter because I firmly believe that naming these kinds of people only brings the fame that so many seek, but I will name his victims in honor of the dead: Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, and Rebecca Smith were all killed. Rachael Pacella and Janel Cooley were wounded.
What I’m about to write is not out of a desire to politicize these people’s death; rather I write it in hopes that incidents like this can one day be almost unheard of — and we’re a long way from that.
There were two things about this attack that make a very strong argument for workplace carry, specifically in contrast to other possible action to curtail gun violence.
One major point that is being brought up in some circles — but not often enough — is just how quickly law enforcement was able to get onto the scene. As The Baltimore Sun reports, law enforcement personnel were on-site in under 60 seconds and were inside the building moving on the bad guy in under two minutes.
That’s insanely fast. Really, that’s an ideal performance in terms of law enforcement action.
Five people still died. Two people were still injured.
There wasn’t a thing that law enforcement could do about it. Anti-gun folks can’t even make the normal argument that the gun employed by the shooter was a “weapon of war” or some such nonsense, which brings us to our second point:
As noted in another story reported by The Baltimore Sun, the suspect utilized a pump-action shotgun.
That’s about the third-last firearm gun-grabbers would want surrendered, just behind bolt-action rifles and single-shot firearms. The shooter bought the gun legally, and still would have even if what many anti-gunners want got put into place.
Five people still died. Two people were still injured.
Police can be fantastic in their response time and tactics and gun rights can be whittled down to a ghost of their former selves and you can still have a mass shooting in the United States.
The only way the death toll could get any loser to absolute zero was if a good guy with a gun had been in the building to counter a bad guy with a gun.
Folks, I beg you to arm yourself at your place of work if at all possible. It could save lives. That threat isn’t imaginary, it’s a reality we endure every day — there are evil people in this world.
Please share this story on Facebook and Twitter and send this to a friend you’d want to be sure is carrying in the workplace!