Col. Jeanne Assam said her hands were steady as she aimed her gun at a young man firing a high-powered rifle in the crowded foyer of the New Life Church. Posted on 12/11/2007 5:35:12 AM PST by Sopater
Col. Jeanne Assam said her hands were steady as she aimed her gun at a young man firing a high-powered rifle in the crowded foyer of the New Life Church.
And she prayed for divine guidance.
I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse, the volunteer security guard said yesterday, a day after police say the same man killed four people at the church and a missionary training school in a nearby city.
I just said, Holy Spirit, be with me, Assam said. My hands werent even shaking.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
That's what Col. in front of someone's name means. Using Col. at the beginning of a sentence to mean "Coloradan" would be a usage they just made up.
I don't know where the Post got that bit of information. Google didn't turn up any other mention of a service record, and she looks awfully young to have retired as a colonel. Maybe she's a reservist. One Web site tracking citizen complaints against police lists complaints against an officer named Jeanne Assam from 1993 to 1997 -- the only one sustained was for "derogatory language." Don't know if that's the same lady.
Can't report that an AVERAGE LAW-ABIDING CITIZEN accomplished what she did, now can we?
She's certainly anything but average.
In an internal investigation, Assam had denied she used derogatory language in an encounter with a citizen in the late 1990s, but a videotape proved differently, Kroll said.
Assam appealed and the firing was upheld by an arbitrator. Because police personnel files were not available late Monday, Minneapolis Police Department spokesman Jesse Garcia said he could not provide details.
Suicide is fairly common in spree killers. He walked into that church with the plan in mind to take out as many people as he could, and then off himself when he ran out of ammo or escape options. One of the two heavily-armored North Hollywood bank robbers killed himself, and I believe the Columbine shooters also had suicide as their endgame.
I think we all know the answer to these questions. With that in mind, even if he did commit suicide, she still saved a lot of lives.
Absolutely. She stopped him. It matters not a bit whether she fired the fatal shot or not.
What my dad taught me was to shoot to stop. To remove the threat. Whether the perp lives or dies is a secondary concern. Priority one is to stop him from shooting, not from breathing.
God Bless her and may she never have a doubt that it was God’s Hand that guided her to save her fellow man.
The witnesses to her acts of courage have spoken clearly and her actions were well justified. Her few detractors lack courage and moral conviction. There is right and wrong in this world and unless somebody stands up for right, wrong will flourish.
This is clearly a shining example of an armed citizen stopping the wolf at the door. Wack jobs exist. No laws or regulations will stop them from their attempt to cause carnage because they do not recognize those laws. We must choose to stop them or be their victims. That is why the Second Amendment is in our Constitution. Be it the lone gunman of the corrupt tyrant, self-defense is a right not to be abridged.
“Suicide is fairly common in spree killers. “
I have no doubt this whackjob would have eventually offed himself. I believe that this is what gives these whackjobs the “courage” (if we can call it that) to continue to fire even if someone were to fire at them. They are no longer afraid of dying.
However, with the amount of ammo they are reporting he had, he was planning on taking a lot more people down before he turned it on himself.
Wonder if she used to work in Minneapolis as a police officer. The training shows.
To me she has the natural ruggedness that gal projected in those Kill Bill movies. Very attractive but tuff enuff.
It always amuses me when folks ascribe motives to "the press."
The fact that Jeanne Assam was trained to be a cop helps explain how she could stay so cool under fire. Her disciplinary record helps explain why she's not a police officer today. It's a legitimate part of the story.
That said, she's pretty much universally being hailed as a hero, in the MSM as well as elsewhere, so anyone "trying to find a way to discredit her" is doing a piss-poor job of it.
Not necessarily. He could've pistol whipped himself to death.
Absolutely. A spree killer suits up for his "work" knowing that at the end of the day, one way or another, he will be dead. Nothing matters. It is the ultimate act of malignant nihilistic narcissism.
Rather than "courage," I'd use the word "resolve," but even that connotes strength, and these dipwicks are anything but strong.
However, with the amount of ammo they are reporting he had, he was planning on taking a lot more people down before he turned it on himself.
Again, no doubt. These guys want to play the game out as long as possible before they fold their hand. She stopped him. Whether she killed him doesn't really matter.
Or he could have had -- and by most accounts did have -- more than one gun.
That's why I made my point that it LOOKS like they want the public to believe that she was acting in an official capacity of some sort - NOT just an average citizen.
As far as "average" goes...
She's certainly anything but average.
I'd have done the same thing, as would have many law-abiding gun owners with CCW.
While there are many such instances of "average" citizens rising to the occasion in an emergency situation, we don't hear much about it.
The reason?
When guns are used lawfully to thwart an attack, and this is done by average CITIZENS (not police officers or military, etc.) the events are either NOT reported, UNDER reported, or twisted to meet the liberal medias anti-gun agenda.
“Woman of the year?”.....a cabinet post in the next republican adminstration?...I’ll bet she would get the damn border built!
She did the right thing. Every human has a right and an obligation to defend him/herself and family and friends. The agressor has NO RIGHTS!
The left is choking over this one, because it is about two of the things that they hate the most: guns and God!
We mustn't admit that an armed private citizen prevented a mass-murder.
That would just encourage people to kill more innocent mass-murderer wannabes.
armour behind armour....how impressive
“hey Joe...let’s get in there and save lives when the shooting stops...try not to shoot any good guys” Barney out.
I don't know where you got your info, but you are wrong. The reason the police didn't charge into Columbine was due to archaic protocol developed for barricaded hostage situations. In those instances, the protocol was to surround and contain and call in the SWAT team.
Problem is, Columbine wasn't a barricaded hostage situation, it was an "active shooter" situation.
Police were not adequately trained at the time for such scenarios.
Today, almost all law enforcement agencies have developed new protocol for "active shootings" the new protocol is first two officers on scene go straight to the threat. No more surround and contain, no more waiting for backup.
This has been the standard since Columbine.
The problem is response time. It's just a fact of life that most active shooter situations are over in a couple of minutes. It usually takes the officers longer to arrive. Hence, the importance of armed citizens.
The Virginia Tech Shooting is another example. There, the Police did exactly what they were trained to do when Cho started his rampage in Norris Hall. They tried to go straight to the threat. However, Cho had locked the doors from the inside with Chains. It took them a bit to breach the door and make entry.
What a lot of people don't know about VT, is that Cho had another bag full of magazines and ammo on the Fourth Floor of Norris Hall. He was found dead on the Third Floor of a self inflicted gunshot. He killed himself when the Police breached the chains and began coming up the stairs to where he was shooting.
Had the police still been using the old pre-columbine surround and contain tactics, Cho would have finished killing people on the third floor, walked up to the fourth floor and started killing more people there.
Police training has improved, the problem that remains is response time. That will always be present.
How about not letting the cop-hating take away from training and tactics?
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