Posted on 12/16/2007 10:43:41 AM PST by marktwain
Jeanne Assam, the heroine of the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, would likely have been unable to carry the Beretta that she stopped the shooting with if she had been a licensed security guard.
An AP article published on 12 December noted that licensed security guards in Colorado Springs are restricted to the use of revolvers.
As Jeanne Assam was a volunteer parishioner who was performing security guard duties because the church did not want to hire “mercenaries”, she was almost certainly not affected by the regulations, which only apply to government regulated security guards.
Fortunately, her lack of official status with the state and city allowed her to carry a firearm with sufficient firepower to accomplish the necessary task.
Jeannette had to fire 10 rounds to keep her fellow parishoners safe.
Femural artery shot is as good as a chest wound, a nice bleeder.
The title uses “may,” which is basically the subjunctive in modern English usage, and suggests that she WAS a security guard and it’s POSSIBLE therefore that she would not have been able to use that particular weapon.
However, she was not a security guard, and thus she was simply using a particular weapon that was perfectly legimate for her to use.
Therefore, the headline should have been, “Colorado Heroine Would Have Been Legally Prevented from Using Beretta if a Security Guard.”
You have a point. If I were omniscient, I would have used “would” instead of “may”. I did not have access to the definition in the city ordnance. I wanted to point out the legal difference that I was 99 percent sure of. The original AP article left room for doubt, and I wanted to be precise.
Plus blow everyone's eardrums out and spatter perp all over the church.
For carry, I need something much smaller. Kahr, walther, keltec, seacamp, etc. Otherwise, I just leave it home.
I've got a Taurus PT-99, which is very similar to the Beretta (in fact, Taurus bought their tooling from Beretta). It's a terrific gun, and in fact, I used to use it for USPSA competition: Imagine an Ernie Hill Speed Leather rig, along with that gun with 17 rounds in the mag, and 3 extra 17 round mags on my belt! It was a miracle that my pants weren't down around my ankles!
I'm big enough that with a jacket, I can CC my S&W 625-5, a .45ACP N-Frame... But as you said, I'd really hate to carry it every day. Although I haven't gone to the trouble to get a CCW permit (I live in MO, but work in KS, which hasn't quite worked out their CCW just yet, regarding out of state residents, or if they'll honor MO CCW permits) but my "carry weapon" will probably be my Star Firestar in .40S&W. Not a whole lot of fun to shoot. It's about the size of a .380 auto, and it just beats the hell out of your thumb knuckle when fired.
Mark
Thanks for the constructive criticism. I can always learn, and Freerepublic is a great University.
As a member of the Pajamamedia, I strive for ever better accuracy and style.
The most popular security revolver is a Ruger Security Six, I think. A good, reliable gun, which comes chambered for .357. If she had to carry a wheelgun, it is likely she would have had one of these.
Well, they say that if you’re in bear country your sidearm’s calibre should start with at least a ‘.4’
I think yours qualifies!!!
If she were in the alice-in-wonderland world of the U.S. Military she would probably be facing Court Martial.
I suspect that it is a Smith & Wesson model 10 in .38 Smith & Wesson Special caliber. It was the standard police gun for decades, and they were dirt cheap on the used police gun market from about 1992 to 2002. I bought and sold dozens when I had an FFL, many re imported from England when the bobbies switched to Glocks.
Nice.
Question: Is it better to get your cast before or after breaking your wrist firing that thing?
You’re right. There is confusion about whether she was in official capacity as a security guard at the time. Meanwhile, this is a real wake up call to other religious institutions around the country to get people with guns in the buildings.
Thank you. I think the confusion is partly deliberate. I want people to realize that there are advantages to having private volunteers. They are not constricted in the same way as legally licensed security people are.
.357 Sig ballistics are nearly identical to .357 mag. The primary difference is .357 Sig is a semi-auto pistol round. One of our local SWAT officers took a .357 mag in the back. His vest stopped it, but it still left a big red bruise.
Consider
So the headline reflects, IMHO, two problems with modern US English, we don't know the sequence of tenses in conditional sentences, and we don't know the inflection of the verb "may".
IMHO, when language loses the ability to make distinctions, it loses something inmportant. There's an real difference between "She MAY not be able," and "She MIGHT no be able", but the uses of the tenses of "may" is vanishing, so we're having to find different ways to draw that distinction.
In this "headline", what we have is a hypothesis contrary to fact. Here's a restriction on registered security guards. She isn't a registered security guard, so it's not a restriction on how she can be armed. But if she HAD BEEN a registered security guard (which she, in fact, wasn't) then she MIGHT HAVE BEEN (Or, I wouldd htink, would certaianly have been) restricted from carrying her lovely Beretta 92-FS, which is one of the sweetest guns I own, though I prefer my sigp226, and, if I AM ombliged to carry a revolver, I usually carry my S&W 686P.
Don't get me going on grammar and "may" -- instant pedant, AND if I WERE to be disagreed with, I MIGHT draw one of my weapons, though I think I WOULD get more satisfaction from using my knife, up close and personal, than I WOULD from using a gun at some distance.
I trust I make myself obscure.
I do not know the legal definition of “security guard” in the city ordnance. I used “may” because the ordnance may apply to her, though I think that unlikely.
I don’t claim that grammer is my strong suit, but I am willing to learn from those more learned than I.
Evil guns...at least that is what the libs in the Colorado legislature think...
Do you know that it was a Beretta 92-FS? Or are you merely speculating?
Are you kidding me? THat’s all you got? You seriously need an upgrade.
500 smith&wesson
hehe, just kidding.
Depends on barrel length.
With long barrels, a 357mag outperforms a 357sig. With short barrels, the 357sig is the winner.
Actually, with really short barrels, say a 1-7/8” snub revolver compared to a 3”bbl auto, even a 9mm luger +P outperforms a 357mag.
Unless you are a handloader, 357mag does very poorly with short barrels.
I don’t think anyone’s complaining. I know if I was there, I woulnd’t be complaining any.
As you can tell, I like grammar and related issues. But at least I know I’m weird! I hope my pedantic rant didn’t sound like it was aimed at you. It’s just the kind of thing that happens sometimes, you know, too much coffee, too much fee time, a strong desire to avoid getting ready for Xmas, suddenly the difference between May and Might is the most important thing in the world!
hehe, just kidding.
I know you were just kidding, because the weight of that 500 S&W pistol is almost twice that of this baby. So the S&W is a wimp in the recoil department. I wear a brace sometimes when I fire the Linebaugh as I am not as young as I used to be.
You’re kidding, I assume.
What I hear/read is that she engaged the guy and advanced on him while yelling "Surrender!" and firing. If a reliable and more detailed account is available, I'd love to see it.
It MAY not be accurate to say she NEEDED all ten shots. I can imagine in a situation where you are advancing on an armed person who has already started shooting that you focus on lining up your front sight with his general outline and pull the trigger until all you hear is "Click, click, click." (So why did she have only a 10-round mag? Who knows?) She may have kind of forgotten to stop shooting until she ran out or the guy was obviously on the floor and more or less motionless.
Your average LEO or security person doesn't get a whole lot of practice dealing with major adrenaline dumps. I don't think it's within reasonable bounds to expect Dirty Harry-like cool and deliberation from such folks. I think she did fine.
Are there any indications she hit anybody else? From one account that I heard, she did a lot better than her two male companions who sat around and dithered while she actually engaged the bad guy. Yeah, I guess she wasn't perfect. I kind of like her imperfection and would like to think I'd do as well in a similar situation.
Didn’t bother me a bit. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. Feel free to chime in any time.
12 FPS?
Elmer Keith’s tobacco spit is deadlier than that! :)
That’s 1200 fps not 12!
See paost # 80 (I should learn to preview!)
I figured, but I’d lose my FReeper license if I let something like that pass on a gun thread without comment.
I’m partial to my 3.5” Smith 27.
By “performance” I was not referring to accuracy. I was referring to muzzle energy. Stopping power.
She used a weapon she could hit with, to good effect.
Hits with a 9 are better than misses with an elephant gun.
And even if you have a BIG, BIG gun with BIG, BIG bullets, you still need BIG, BIG stones to close the range on a shooter while taking fire and still put him down.
Congratulations to the heroine of this affair.
As in real estate, the 3 most important things are location, location, location. A well placed shot with a .22 beats a poorly placed shot with a .454 Casull. A center of mass shot is the first choice as it presents the largest target. If body armor is encountered, you're left with a head shot or upper leg. The latter is what killed Sean Taylor.
Hey Cowboy she could have just been using an old firearms rule "When in doubt, empty the magazine".
If it was a revolver it probably would have been 6 to 8 shots of 357 into him. "Empty the cylinder"
or a solid faith in a Big God guiding your movement...
We need an open record push for the autopsy photos, let those be the ones that the press gets for the copycats...
I’ve read elsewhere that Jeanne’s firearm was a 9mm. And my impression was he shot himself with his handgun. He had three weapons on him.
I was thinkin’ 12 fps was a little slow...
Tell me more about this upper leg shot.
And here we have the essence of who she is.
She is somebody who did not hesitate to engage the bad guy, even though he had a long arm and she just had a pistol.
Ole shoots a S&W; I thought Sven shot a Ruger.
Yup....
Morons that don't read, or don't understand, the article/post.
Most definitely. My response was in the context of dispelling the rumor that revolvers were somehow inferior.
While the caliber of the firearm is relevant, and in some cases it is even decisive, the main point is that this was combat.
In combat you have the weapon, but far more important is the caliber of the person who is engaged in combat. Combat, once begun, is usually to the death (or something approximating death).
She was fearless, and was obviously willing to fight to the death.
Her caliber as a warrior was what made the difference. The handgun caliber was secondary. She broke the evil one’s will and kept going as long as it took. Totally heroic.
-—I sure would not want to fire a compensated pistol in dim light.
You would be blinded by the flash.-—
That’s actually not true.
-—Does Sven have to be holding the revolver?-—
Just don’t let get anywhere near any panacakes!
Try it at night
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