The left’s anti-gun narrative has been blown wide open after a ‘good guy with a gun’ stopped a school shooter in his tracks at Great Mills High School in St. Mary’s County Maryland. Roughly a minute after 17-year-old Austin Wyatt Rollins opened fire inside the school, shooting two of his fellow students, Deputy Blaine Gaskill, a school resource officer and member of the St. Mary’s County SWAT Team responded, engaging in a brief exchange of gunfire with Rollins, leaving the shooter dead and potentially saving the lives of many students and teachers. Although authorities are still working to determine if the bullet that struck and killed Rollins was self-inflicted or fired by Gaskill, it is clear that the presence of armed security within the school stopped the shooting from escalating any further.
According to reports by the Baltimore Sun, Rollins entered the school with a Glock 9 millimeter handgun and opened fire, striking a 14-year-old male who was treated and released from a local hospital, and a 16-year-old female, who may have previously been romantically involved with Rollins, and remains in critical condition. As a result of the incident, the school will close for the remainder of the remainder of the week.
The shooting comes as the nation is engaged in a heated debate over Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights following a shooting at another high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and teachers lost their lives. Despite massive media coverage as news of the shooting broke, attention from national media outlets died down as police released information contrary to the anti-gun left’s usual narrative. The shooter, a minor, was able to steal a handgun legally owned by his father in a state with strict gun control laws, and enter a gun free zone, where defenseless students and teachers were protected by a lone armed Sheriff’s Deputy stationed in the school, something anti-gun zealots have rigorously fought against.
Rollins’ use of a handgun and not an AR-15 makes the shooting far less appealing to those lobbying for a ban or new age restrictions on what they incorrectly refer to as ‘assault-style weapons.’ A similar campaign waged by gun grabbing groups in previous decades which promised that by simply banning the purchase and possession of handguns for those under 21, gun violence would rapidly decrease, schools would be safer, and it would be nearly impossible for an unstable child to commit an act of violence has been repeatedly turned on its head, and this incident is no different. If a criminal wants to commit an act of violence, he or she will do so, we can only hope that more often than not, a man like Deputy Blaine Gaskill will step forward and defend those who can’t defend themselves.
