By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--March 20, 2018
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This is why schools shouldn't be gun-free zones. Who knows how many would be dead today in Great Mills, Maryland if not for the good guy with a gun who put an end to Austin Wayne Rollins's intended massacre?
But there was someone armed and ready, so the only one dead is Rollins himself:A 17-year-old student shot and critically wounded two fellow students at a Maryland high school on Tuesday morning before dying after exchanging gunfire with a campus security officer, the county sheriff said. The shooting, which came amid a renewed national debate over gun violence following a school massacre in Florida last month, occurred just before 8 a.m. (1200 GMT) at Great Mills High School in St. Mary’s County, county Sheriff Timothy Cameron said. A 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy were wounded and taken to hospitals. The girl was in intensive care with life-threatening critical injuries, the sheriff said, while the boy was in good condition. The gunman was identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins, and Cameron said there was “an indication” of a prior relationship between him and the female student, though he said that was still under investigation. The latest in a long string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools and colleges took place a little more than a month after 17 students and educators were shot dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. That massacre sparked a new student movement against gun violence, including a national school walkout last week that Great Mills students participated in. It occurred just days before a planned Saturday march in Washington calling for new restrictions on guns.
Rollins pulled out a Glock semiautomatic handgun around 7:55 a.m. in a hallway and shot the students, the sheriff said. The attack, which lasted less than a minute, ended after the school resource officer, Deputy 1st Class Sheriff Blaine Gaskill, ran inside the building and engaged with Rollins, with both firing a single round almost simultaneously.I'm sure Deputy Gaskill was aware of the dereliction of duty committed by Broward Deputy Scot Peterson in Parkland, and realized he needed to act quickly. Clearly he did. And Deputy Gaskill's actions - not an anti-gun law - were the difference between Great Mills being another Stoneman Douglas and Great Mills being spared. Thanks to God for sparing those young people in Maryland, and for putting Deputy Gaskill in the position he was in to respond. And thanks for Deputy Gaskill's bravery in running in and engaging the shooter. You cannot pass laws that stop people from attempting to do evil things, nor can you make it impossible for evil people to obtain the tools necessary to perpetrate evil deeds. They find a way. It is what they do. You have to have people ready to respond and ready to protect the innocent. Thank God that had someone like that on hand in Great Mills this morning.
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