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Hawkins: Good Guy With A Gun Could Have Stopped Stephen Paddock Before Mass Shooting

Following Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s October 9 announcement that Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos actually discovered Stephen Paddock six minutes before the attack began, it is only natural to wonder if Campos could have stopped the attack–had he been armed.

But The Daily Beast (TDB) reports that Campos was not armed when he discovered Paddock. Therefore, he was at Paddock’s mercy and ended up shot and wounded.

The day after the attack, Breitbart News reported Mandalay Bay’s 2012 guidelines for private security, which mandate that guards are banned from carrying “weapons of any kind.” The guidelines define weapons as “guns, knives, nightsticks, mace, pepper spray, stun guns etc.,” all of which are designated as “strictly prohibited on Mandalay Bay property.”

What if the security guard who discovered Paddock six minutes before the attack had been armed?

What if he had been carrying a Glock 19 with a 15-round magazine and had been well-trained in use of the firearm?’

Many on the left argue against more good guys guns and even against the basic premise that a good guy with a gun is the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun. But such arguments are not logical.

Consider the heinous attack on Sandy Hook Elementary, where there were no good guys with guns and the attacker had over nine minutes without any armed resistance. Contrast that with a shooting almost one year later to the day – a shooting in which Karl Halverson Pierson entered Denver, Colorado’s Arapahoe High School with a shotgun and was confronted by an armed guard.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that the armed guard began running toward the sound of the shooter as soon as the first shots were fired. Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said that as a result of the guard’s action, “the heavily-armed shooter realized he was about to be confronted by an armed officer and took his own life.”

Because of a good guy with a gun the Arapahoe High School shooting lasted 80 seconds and only took the life of one innocent. Quite a contrast with the Sandy Hook attack that lasted over nine minutes and took 26 lives.

This begs the question, how many lives might have saved on October 1 if Paddock had been confronted by a good guy with a gun six minutes before the attack began?

(First reported by Breitbart News) http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/10/10/hawkins-good-guy-with-a-gun-could-have-stopped-stephen-paddock-before-mass-shooting/   (October 11, 2017)


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