It’s a stark fact that is fueling an already intense debate about gun rights in this state: It was an armed deputy who stopped the Arapahoe High School gunman last week from unleashing a deadly massacre, not the expansive new gun control laws approved by Colorado Democrats in March in reaction to two mass shootings.
That is the increasingly inescapable takeaway as details emerge from the school shooting Friday, when the 18-year-old gunman injured another student at random before turning the gun on himself in the school library as the armed deputy was closing in on him.
“The gun control laws didn’t make a difference,” said state Sen. Greg Brophy, a Republican who is seeking his party’s nomination for governor next year. “What made a difference was a person in the building who was armed and who rushed to end the threat.”
Even Gov. John Hickenlooper, the Democrat who signed three gun control bills in March at considerable political risk, acknowledged on CBS’ ”Face the Nation” on Sunday that the laws “in this specific case aren’t going to make a difference at all.”
The governor and others have credited Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Deputy James Englert, who was assigned to the school, with forcing the gunman’s hand by rushing toward the library, shouting at bystanders to get back, and identifying himself as law enforcement.
Eighty seconds after entering the school, the shooter killed himself. The deputy’s response “was a critical element in the shooter’s decision to take his own life,” said Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson.
Source: Washington Times
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