A school shooting in Maryland was thwarted by an armed security guard.
On Tuesday morning, student Austin Rollins, 17, came to Great Mills High School armed with a handgun, shooting two students, including an ex-girlfriend.
But the carnage could have been substantially worse had St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Deputy First Class Blaine Gaskill, a school resource officer, not leapt into action just seconds after the attack started.
Gaskill engaged Rollins in a firefight. Gaskill was unharmed but Rollins, the would-be killer, was killed.
“He responded exactly as we train our personnel to respond,” said St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron.
Cameron added, “”DFC [Deputy First Class] Gaskill fired at the shooter … almost simultaneously as the shooter fired. his is something we train, practice and in reality, hope would never come to fruition. This is our worst nightmare.”
Gaskill’s bravery was also complimented by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who called the hero “a very capable school resource officer who also happened to be a SWAT team member.”
“This is a tough guy who apparently closed in very quickly and took the right kind of action,” Hogan added. “And while I think it’s still tragic, he may have saved other people’s lives.”
Conservative groups were also quick to use Gaskill as an example of how to sufficiently deal with a school shooting—without stripping guns away from law abiding citizens.
On Twitter, the NRA tweeted a quote from their spokesman Dana Loesch, writing: “This [Great Mills High School] armed school resource officer, you’re not hearing anyone in [the mainstream media] talk about it because it disrupts their narrative…They do take issue with defending our most vulnerable and our most innocent and as a mother I will never understand that.”
