Donald Trump, the National Rifle Association and people who believe in the magical fairy tale of armed school employees preventing school shootings were all forced to eat their words with a supersized cup of “shut the fuck up” Monday, when authorities investigating the case of the Maryland school shooter who was stopped by a “good guy with a gun” announced that—contrary to earlier reports—the shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The Baltimore Sun reports that the St. Mary’s County (Md.) Sheriff’s Office described the events that happened at a southern-Maryland high school on March 20. The newly revealed facts destroy the NRA’s narrative about armed school employees preventing school shootings.
According to the ongoing investigation, 17-year-old Austin Wyatt Rollins parked his car at Great Mills High School at 7:50 a.m., armed with his father’s legally owned 9 mm Glock pistol. Once inside the school, he approached Jaelyn Wiley at 7:57 a.m. and shot her in the head. The bullet also hit 14-year-old Desmond Barnes in the leg.
Rollins continued to walk through the school until he was approached by a school resource officer, Deputy 1st Class Blaine Gaskill. Gaskill fired at Rollins; the teen then dropped to the ground from a gunshot wound to the head.
Dana Loesch, the SuperBeets saleswoman and NRA spokeswoman whose rotted, demonic soul must smell like a combination of Satan’s septic tank and Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ post-White House-briefing armpit sweat, immediately seized on the story as an example of how gun-toting school employees could save lives.
However, as it turns out, the school shooting didn’t exactly happen that way.
According to the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Gaskill fired his weapon at Rollins, while Rollins simultaneously shot himself in the head. Gaskill’s bullet missed, striking Rollins in the hand. Rollins was taken to the hospital, where he was taken off life support later that evening.
Despite being proved wrong by the facts, Loesch held firm to her point by using the tried-and-true debate tactic: Yeah, but still ...
Even though there is no proof, it is certainly possible that Deputy Gaskill prevented more lives from being taken. Of course, Loesch failed to point out that one student was killed and another was shot even though an armed school employee was present.
The state of Maryland once had a law that required gun owners to purchase trigger locks with their guns, until the NRA began pushing the idea that gun ownership was an unlimited right, resulting in the 2008 Supreme Court Heller decision, striking down Maryland’s law.
Maybe the shooting could have been prevented if the NRA hadn’t persuaded gun companies, including Glock—which manufactured the weapon used in the Great Mills High School shooting—to abandon their plans to make firearms that could only be fired by the owners. The aptly named Dana Loesch also forgot to mention that fact. (You gotta admit, her name does sound like a used douchebag filled with vomit squirting the last remnants of its contents into a shot glass so NRATV watchers can get drunk off her shit-puke lies.)
But you know there’s only one thing that can stop the lobbying organization that funnels money from the gun industry to politicians while our children continue to be killed:
Actually, I don’t know.
Does anyone?