Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- Five people were murdered and two others were wounded in Maryland on 28 June, 2018. A lone murderer shot his way into the newspaper office of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis. Police response was swift, but it was not fast enough to stop the murderer before he put down his weapon and hid under a desk.
The entire state of Maryland is pretty much a gun free zone. No one at the newpaper was armed to oppose the killer. From wtop.com:
Officers were on the scene within two minutes of the first call about the shooting, Altomare said. Ramos was arrested by officers after he was discovered hiding under a desk.
Altomare said more than 300 officers from federal and state enforcement agencies descended on the scene of the shooting. There were no shots fired by law enforcement during the arrest.
Wes Adams, the state’s attorney for Anne Arundel County, told WTOP’s Neal Augenstein that Ramos barricaded the back entrance before coming to the front entrance, shooting out the front window and shooting into the newsroom.
Adams described it as an orchestrated plan to make sure no one could get out. He added that one of the victims tried to get out the back door, but couldn’t, and was killed.
One of the reporters at the paper tweeted how he felt terrified, hiding under his desk, as other people were shot and killed. He wrote of how he heard the killer reloading his pump shotgun. From the independent.co.uk:
Phil Davis, a crime reporter for the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, posted a series of tweets, explaining how he and others were in their office when the suspected shooter – said to be a lone male – entered and opened fire.
“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload,” he wrote.
People who are familiar with firearms feel regret they were not armed, and could have cut the killing short. That is what happened to Suzzana Gratia Hupp, who had her parents murdered in a mass killing at Luby’s restaurant, in Kileen Texas.
Dozens of mass killings have been stopped by armed citizens.
The FBI says 8% of mass killings have been stopped by people with concealed carry permits from 2014-2017. About 6.5% of adults in the United States had a concealed carry permit in March of 2017.
Maryland had one of the fewest concealed carry permit percentages in the United States. As of March, 2017, the State had 17,414 active permits. That is the lowest number of permits of all but two other states, Hawaii and New Jersey. Maryland had a population of six million in 2017. That would be 4,662,000 adults. Very few permits are issued to anyone but the powerful, connected, or security personnel who had to have a permit to work.
An activist says he looked at the permit list in 2010. From thedailyrecord.com:
In 2010, I obtained the MDSP MAAFS list, that has all of the names and occupations of those who hold a MD CCW permit. When you remove the business people, the state politicians, retired police, prison guards, etc… In essence, if you remove the government, business, and people who require such for work, it leaves approximately 750 issued permits in a state of 5,000,000 residents, or less than 1/10th of 1%. The reason 95% of all permits are issued, is because only those groups aforementioned need apply. The average citizen does not apply, because they cannot obtain one.
17,411 would be .37 of one percent of the adult population. If we take the estimate of 750 in 2010 (4,483,00 adults in 2010). That would be .017 percent of the population who were not powerful, connected, or work related.
Maryland is one of only six states that has no protection for a right to keep and bear arms in its Constitution.
When people who are gun owners, who feel comfortable with firearms, think of themselves in such a situation, they know they would want to be armed. People who have made the decision to be voluntarily unarmed, wonder when armed protectors might rescue them.
©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
This is a double ended sword… on one half it’s a reality that showcases that people should secure themselves at all times…. but on the other hand, it shows that people can be so irresponsible with firearms and cause undue burdens for those of us whom act responsibly with our firearms. It’s truly a sad event to see where a firearms owner has acted inappropriately and the legislation that prevents personal safety has caused undue harm to those whom truly believed in the false sense of security that the government has projected into society. And while this event showcases the… Read more »
WK: With all due respect, Ramos was not acting “irresponsibly”. He is a murderous thug that premeditated and acted upon a heinous attack that goes against law, natural or man-made. To say his actions were “inappropriate” in my mind works to lessen the seriousness of the crime. I, for one, do not think we should sugar coat statements. Your comment “If you’re a firearms owner, you must hold yourself to a higher standard, for your actions effect not only yourself, but the many of others directly and indirectly in life.” while appreciated, is not one that will reach those with… Read more »
Lessons received are not necessarily lessons learned. When dems make the calls in their states and libs keeps drinking the radioactive kool aid these problems will always exist.
It’s stupid enough to disarm cirizens, it’s an all new game when they don’t read the signs and blame it on something they can’t fix.
One of the people at the newspaper had 2 guns in his desk.
The police arrived so fast that he never had a chance to use them.
Stay armed people, even in gun free zone’s.
Your life is worth far more than your continued employment
WHERE IS YOUR DOCUMENTATION OF THIS?
No way. In a Gun Free Zone. I can’t believe it it.
congratulations, useless gub-mint aholes of fairy-land. u enabled another shoot-up because of brain-dead biden death-zone/gun-free zones. perhaps you legislator-commies could float a state-wide “protection” bond to provide for pails of rocks & desks to hide under, while you huddle beyond your taxpayer-funded armed protectors.
NEWS FLASH! Bad guys do not care about laws! And ban all the weapons you want it WILL NOT go away! We in the US have some city’s with VERY THOUGH gun laws and guess what……The bad guy still gets guns!
Whenever you present a cogent argument to the Left along with statistics showing that gun-free zones are killing fields, they will always invent some stupid scenario where armed citizens would be shooting each other instead of a bad guy with a shotgun, rifle or pistol whose intent is clear. The most repulsive and ridiculous of these is the claim that armed white people would declare open season on black people and begin shooting them. If they had half a brain,they would know that if we had any animosity towards an entire group of people , it would not be people… Read more »
There’s a major flaw in your argument: liberals don’t have anywhere near half a brain, at least not a working one.
Stay alert. Stay armed. Practice. The police will only show up AFTER your dead.
fairy- land anti-2a d-rat d-suckers
One of the females present at the above office shooting stated if she had a firearm it would have been in her purse which ended up being underneath one of the victims after the shooting started. She claimed her retired homicide detective father said he could have done nothing about the shooting if he was present. ‘You can’t fix stupid’. Intelligent people moved West long ago…..