NEVER AGAIN: REMEMBERING THE KATRINA GUN-GRAB

Some Federal Way, Washington residents have devoted many evenings and weekends preparing for earthquakes, fire, WMD attacks or other disasters. One of the primary ways to get ready is to attend CERT training. Community Emergency Response Teams obtain first aid skills, learn how to use fire extinguishers and practice other skills like prioritizing assistance to victims and communicating with professionals. The professionals that normally respond to criminal activity, fires or other hazards may become totally overwhelmed by the damage that occurs to people, structures and communication networks when disaster strikes.

The aftermath of a major event causes shock and other physical symptoms that impair every one of us to some degree. Preparation for civil defense is normally presented in terms of responding to the aftermath rather than preventing an event. Professional police officers, medical personnel and other emergency responders know that it will take many volunteers in order to deal with events like the attacks on the WTC or the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

One of our CERT instructors, a firefighter, told us that only the police should have guns at a “crime scene”. If you show up as an armed CERT volunteer with a gun, you will be detained. Your weapon could be confiscated and you should expect never to be on a CERT team again! But the “crime scene” could include most of South King County. Then another firefighter told me, off the record, that many firefighters packed during the LA riots.

To the horror of honest citizens everywhere, New Orleans authorities entered homes and re-victimized honest gun-owners by confiscating guns. It took an NRA lawsuit to get the guns returned to the owners. Rape, looting and violence while homes were searched for weapons caused lawmakers in many states to enact laws that say, “Don’t confiscate guns when needed most to protect innocent lives!”

HB 1832 provides that Washingtonians not be deprived of our right to bear arms during an emergency. However, just because many other states have recently enacted such legislation, don’t expect to see such safeguards for gun-owners reported out of committee in Washington State very soon.

It could be dangerous having volunteers showing up at a “crime scene” with guns. Imagine how things could have gotten out of hand when tactical teams spread out through Mumbai killing and taking hostages. The shooters successfully targeted law enforcement. Untrained volunteers might have responded by harming themselves or others. What if the photographers that followed the shooters around with cameras had gotten ahold of guns? They might have taken matters into their hands. The terrorists might have even taken away their weapons and used their own weapons against them!

Our governor can issue an emergency order prohibiting you from having weapons outside your home in a crisis. The rationale is that volunteers should leave the professionals to deal with terrorists.

If you are a CERT member and local police officers are lying dead in the streets, would you consider showing up with a gun? If you are law enforcement, would you be inclined to confiscate my weapon if I can provide back-up? We propose making firearms training an optional component of CERT training. Then volunteers can be even more helpful to the professionals if things really get out of control.

I have had mas much formal gun training in the classroom and on the range as many experienced law enforcement officers. At the last minute, I decided to miss the final CERT drill rather than forego the opportunity to get additional AR-15 range time at our CMP rifle practice.

AR-15 is a civilian legal military-style rifle (assault rifle) and CMP stands for Civilian Marksmanship Program. CMP was initially established as the Directorate of Civilian Marksmanship by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt. The President believed that civilian marksmanship was an important key to the nation’s military preparedness. The government program provided weapons, training and competition in order to encourage folks of all ages to learn to shoot.

Nevertheless, in more recent times, our federal government determined that an armed citizenry is something of an anachronism and prepared to dissolve the program. Citizen-shooters raised a hue and cry resulting in the program becoming privatized as a quasi-governmental foundation. You can still get a good deal on an M1 Garand and certain other surplus rifles via the CMP program. An M1 Garand would be swell medicine against a team of killers like those boys that took over Mumbai for a day or two.

FROM KABUL TO JALALABAD IN 1842

Central Asia is a very large stage from which originated the legendary Mongolian armies, the Turks that seized the ancient Byzantine empire and many fabled cities that had rarely been visited by Westerners even in the 1800s. In Washington DC and other modern world capitals, officials wring their hands and discuss Afghanistan’s reputation for breaking formidable occupation forces like the British and Russians. President Obama campaigned with promises to finish the job in Afghanistan. A good promise that may be EXHIBIT “A” in the case we can call “CHARACTER COUNTS vs. INDECISION AND VACILLATION, et al.

In 1840, Sir William Macnaghten, preparing to leave his duties in Afghanistan and begin a new job in Bombay, stated that Afghanistan was quiet from “Dan to Beersheeba”. In Kabul, British officers and their wives and children played cricket, held concerts and enjoyed steeplechases and skating far from the heat of India from where most of them had come. Macnaghten was an experienced political officer but he and the other political were unaware that the combination of coercion and subsidies the British lavished on many tribes could not offset womanizing, drinking and other British pastimes that greatly offended the Islamic mullahs and not a few Afghani husband’s. Warnings went out that “their mullahs are preaching against us from one end of the country to the other” but Macnaghten chalked the warnings up to alarmism with potential to needlessly delay his career move.

The presence of so many British subjects drove up the price of food. Additionally, taxes were increased due to Shah Shujah’s lifestyle which depended on the British continuing to occupy Kabul despite British assurances to the contrary. Seduction of local women had roused the cuckolded men of Kabul to murderous thirst for revenge that was not long in coming.

Sir Alexander Burnes, the British officer who first scouted out Afghanistan for the British, was living with other officers in a house surrounded by a wall and courtyard. His assistant warned Sir Alexander that threats against his life were being made. Even as Burnes was ignoring the warnings, a crowd was gathering in hopes of seizing the garrison treasury. The mob grew larger and proceeded to the officers’ residence in the old city. When Macnaghten was informed, he argued with suggestions to take immediate action and continued to act indecisively as things took many rapid turns for the worse.

Burnes and other officer, standing on a balcony overlooking the demonstrators, tried to reason with the now uncontrollable mob which unable to hear anything Burnes said. Nevertheless, Burnes ordered his sepoys to hold their fire even as the stables were set on fire. Then a shot from the crowd killed Major Broadfoot standing beside Burnes on the balcony. Burnes tried to buy off the crowd but the gold in the compound was already free for the taking. According to one account, Burnes was convinced by to sneak out of the compound in native garb and then betrayed to the mob. Due to indecision and the confusion amid such uproar, Macnaghten never issued orders to save Burnes and the other officers from the massacre even though over 4,500 British and Indian troops were nearby.

Burnes fate was only a prelude to more indecisive negotiations, mistakes and outright criminal negligence on the part of Macnaghten, the epitome of the wrong politician at the wrong place at the wrong time. The mob careened through the city slaughtering suspected collaborators. As the rampaging mob proceeded to burn homes and loot shops, Macnaghten and General William Elphinstone, a sick and ageing man that should not have been in command, continued to vacillate as thousands of Afghans streamed to join the throng in the city. Shukah, to his credit, tried to send rescuers but they were trapped in the narrow streets and 200 were killed.

The British hunkered down for a siege in a poorly protected low-lying plain. Macnaghten had no military experience that might have caused him to move the garrison away from the threat of artillery and sniper fire. Like a true politician he began dispensing more money in a failed effort to buy some friendship. There were even payments made to assassinate the leaders of the insurrection but with little effect on the rebel resolve. Outlying British posts were overrun, an entire Gurkha regiment was massacred and efforts to eliminate two Afghan guns that were placed on a hill overlooking the trapped garrison led to a new catastrophe.

After taking the hill, the British troops, attacked by Afghan horsemen and infantry, formed into two squares with massed cavalry waiting for the onslaught to begin. The Afghans had long-barreled jezails that reached out to British troops with impunity. The British nine-pounder was too overheated to retaliate and the British muskets dropped rounds harmlessly in front of the deadly Afghan matchlocks.

Even while many British troops within the squares were being killed by well-aimed rifle fire, the enemy had crawled along a gully (in full view of those watching the battle from the cantonments below) and the enemies blood curdling charge was only stopped after the rallying fleeing British to reform and launch a bayonet charge. The cavalry and the 9-pounder (back in action) also helped to drive off the Afghans. Casualties were heavy on both sides but it seemed as though “the curse of God was upon those unhappy people”. The Afghan attackers were intermingled with British troops that fled back to the cantonments but quickly returned with shouting to mutilate the 300 British corpses that remained on the hillside.

At this point Mohammed Akbar Khan joined the rebels with 6,000 fighting men! His father, Dost Mohammed, deposed by the British, was in India in British hands, so the Afghans, now outnumbering the British garrison by seven to one, surprised the British by offering a truce. Macnaghten had little choice but to follow the standard political playbook- negotiate and cover your tail!

The Afghan negotiators wanted Shah Shujah and demanded that the British surrender their arms and return to India. After further discussions it was agreed that Britain would withdraw its troops under guarantee of safe passage and the Shah would return with the British to India. Meanwhile Macnaghten began attempts to reverse the situation by manipulation. Even as his negotiating position continued to weaken and with the onset of winter, Macnaghten sent a go-between with promises of gold to divide the enemy.

This worked well enough that Akbar now made a new offer. Wait and leave Afghanistan in the spring and pay Akbar a small fortune for handing over Burnes’ assassin. Macnaghten, convinced that he had now finessed the situation beautifully, went out the next day and sat down to parley with Akbar. When asked whether he accepted the offer proposed the night before, Macnaghten replied, “Why not?”

Within hearing range and unbeknown to Macnaghten, men from the same tribes that Macnaghten had worked so assiduously to buy off were within hearing range and could now see for themselves how the British were trying to play off the various tribes against each other. Such duplicity sealed Macnaghten’s fate and the fate of the whole garrison.

Akbar came off best in the game of treachery that had now been unfolding in central Asia for centuries. Macnaghten was drug away in horror and astonishment and there is no reliable account of the exact manner of his death which may come from Akbar’ own hand. Such was Akbar’s rage at his father having been overthrown by the British that Macnaghten’s beheaded corpse along with the severed arms and legs were exhibited in the bazaar that night. Once again, indecision had prevented rescue even though General Elphinstone had stood by with look-outs in the nearby cantonments and observed the whole affair.

At this late stage, the Afghans fully expected to bear the brunt of British retaliation. But Elphinstone, gout-ridden, descended into a paralysis that spread to the whole garrison. Decisive leadership, which still could have prevented the annihilation of over 16,000 men, women and children did not exist within the camp. With limited supplies and without any will to act, negotiations were renewed!

At this point, Eldred Pottinger could only negotiate from weakness and advised an immediate attack. Five years previously Pottinger had successfully organized the defense of Herat but Elphinstone ignored the suggestion that Akbar could not be trusted and overruled Pottinger’s advice to attack the enemy. When Akbar demanded that the British surrender their field pieces and provide married officers along with wives and children as hostages, Elphinstone asked for volunteers.

On January 1, 1842, the British garrison entered an agreement for safe passage under armed escort through the passes to Jalalabad, the nearest British garrison, eighty miles away. The demand for married officers with families was dropped and the British knew that any hesitation would mean mountain passes blocked with snow. There were unheeded warnings that, unless the Afghans also provided hostages, the British had signed their own death warrants. Any remaining position of strength had now been denied the British, however, as they headed to their fate.

There was an advance guard that included cavalry followed by British wives and children, the sick and pregnant borne by Indian on palanquins. Following these were the infantry, main cavalry and artillery and then a rearguard that protected the camels and bullocks sandwiched in between the main body and the rear. Thousands of camp followers were trying to keep up wherever they could, most without any provisions.

The escort promised by Akbar did not show up and promised supplies were not provided. Nevertheless, despite repeated advice to stay in a defensible position within the city, the British started towards the passes. Only one man, a medical doctor, made it through alive to the fort in Jalalabad a week later.

From the time that they turned their backs on their cantonment, the Afghans harassed them with sniper fire that never really ceased. Afghan horsemen drove off the livestock and hacked at the straggling camp followers. The British covered a bloody five miles the first day after leaving Kabul and the first night many of Indian troops and camp followers died from the cold or were crippled by frostbite and left behind to die in the snow. Akbar now appeared and demanded more hostages, ordering Elphinstone to wait while Akbar went ahead to talk to the tribes through whose territory the British would be escorted.

Once the British entered the four mile long Khoord-Cabool Pass on January 8th, the fact became apparent that Akbar had made the British halt to give the tribesmen with their jezails time to reach the crags commanding the pass. The dead numbered three thousand that day, many butchered as they crossed and recrossed a frozen stream. Amid the incessant sniper fire, Akbar rode around urging the Afghans to spare the British. While he said “spare them” in Persian (a language known to many British officers), he exhorted the enemy to “slay them” in Pashtoo. Akbar proposed to take the wives and children of the British officers. Nineteen of them were escorted away and never seen again!

The snow-blind soldiers were cut up by incessant sniper fire and butchered by hand in the snow. By the 10th only 750 troops survived and, of the 12,000 civilians that had left Kabul five days before, two-thirds were dead. Akbar looked on as all this transpired and Elphinstone accepted his claims that the men were beyond his control.

On January 12th, there were less than 200 surviving troops and 2,000 camp-followers. When the general went to Akbar’s camp with his second-in-command and another officer, Akbar took them hostage, too. The British, having received a message smuggled out by Elphinstone, continued on at night. Thus, they surprised the Afghans by trying to remove an unmanned barrier erected to stop them beneath the deadly Afghan sniper positions planned for the following day in the narrow gorge.

It was in the chaos after the Afghan’s discovered British troops demolishing the barrier that Dr. William Brydon was surrounded, pulled from his horse and cut with a knife. Brydon parried another blow from a long Afghan knife by slicing off his opponent’s fingers in the darkness. Dehorsed and missing a piece of his skull, Dr. Brydon came across a chest-shot cavalryman that begged him to take his pony. Dr. Brydon joined a group of officers and men who made it past the barrier.

The only other group that broke through (twenty officers and forty-five enlisted men) made it far enough to form into a square near the village of Gandmark and fought to the last man. These men refused to bargain with Afghans that promised safety if the men handed over their weapons. Hand to hand fighting started when the British men had resisted disarmament. Fighting with bayonet and sword, one officer killed five Afghans before they claimed all of the plucky British soldiers’ lives.

Dr. Brydon’s group accepted the hospitality of a peaceful village twelve miles to the east. Suddenly, at a signal. Armed horsemen were attacking them in the village of Futtehabad, grabbing the British weapons while the villagers joined in, firing on Brydon’s comrades that tried to ride off. Five, including the good doctor, got clear but only Brydon managed to elude pursuit. The doctor put his sword to good use and cut through one group of about twenty. A little further on he was confronted by a second group that included an Afghan with a jezail. A shot at close range snapped the doctor’s sword and wounded the pony that carried the lone British survivor out of range.

Then a group of horsemen approached Dr. Brydon. At first mistaking them for a British rescue party, Dr. Brydon threw the broken sword at his opponent, receiving a sword swipe that sliced his left hand. He reached for his bridle with his strong hand and the opponent rode off, he stated later.

“

”

Alas, his pistol, fallen from its holster, was behind him somewhere in the snow. Brydon was wounded and his pony, severely bleeding, was unlikely to take him to Jalalabad. Hunger was overtaking him and fatigue began to set in. He started thinking about how vulnerable he would be to another roving band of Afghans when, on January 13, 1842, the look-outs in Jalalabad saw him.

The other survivors of the original 16,000 that left Kabul were the hostages held by Akbar and some sepoys and other Indians that hid in caves. No stragglers ever came to Jalalabad’s Kabul Gate.

This account is summarized from The Great Game; The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, by Peter Hopkirk.

There are dozens of shooting ranges and clubs in Western Washington and all over the United States. As early as 1466, shooting clubs were formed in Switzerland and, by the 15th Century, Schutzenfahnlein companies in Germany and the Swiss cantons boasted flags depicting crossbows and target rifles. Before long, many armies were combining pikemen with units of smoothbore musketeers that were almost accurate at 200 hundred yards to break up squares of massed troops. By the 1600s, weapons with grooved rifling began to show up on European battlefields.

Since that time, a rifleman culture, developed in many countries at once, culminating in the United States where civilian and military shooters have participated in competition together and shared knowledge and technology for many generations. The difference between a rifle and the earlier smooth bores is that the lead ball grips the rifling, resulting in spin that produces accuracy at ranges three times the distance of the smooth bore muskets.

During the Thirty Years War (1618-35), King Gustavus Adolphus II of Sweden was wounded by a Polish sharpshooter. The Dutch Republic soon began to export firearms, touching off an arms race that never really stopped.

See also Seige of Leyden.

The advantage of rifles over muskets at long range soon became evident, but the necessity of forcing a large ball against tightly fouled grooves made early rifles difficult to load quickly. The English Civil War (1642-48) was one of the first wars in which firearms were to predominate. Matchlock rifles began to appear but the most significant impact of the English Civil War on firearms technology may have been the influence of those times on a generation that was born a hundred years later in England‘s American colonies.

Men like Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams were raised on concepts of law, government and liberty that were set in motion by Parliament’s Roundhead militias that opposed Royalist claims to the “divine right” of kings.

American woodsmen came into contact with German and Swiss mercenaries armed with rifled firearms during the Seven Years War. By the time of the Revolutionary War, Americans demonstrated that a smaller ball fired from a long rifle was deadly at distances of 400 yards.

But see Ferguson Rifle.

The new American rifleman wasn’t a sporting man like the early Swiss and German shooters and he wasn’t a religious fanatic like some of Cromwell’s Roundheads. The new breed had learned to reject elitism under the lash of British officers during the French & Indian War and had studied tactics fighting alongside and against native American warriors.

Firearms technology and history conspired in early America to favor carrying, shooting and working with rifles and other shooting equipment. In Europe innovation shifted to huge enterprises like Krupp Arms, forever associated with progressive Germany’s 20th Century concepts of national socialism. In the United States, on the other hand, individual men like John Browning, proved that individual freedom trumps big government and every weekend there are Washingtonians in competitions all over the state perfecting long range shots that are still heard around the world.

Ferguson Rifle
1776 English

Major Patrick Ferguson patented this breech loading flintlock rifle in England, 1776. Only about 200 were made. The number ‘2′ stamped on the trigger guard distinguishes this one from the others.

Walnut, iron, brass. L 124.5 cm, L (barrel) 86.4 cm
Morristown National Historical Park, MORR 2375

See more on the design of the Ferguson Rifle.

Churches have been coming under attack for many years from many quarters. Now well armed individuals, often with a grievance or just hatred for Christianity have been literally invading churches to kill the worshippers within:

Killer’s rant filled with profanity, hate
By The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 12/11/2007 09:24:12 AM MST

A message posted between the Youth With a Mission shooting in Arvada on Sunday, Dec. 9 and the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs is believed to be Matthew Murray’s last posting. It contains language which many may find objectionable:

“You christians brought this on yourselves!”

—————————————————————————–

“I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ….God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.

Well all you people out there can just kiss my ass and die. From now on I don’t give a @#%$ about what all you muthaf#*kers have to say, unless I respect you which is highly unlikely, but for those of you who do happen to know me and know that I respect you, may peace be with you and don’t be in my line of fire, for the rest of you, you all better @#%$ hide in your houses because I’m coming for EVERYONE soon, and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth, and I WILL shoot to kill and I WILL @#%$ KILL EVERYTHING! No I am not crazy, crazy is just a word, to me it has no meaning, everyone is different, but most of you @#%$ heads out there in society, going to your everyday @#%$ jobs and doing your everyday routine shitty things, I say @#%$ you and die, if you got a problem with my thoughts, come to me and I’ll kill you, because……..God damnit, DEAD PEOPLE DON’T ARGUE! My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If you don’t like it, you die. If I don’t like you or I don’t like what you want me to do, then you die. If I do something incorrect, oh @#%$ well, you die. Dead people can’t do many things, like argue, whine, @#%$, complain, name, rat out, criticize, or even @#%$ talk. So that’s the only way to solve arguments with all you fuckheads out there, I just kill. God I can’t wait till I can kill you people, I’ll just go to some downtown area in some big city and blow up and shoot everything I can.

You break my back but you won’t break me…..all is black but I still see…shut me down, knock me to the floor…..shoot me up, @#%$ me like a whore….trapped under ice, comfortably cold, I’ve gone as low as you can go….. feel no remorse, no sorrow or shame……time’s gonna wash away all pain I made a God out of blood not superiority I killed the king of deceit and now I sleep in anarchy…”

We pieced together the following account of what happened next from various websites:

In Denver, a woman, fresh from a three day fast, in which she prayed to God for guidance in choosing a career path, was thrown right into the path of this mad-dog killer:

Amid deafening cracks of gunfire, smoke-spewing canisters and the flight of thousands of New Life Church members, Jeanne Assam said she suddenly saw the hallways clear and a gunman come through the door.

“I took cover. I identified myself. I engaged him. I took him down,” the 42-year-old former law officer and volunteer church security guard said Monday at a news conference in the Colorado Springs police station.
Murray was carrying two handguns, an assault rifle and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition, said Sgt. Jeff Johnson of the Colorado Springs Police Department.

“It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God,” she said.

Assam worked as a police officer in downtown Minneapolis during the 1990s and is licensed to carry a weapon. She attends one of the morning services and then volunteers as a guard during another service.

New Life’s Senior Pastor Brady Boyd called Assam “a real hero” because Murray “had enough ammunition on him to cause a lot of damage.”

Boyd said Assam was the one who suggested the church beef up its security Sunday following the Arvada shooting, which it did. The pastor credited the security plan and the extra security for preventing further bloodshed.

Boyd said there are 15 to 20 security people at the church. All are volunteers but the only ones armed are those who are licensed to carry weapons.

The security guards are members of the church who are screened and not “mercenaries that we hire to walk around our campus to provide security,” Boyd said.

About 7,000 people were on the church campus at the time of the shooting, said Boyd….

“I just said, ‘Holy Spirit, be with me.’ I wasn’t even shaking,” Assam said. “I give the credit to God. I say this very humbly. God was with me.”

The female security guard who shot and stopped a gunman at a Colorado Springs church yesterday is crediting God for helping her to resolve the threat by killing the assailant…

“This has got to be God, because of the firepower that [the gunman] had vs. what I had was God. I did not run away and I didn’t think for a minute to run away, I just knew that I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse. I just prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide me.” …
“I heard shots fired. It was chaos. There were a lot of people in the church,” she described.

“The halls cleared out and I saw him coming through the doors. I took cover, waited for him to get closer, came out of cover and identified myself, engaged him, took him down,” she said.

Church officials said they have a contingent of volunteer security officers because of the high profile of the church.

“Obviously if we had not had an armed person on our campus, 50 or 100 people could have lost their lives,” the pastor said. …

…victims Stephanie Works, 18, and her sister Rachael, 16, adorned the program for services Sunday.

The two were killed when gunman Matthew Murray, armed with an assault rifle, a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, opened fire in the parking lot as a service was letting out. The girls’ father and two other people were wounded.

A volunteer security guard shot and wounded Murray, 24, before he turned the gun on himself. Twelve hours earlier and about 65 miles away, police said, Murray killed two staff members of the Youth With a Mission missionary training center in Arvada and wounded two others….

A Vietnam vet’s eyewitness account:

Larry Bourbonnais, a combat-tested Vietnam veteran, said it was the bravest thing he’s ever seen.

Bourbonnais, who was among those shot by a gunman Sunday at New Life Church, watched as a security guard, a woman later identified as Jeanne Assam, calmly returned fire and killed the shooter.

“She just started walking toward the gunman firing the whole way,” said Bourbonnais, who was shot in the arm. “She was just yelling ‘Surrender,’ walking and shooting the whole time.”

Bourbonnais, 59, was chowing down in the chuch cafeteria when he heard the shots. He headed in the direction of the gunfire, asking “where’s the shooter?”, as people ran past him.

Near an entryway in the church, Bourbonnais came upon the gunman and an armed male church security guard who was there with his gun drawn but not firing, he said.

“Give me your handgun. I’ve been in combat, and I’m going to take this guy out,” Bourbonnais recalled telling the guard. “He kept yelling, ‘Get behind me! Get behind me!’ He wouldn’t hand me his weapon, but he wouldn’t do anything.”

There was an additional armed security guard there, another man, who also didn’t fire, Bourbonnais said.

…Bourbonnais yelled at the gunman to draw his attention, he said.

“First, I called him ‘Coward’ then I called him ‘S—head’ ” Bourbonnais said. “I probably shouldn’t have been saying that in church.”

No, indeed, it only attracted the shooter’s attention:

That’s when the shooter pointed one of his guns at Bourbonnais and fired, he said.

Bourbonnais ducked behind a hollow, decorative pillar and was hit in the arm by a bullet and fragments of the pillar.

Enter our heroine:

Assam turned a corner with a drawn handgun, walked toward the gunman and yelled “Surrender!” Bourbonnais said.

The gunman pointed a handgun at Assam and fired three shots, Bourbonnais said. She returned fire and just kept walking toward the gunman pressing off round after round.

After the gunman went down, Bourbonnais asked Assam, a volunteer security guard with the church, how she remained so calm and focused.

Bourbonnais said she replied:

“I was asking the Holy Spirit to guide me the entire time.”