St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron updates reporters after the shooting at Great Mills High School in Maryland. (Screen capture, YouTube, ABC)
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
The confrontation between an armed school resource officer and a Maryland high school gunman that ended with the shooter’s death might easily underscore the long-standing contention by gun rights organizations that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
The shooting at Great Mills High School left two students – male and female – wounded, but only the 17-year-old would-be killer is dead. He was identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins. He was armed with a Glock semi-auto pistol, according to St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron.
Rollins had only fired a couple of shots that hit the two students before he was chased down a hallway and confronted by Sheriff’s Deputy Blaine Gaskill. Each fired one shot before the incident ended according to several published reports.
Sheriff Cameron told reporters that there is a school resource officer at each high school in the county, which is about 60 miles southeast of Washington, D.C.
Maryland has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States. It is extremely difficult, and often impossible, for most adults to get a carry license. The teen gunman violated several existing laws by bringing a gun onto a school campus, carrying it illegally and opening fire.
The incident unfolded just four days before a nationwide “March for Your Lives” event in the aftermath of February’s mass fatal shooting at a Florida High School. But in this case, the SRO quickly confronted the shooter and stopped the rampage. Broward County, Florida lawmen have taken lots of criticism since the Valentine’s Day shooting because they waited outside the school building.
Sheriff Cameron told reporters, “This is what we prepare for; this is what we pray we will never have to do.”
In the weeks following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, there have been mass demonstrations of high school students across the country, calling for an end to so-called “gun violence” and for more restrictive gun control laws. To many in the firearms community, it appears that this student movement has been expropriated by the gun prohibition lobby to push its anti-gun political agenda.
There have been reports that some students who support the Second Amendment have been harassed or otherwise intimidated. To that end, the Second Amendment Foundation has announced a new project to support those students.
In a strongly-worded statement, SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb noted, “While we encourage young Americans to speak their minds and engage in productive debate and dialogue about this issue, we cannot condone any behavior designed to silence or intimidate others with different viewpoints. That is why we are announcing this project to help students who support their constitutional rights.
“We recognize that in times of high emotion and short tempers, there is inevitably the potential for disagreement to get out of hand,” he continued. “It is often too easy to go beyond the bounds of rational discourse and enter the realm of vindictiveness.
“If we are to find the common ground everyone seems to seek,” he said, “we’ve got to find it together. If students are penalized for exercising their First Amendment rights to defend the Second Amendment, we want to know about it.”
About 1,500 students attend the high school, located inland from Chesapeake Bay.
