The Untold Story Of How A Man And His Gun Saved The Day During Tucson Shooting

One of the most heroic stories during the horrific shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and many others is the story of Joe Zamudio:

Joe Zamudio was buying a pack of cigarettes nearby when the first shots were fired. “I ran out the doors and there is a man running and he says, ‘Shooter. Shooter. Get down,'” says Zamudio.

John Blackstone: “You heard the shots and you went running toward the shots?”

Zamudio: “I know. That’s pretty crazy, huh?”

Well, certainly pretty incredible, anyway.  Just imagine yourself running – completely unarmed – toward a mass-murdering shooter.

Would you do that?  I sure don’t think I would.

Ah, but it turns out that neither did Zamudio.  Pay particular attention beginning at 4:39 in the Youtube video:

A transcript of the most relevant moment of the interview:

Ed Shultz: “Did you ever think of drawing your firearm or did you make the determination that you didn’t have to?”

Joe Zamudio: “Sir, when I came through the door I had my hand on the butt of my pistol and I clicked the safety off.  I was ready to kill him.  But I didn’t have to do that and I was very blessed that I didn’t have to go to that place.”

Schultz:  “You would have used that firearm?”

Zamudio:  “You’re damn right!”

And pardon my saying so, but damn right he was damn right.

But it’s important to recognize that Joe Zamudio did NOT run unarmed toward a killer who was gunning unarmed people down.  Joe Zamudio was armed himself.  Rather than being a helpless target, Joe Zamudio was a warrior who ran toward a shooting scene because he knew that he could fight the slimebag on his own terms.

Had he not been so armed, the events would almost certainly have been very different – and far more tragic.

It’s still not clear exactly what happened immediately before Joe Zamudio ran onto the scene and put the forces of light over the top in a deadly battle with the forces of darkness.

The man who started the takedown of monster Jared Loughner was a 74 year-old retired Army colonel named Bill Badger (and thank God for a soldier to have been in the right place at the right time) who had been shot in the head and bleeding heavily.  Somehow even though seriously wounded he managed to grab Loughner by the wrist and took the killer down to the ground.

Here’s the basic account from the Washington Post:

TUCSON, Ariz. — Three people helped subdue a gunman accused of attempting to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killing six people at a political event in Arizona.

Pima Co. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik says Patricia Maisch (MAYSH) was waiting in line with her husband to get a photo with Giffords. When the shooting started, she ran up to the suspect and grabbed the empty magazine, then grabbed a full magazine as he was loading it into the gun.

Two men helped subdue the suspect – Roger Sulzgeber (SULZ-gay-ber), who was also in line, and Joseph Zimudie (Zah-MOO-die), who was at a nearby Walgreens and heard the shooting.

Maisch says she believes the two men got to the gun the same time she got to the magazine.

And here’s the account of 61 year-old heroine Patricia Maisch:

Ms Maisch told Channel 4 News that she had been waiting in line to meet the Congresswoman when she heard what she realised was a gunshot.

“In that split second I had to make a decision whether to run or to lay down on the ground,” she told our Washington Correspondent, Sarah Smith.

“I decided I would be a target if I ran because the gunman was now just steps from me and I lay down.”

A teenage girl next to her – being shielded by her mother – was shot three times.

“I was laying there on the concrete wondering how bad it was going to be and how it was going to hurt,” she said.

“And, instead of a gunshot , the shooter was now on the ground just on top of me nearly – and there were two gentlemen on top of him.

Somebody said ‘get the gun’, and I was already up on my knees and over his waist. The gun was out of my reach, but he was reaching into his pocket with his left hand and pulling out a magazine, which fell on the sidewalk.

“I managed to get the magazine before he could get it. I got it secure in my hand.”

While Ms Maisch knelt on the gunman’s legs and ankles to stop him flailing, she noticed that one of the men also helping hold him down was bleeding from a head wound

You get a sense of just how critical the moment was that Joe Zamudio sprinted onto the scene.  Patricia Maisch was lying on the ground waiting to die when all of a sudden a heroic struggle began to take place.

But just how long was a seriously wounded and bleeding 74 year-old man going to be able to take on and control a 22 year-old psychopath?  Not very.

Had Joe Zamudio not arrived at the moment he did, a terrible and tragic scene would have been at least TWICE as terrible and tragic.  Police were still minutes away.

And Joe Zamudio was able to race toward the gunfire when everyone else was literally running away from it because he was armed.  With a gun.

Now, allow me to digress for a moment to point out that most mainstream media accounts make out Patricia Maisch to be the hero who disarmed the shooter.  Why?  Well, because the colonel is a military man – and the left despises the military.  And Joe Zamudio (more about what the left says about him in a moment) was carrying a gun.  Which means he’s clearly a villain.

This is what we’ve got from ABC’s “The View” regarding what they think about Joe Zamudio – a guy who only selflessly raced from safety to confront a killer, turn the tide and saved a whole bunch of lives:

“Looks like white trash, talks like white trash and for all intents and purposes, IS WHITE TRASH. This thug said he “carries” a gun and unlocked the safety and was “ready to kill” (in his words). He later went on to say he was “blessed” that he didn’t have to. Can we say oxymoron here? Sickening.”

You and I have a very different notion of what is “sickening,” you slimeball.  Tag, you’re it.

I took a screenshot of ABC’s website, because you know this is going to be taken down – liberals and “moral courage” go together like peanut butter and spinach – and liberals will be denying that, yes, they really ARE this amazingly vile and loathsome:

[Click on image to enlarge]

How many times do I have to say this?  If you are a liberal, you ought to be ashamed.  Just ashamed.

And the above gets right to the heart of why I got into blogging: because while I haven’t had to display the courage of Joe Zamudio, I’ll be damned if I’m going to do nothing and allow depraved moral idiot liberal slimeballs like our example above to spew his filth.

The mainstream media leftists are going to tell this story in their own image, but the fact of the matter is that if it hadn’t been for that “white trash” “thug” Joe Zamudio and his gun, no rational mind even wants to think about how many more innocent people would have been murdered or terribly wounded.

There’s an interesting thing about such shootings involving crazed psychos: the degree of carnage is directly related to how long it takes before another gun shows up. The cities and states with the most restrictive gun control laws have the highest levels of gun violence because criminals don’t care about laws.

2nd Amendment: How the Founding Fathers Provided Against Tyranny

My brother sent this to me.  It might have ran around the internet universe seven times via email.  But it was new to me, and I found it genuinely insightful.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell” (Aug. 14, 1787. ME 6:274)

Twelve years after Jefferson wrote these words, Napolean Bonaparte installed himself into power in a coup and began a totalitarian dictatorship.  For the next sixteen years, he stirred constant war across Europe.

Sixty-one years after Jefferson wrote these words Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto, which stated, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

One hundred and twenty-seven years after Jefferson wrote these words the hatred and ugliness that had long festered in Europe erupted into the most vicious and murderous world war the world had ever known up to that time.

One hundred and thirty years after Jefferson wrote these words the revolution of class struggle described by Marx violently took over Russia and began to grow into the greatest oppressor of the human spirit the world has ever known.  Over one hundred million human beings would die under the system of communism.

One hundred and thirty-five years after Jefferson wrote these words the dictator Benito Mussolini brought fascism into the world in Italy.  And one hundred and forty-six years after Jefferson wrote these words Adolf Hitler degenerated fascism into its ultimate depths of evil that led to the Holocaust and the most costly and horrible war ever waged.

While European despots and totalitarian regimes seized weapons from the hands of the people and dominated their people with tyranny, America – like heaven in comparison – continued to grow as a free nation.  Ultimately, it came to grips with the conflict that the founding fathers deliberately created, and faced its own tyranny in a costly Civil War that resulted in the freeing of the slaves.

While white Americans continued to be free to keep tyranny at bay by bearing arms, the laws prior to the Civil War kept blacks under the thrall of abject tyranny:

“No slave shall go armed with a gun, or shall keep such weapons,” declared an 1854 law of North Carolina.

There were four million black slaves in 1861.  How long would they have remained slaves had they possessed arms?

And thus without further ado we present the:

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE

1. “Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.”  ~Thomas Jefferson

2.  Those who trade liberty for security have neither. ~John Adams

3.  Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.

4. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.

5.  Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.

6. Gun control is not about guns; it’s about control.

7.  You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.

8.  Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.

9.  You don’t shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.

10. Assault is a behavior, not a device.

11.  64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.

12.  The   United States  Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.

13.  The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.

14.  What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ do you NOT understand?

15.  Guns have only two enemies; rust and politicians.

16.  When you remove the people’s right to bear arms, you create slaves.

17.  The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

IF YOU AGREE, PASS THIS ‘REFRESHER’ ON TO TEN FREE CITIZENS.

I think back to the country our founding fathers had emerged from.  In Britain, it was illegal for a peasant to be armed.  Revolt against the king – no matter how villainous or tyrannical he was – was absolutely impossible.

The founding fathers had an idea for a greater system of government; one which forced the government to respect the people.

I think back more recently to the many countries that America has liberated from tyrants – Iraq and Afghanistan included.  The peoples we liberated were helpless to liberate themselves; they needed the strong and mighty hand of a free people who loved and valued freedom to do their liberating for them.

And America – with its passion for freedom and its hatred of tyranny espoused in the theme of sic semper tyrannis – has a proud and noble history of liberating peoples from the most evil dictators and tyrants the world has ever seen.

The 2nd Amendment was a reaction against tyranny in the aftermath of their conflict with a nation that offered its people no recourse against the tyranny of their government.

As we stare a government that is growing larger and ever larger, and more and ever more invasive, we keep our rights as a free people only by embracing the fundamental right to defend ourselves against tyranny from the wisest and noblest political leaders who ever lived.