RIGHT-WING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS FORBIDS YOU TO THINK OF HER A "SECURITY GUARD"

Jeanne Assam is an ex-police officer. She's one of a number of members of New Life Church in Colorado Springs who provide security; those who are licensed to carry weapons, including Assam, do so. Confronted with Matthew Murray, who'd already killed four people and was heavily armed, she took her responsibilities seriously, bravely confronted the gunman, and killed him before he could kill again. (UPDATE: Now we're learning that she shot him several times, but the bullet that killed him was his own.)

But don't dare talk about her as if she was a security guard:

New Life's Senior Pastor Brady 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.

Yes, heaven forfend.

McQ at QandO says more or less the same thing:

She's being called a 'security guard', but in reality she was a volunteer church security person. My church has them as well. As far as I know, they aren't armed, but they are there for security purposes. And as the incident in Colorado proves, there's a reason for them to be there.

In the case of the Colorado Springs incident, the female "guard" who shot the gunman was a former Minneapolis police officer (in the early '90s) but a volunteer church security person who also had a license to carry a weapon. Because of the shooting earlier at another church property in Arvada, she'd suggested that the church beef up security at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

... one armed church member, trained and prepared to use her weapon, ended it before it really got started.

That's how you stop a psychopath.

And there you have it: We're not allowed to think of her as a "guard," even though she used to be a cop and was acting as a guard. We have to think of her as "one armed church member, trained and prepared to use her weapon," because that's the way this story becomes a conservatively correct legend.

Ordinary citizens need guns because ordinary citizens are the first line of defense against crime -- that's the gun crowd's first principle. So pay no attention to Assam's training professional experience as a police officer. Pay no attention to the fact that she was on duty.

In fact, she was no more an average parishioner than a trained volunteer firefighter (with prior professional experience) at a house fire is an average citizen.

But we're not allowed to say that, because the gun myth requires her to be average.

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UPDATE: This guy really tries to enforce the right-wing PC (emphasis in original):

...One thing is clear: she is not a police officer, and by inference, she must be a civilian CCW [concealed carry] licensee. In other words, an armed citizen was on the scene of a shooting rampage and successfully stopped the murderer.

...It has been interesting to watch the language game being played about the security staffer who stopped the rampaging gunman. There has been an obvious attempt to "officialize" her, and I have watched with a certain degree of amusement as the language has morphed from "volunteer" to "plain clothes security officer" in news media reporting. Could it be that the MSM want to do anything they can to avoid acknowledging that this was a legally armed citizen who stopped this murderous attack with a privately owned firearm?

But, by the chuch's own admission, she was tasked to provide armed security -- she wasn't just a random person in a pew who happened to be armed. So she's being called a "plainclothes security officer" because (although she was a volunteer and a parishioner) she was acting as a plainclothes security officer.