When the first shot went off, Pat Maisch of Tucson knew it was a gun. Standing at the end of a line to see Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, she hit the ground. The murderer had just shot Mary Reed who was shielding her children, when he ran out of bullets.
The shooter had fired 33 rounds in 20 seconds on January 8, 2011, at a “Congress on Your Corner” event, killing six people and injuring 13. Suddenly two men tackled the crazy shooter and landed on Maisch.
“In our case, we had two good guys without guns,” she said. The killer was taking another magazine out of his pocket, “and I was able to take that away from him.” She immobilized the shooter by pinning her knees on each of his ankles.
Speaking at a meeting of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, she said she was not physically injured, but is scarred by the gun violence. “People said to me, ‘that happened for a reason.’ That really pissed me off because there’s no reason that God needed Christina-Taylor Green [age 9] in heaven, or Dorwan Stoddard, or Phyllis Schneck, or Judge John Roll or Gabe Zimmerman, or Dorothy Morris.”
“This happened because people who are a danger to themselves and others shouldn’t have guns, but have easy access to them,” Maisch said.
