A good guy without a gun

In Colorado Springs, Richard Fierro, a U.S. Army vet who’d deployed three times to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, went to an LGBTQ nightclub with his wife to celebrate a friend’s birthday. There was dancing and a drag show.

In came a man wearing body armor and wielding an AR-15-style assault rifle, both of which are legal in Colorado, 23 years after the Columbine massacre and a decade after the mass shooting in an Aurora movie theater.

Fierro jumped on the assailant’s back, knocked him to the floor and managed to grab his pistol, with which he started hitting the shooter. He shouted for help. Several people, including a drag performer in stiletto heels, kicked him and kept him down.

Those who believe more and more New Yorkers should be armed subscribe to the myth that only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.

But ever more guns wielded by civilians on our subways, in our nightclubs and on our crowded streets would likely mean chaos.

And it was good guys without guns—but with fists and high heels— who just stopped a mass shooting in progress.