Couple of problems with that:
1. Illinois law does not preclude armed employees; in fact, Dale (the owner of Birds n' Brooks) is generally armed. You can legally carry any legal gun on your own property or at your place of employment with the owner's permission.
The story you linked doesn't mention the circumstances of the theft of the shotgun, so I'm not sure if you meant the employee was coming into the shop and surprised Potts burgling the place.
2. When they say the "North entrance" they're talking about the front door, so to speak, with a large veranda and a wide drive facing one of the busiest streets in Springfield. It's amazing that nobody witnessed the shooting, but then on a Monday there wouldn't be many legislators or their staffers about.
I meant to post a picture of the North entrance here, but I can't find a single one online. The East entrance has the impressive columns and the statue of Lincoln, so it's in all the pictures. Weird that there's not even one, though. Must be a conspiracy.
3. The owner of Birds n' Brooks is Dale Patterson. He's an OK guy, little gruff and grumpy, but who isn't? He's chewed me out a couple of times, but he's not a bad guy.
Here's where it gets bad for him: the store employee reported as wounded in the article was Dale's son, Dale Patterson, Jr.
At some point, one of the sherriff's deputies or someone mentioned to a reporter that it was possible that Dale had fired the shot that hit Dale Jr. in the arm as he struggled with the robber. I still have no idea if that's true, but it was repeated about a gazillion times in the hour I listened to the live radio coverage between the end of one job and the beginning of another.
IF it turns out that Dale fired that shot, and IF the story gets any national legs, I expect Dale to be lampooned and mocked in truly vicious and shameful attacks. He's tailor-made to be caricatured as the grumpy, old, bumbling, paranoid, right-wing survivalist nutcase (but he's not one.) He owns an army-surplus store, he collects John Wayne memorabilia and guns, and he drives a big Ford pickup with "The Duke" on the license plates. I feel certain some enterprising reporter will point out that obviously Dale thought he was John Wayne and took the law into his own hands, cowboy fashion, nearly killing his own child in the process and proving why we can't trust people like him to own guns or carry them.
Personally, I can think of several reasons to take such a shot even if you knew it stood a chance of hitting the wrong man. There are almost no details. It's possible Dale was knocked down or out and got up to find the robber getting the best of Dale Jr., which with a shotgun could easily have presented him with the choice of firing or watching his son be murdered. I'd take a gamble in that situation, too, or at least I hope I would. It's easily thirty yards from his office door to the wall with the rifles, which is presumably where they would have been struggling if Potts was after a rifle. Long handgun shot with your target moving and fighting with your son!
3. I wish Dale had killed Potts deader than Milli Vanilli right there. If he had, Wozniak would still be alive (and possibly Dale Jr. wouldn't have his wound.)
However, the situation points up one of the oddities of trying to form any kind of political argument from these situations. Neither Wozniak nor anyone else would have known that he owed his life to Dale if Dale had stopped Potts. If he had killed him, in fact, he might have found himself at the center of a storm. Now, for missing and failing to stop him before he went off to do a random, unpredictable killing, people around here (geographically, not electronically, speaking) are already starting to snicker. You can't win.
4. People around here are already trying to decide which side of gun control will be using this event for propaganda. My guess is both. As Tamara might say, this is a Rorschach tragedy. People will see in it what they want to see. We see that Dale almost stopped the guy, and that metal detectors wouldn't have saved anyone. Antis will see only that Dale failed to stop him, maybe hurt his own son, and that even "a trained professional" is no match for any idiot off the street with a gun, so why have guns?
5. There's a lot of talk now about metal detectors and armed guards at the Capitol. I worked there as a reporter for a few months, and I told people back then that I could go through the security and commit whatever violence I wanted anytime I chose. Metal detectors will NOT stop the next Potts. He neutralized the guard and was in like Flynt until he decided to retreat to his car. I don't know why he did that, but the people inside should be glad, because they were sitting ducks. There ARE armed Secretary of State police in the capitol, but not at the doors. They seem pretty professional, as I found out when I left my briefcase sitting on the floor in a hallway during the AWB debate two sessions ago (two armed cops appeared with a dog and asked nicely to sniff the case, so I let them.)
The guards who are there are basicaly rent-a-cops. Guns and even range time wouldn't have saved these guys from Potts. A man should not be able to park a flashy rice rocket in the no-parking zone in front of your giant glass doors, then hoof up the many steps to those doors with a 12-gauge shotgun in hand, open the door and blast you without your noticing, but apparently he did just that. (Obviously I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, we all lose focus and awareness at times. But this is a good example of why you want to do that less, not more.)
It's easy, right now, to walk right past these guys. There are no metal detectors. They make you sign a book and give a driver's license number, address, etc. when you enter, but I signed in as "Rusty Shackleford" with fake info most of the time. That's not paranoia, just a Dale Gribble reference I thought someone might chuckle at. I don't think they ever checked that log.
I always said that if someone of my size and build wanted to go past most of those guards, he could walk past or simply bull-rush past the guard and commit all kinds of mayhem. Most were elderly or badly out of shape.
No matter how you harden the place, though, if someone wants to walk up and shoot the first person they see, that's going to be almost impossible to stop. A good step will be capturing Potts and putting him on death row.
