The off-duty police officer who killed a knife-wielding attacker who stabbed 10 people in Minnesota Saturday is "a good guy with a gun," former National Rifle Association President David Keene told Newsmax TV on Tuesday.
"One wonders how many examples you need to convince some folks that perhaps an armed citizen with training, who knows what he or she is doing, is an asset rather than a liability to safety in this country," Keene, now opinion editor for The Washington Times, told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth.
The officer, Jason Falconer, killed Dahir Adan, at the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, Minn. Adan, a Somali immigrant, was born in Kenya and came to the United States as a baby.
Falconer, a part-time officer with the Avon Police Department, is the former police chief of Albany, Minn. He also owns the Tactical Advantage Firearms Training Inc. and is a certified firearms instructor.
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Keene slammed Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton's called for "religious and racial tolerance" after the attack.
"If you listen to the governor, it's almost as if he's implicitly condemning Mr. Faulkner, who did not shoot the assailant because he was a Muslim," he told Hayworth.
"He shot him because he had a knife and was stabbing people. He stabbed 10 people and had attacked Mr. Faulkner.
"Mr. Faulkner was, as the mayor, said 'heroic.' He was not involved in any kind of discrimination.
"In this country, we don't treat people differently — but we do treat people who are lawbreakers differently than we treat others," Keene added. "For the governor to even implicitly suggest that there was something — or you'd think that Mr. Faulkner and others were somehow in the wrong because they responded to violence by taking down the perpetrator."
Keene is co-author of the upcoming book, "Shall Not Be Infringed: The New Assaults on Your Second Amendment."
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