Fortunately, before mayhem could ensue, an armed parishioner took him at gunpoint. This was not what the violent intruder had come for; he surrendered, and a mass murder was averted.
These things don’t always have such happy endings. For a number of reasons, houses of worship are disproportionately likely to be the targets of mass murderers. Across the spectrum of the faiths, clergy and church management have taken to heart the words attributed to Jesus Christ: “If thou hast not a sword, sell thy cloak and buy one.” (Luke 22:36)
Yeah, it’s Sunday. Some of you are religious, some are not. I once gave that quote to a friend who happens to be an atheist, who replied with a puzzled look, “Whose screen name is Luke twenty-two thirty-six? What forums does he post on?” Well, if you don’t read the Bible, you’ll find the same principle in Ethics 101. There is such a thing as a responsibility to protect the innocent from evil. This is why so many houses of worship now provide discreet armed security for their members in attendance.
One such was Jeanne Assam, an ex-cop working volunteer security at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado on December 9, 2007. In the wee hours of that morning, a crazed young man had shot multiple people at an affiliated church in a suburb of Denver. The same monster showed up at the Colorado Springs facility with an AR15, a couple of handguns, and a backpack with more than a thousand rounds of ammunition. He opened fire in the parking lot, killing two and wounding two more. Entering the church, he found himself facing Ms. Assam…and his own mortality.
Disregarding her own safety, Jeanne Assam moved in on the heavily armed gunman, firing her Beretta 92 FS with deadly accuracy, and cut him down in a hail of 9mm bullets. Some say that at the last moment he put a fatal bullet into himself, but that wouldn’t change the fact that he died only after Ms. Assam disabled him with multiple solid hits, and stopped a rampage that could have claimed dozens of lives.
We are a nation that seems driven to tear down its heroes, and Jeanne Assam became a target of the mainstream media and other forces thereafter. You can read her compelling story in her own words. Her book “God, the Gunman, and Me” is available for $14.99 plus $5.00 postage from http://www.jeanneassam.com/jeannes-book .
From the brave man in Spartanburg to the courageous lady in Colorado Springs, we have logical testament to the fact that if you’re going to refer to those folks in the pews as “the flock,” and their spiritual advisor as “the shepherd,” it makes a lot of sense to have some sheepdogs around, with good sharp fangs.
When he first ran for President, Barack Obama was the most anti-gun candidate for that office in history. His advocacy of “assault weapons bans” that would have covered many semiautomatic weapons your grandparents and great grandparents hunted with and used to fight for our country, was on his website during the early days of his campaign. He had made it clear that he was opposed to the right of law-abiding citizens to carry guns in public to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Since the election, the President and his apologists have noted that he has done nothing to hurt gun owners. Advocates of firearms owners’ civil rights have repeatedly warned that this would indeed be his strategy during his first term, and that both the mask and the gloves would come off once he was re-elected to his second and final term of office in 2012. The apologists said in essence, “No, a man as sincere as President Obama would never ‘turn’ like that.”
Well, consider this, which slipped into the mainstream news media as an amusing “gaffe.”
Hmmm. He can’t show his real intentions now, but after his next and last election, he’ll be more “flexible”?
If President Obama is re-elected, I predict that we will see the strongest attack on gun owners’ rights that has ever come out of the White House. And forget about the strategy of “we’ll just endure four years until the next election.” The constituency of the Supreme Court, in four more years of an Obama administration, will have changed considerably from the one that barely gave us the Second Amendment-affirming decisions in Heller and McDonald. It will set the stage for the man most likely to get the Democratic nomination for President in 2016, Rahm Emanuel. In many ways, Emanuel is Obama’s familiar, and much less inclined than his mentor to keep his anti-gun leanings even temporarily in the closet. As mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has already proposed a draconian, impossibly expensive gun registration and ownership scheme for the entire state of Illinois. And don’t be surprised if President Obama announces that Rahm Emanuel will be his Vice-Presidential running mate in the 2012 election.
We still have a few months before the election. Get involved. Do what you can to put someone in the White House who won’t appoint Supreme Court justices who vote against the obvious intent of the Bill of Rights.
Someone who hasn’t blatantly and clearly expressed their intent to “be more flexible” after they’ve won the last election they think they’ll need to win.
The death almost a month ago of 17-year old Trayvon Martin at the hands of appointed neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman has become a cause célèbre that has even drawn the notice of our President, who notes that if he had a son he would probably look like Trayvon. I’m seeing some defending Zimmerman, and most demanding his head on a platter, and a whole lot of people who don’t understand how the justice system is geared to approach these things.
As I’ve said earlier in this blog, in answer to reader query, we don’t know enough about what happened to rush to judgment yet, whether that judgment is justified self-defense, murder, or manslaughter. The police have made it clear that there is evidence that has not yet been made public, and may not be put forth until the Grand Jury examines the case next month. Some issues:
The autopsy results, including toxicology screen, have not yet been released. If it turns out that the young man who died was fueled by drugs known to cause violent behavior, could that change our perceptions? That knowledge is not yet in our hands. (Reportedly, Zimmerman was not tested, and police indicate that he showed no signs of drug or alcohol impairment.) My advice to YOU if YOU’RE ever involved in a shooting: request to be taken to a hospital to have a blood sample and toxicology screen taken. A “negative for everything” result will prevent false allegations later that you were drunk or drugged-up when you pulled the trigger.
The death weapon was a Kel-Tec PF9 semiautomatic 9mm pistol. It has been reported that the gun was recovered with a full magazine and that only the chambered round had been fired. This is a condition we associate with something preventing the gun from cycling a fresh round from the magazine into the chamber after the shot was discharged. One thing that can cause that is another man’s hand wrapped around the pistol, retarding its slide mechanism. This would indicate, as could certain gunshot residue patterns or cuts in certain places if found on Trayvon Martin’s hand(s), that a struggle for a gun was taking place when the fatal shot was fired. This would clearly change the shape of the case. But – WE DON’T KNOW YET.
Both men, according to initial reports, were “squeaky clean” in terms of their background. We now know, meh, not so much. There were allegations of domestic abuse against Zimmerman, and a conviction for resisting arrest, in his past. Young Mr. Martin was in the complex in the first place so his dad could straighten him out after being kicked out of school for a week…for what, we don’t know.
Pundits who don’t all seem to understand the concept are tying this shooting in to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law much more than they should. There is conflicting evidence/testimony as to whether Martin approached Zimmerman or vice versa in the penultimate moments before the physical fight that led to the fatal shot. There is, in short, not yet enough information for any of us outside the investigation to formulate a solid opinion.
Update: Turns out that the Trayvon Martin Facebook page mentioned here last night was the wrong Trayvon Martin; that has been deleted with my apologies, and thanks to those who flagged me to the error. Also, HuffPost reports that Trayvon had been suspended for chronic truancy, but another source notes that his school’s posted rules do not prescribe that length of suspension for that minor an offense. Meanwhile, the college George Zimmerman had been attending has suspended HIM, due to the current controversy.
My advice? Let’s all “stand our ground,” not participate in the rush to judgment, and wait for the facts and the evidence to become available to us 300 million jurors in the Court of Public Opinion.
On December 30, 2011, we discussed here the case of the female medical student from Tennessee who was arrested for illegal possession of a handgun in New York City, and was looking at a mandatory three years or more, plus a felony conviction that would have destroyed her career and her life. Of course, in many big cities in more enlightened parts of our country, her Tennessee carry permit would have rendered her perfectly legal. Read about it Here.
This leaves at least one defendant with an out of state permit, who has turned down a similar plea offer, facing charges for much the same thing.
I haven’t heard if Mayor Bloomberg has recanted his outrageous public accusation that this young woman had cocaine in her purse when arrested after declaring her firearm, or rendered a much-deserved apology. The substance in question turned out to be powdered aspirin.
A reminder to all who read this, who go about lawfully armed, and travel: the best, most up to date guide to state-by-state gun laws is handgunlaw.us.
And, another reminder: a bill that would force any state where carry permits are issued to recognize permits issued by other jurisdictions has already passed the House and is now in the Senate. I believe it has the best chance of passing that any such legislation has ever had, or is likely to have in the immediate future. For goodness sake, contact your Senator and ask him or her to support it. It was discussed in my last blog entry, immediately below this one.
Sure an’ begorrah, laddies and colleens, I’m wishin’ ya a Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, with the wind at yer back an’ all o’ that. Be sure that ye wear green, and verdigris on your bullets doesn’t count.
It’s also time to be talking with your representatives on Capitol Hill urging them to support National Concealed Carry Reciprocity, which is coming up for a vote. Now, that O’Bama fella not only isn’t really Irish, he also is quite likely in his next term to go for the hard core “gun control” agenda he always supported before he got elected. The general consensus in the gun community is that he has laid off gun owners in his first term because he doesn’t want to antagonize us before the coming elections this November, but that once he’s reelected, his gloves and his mask will both come off. He has reportedly told the anti-gunners that he’s working on their agenda under the radar.
I would kind of like this bill to get to the President’s desk to be signed while he is still reluctant to antagonize millions of honest, one-issue voters. There are some on our own side who feel that national reciprocity smacks too much of Federalism, and some who hint that it’s a dark Democrat conspiracy to steal our guns. Nobody has a better handle on the matter than the National Rifle Association and their Institute for Legislative Action, both of which are pushing strongly for national reciprocity.
The bill as written is not perfect, but nobody gets “perfect.” It will allow a helluva lot more good, law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and their families in public, in a helluva lot more places than the practice is allowed now.
The good Saint Patrick was said to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. National concealed carry won’t drive all the human snakes out of the United States, but it will give more good people the option to protect themselves, one snake at a time. It will save lives, and it will give peace of mind.
I’d be interested in all y’all’s take on this. I for one am solidly for it
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