Church Security & Legally Armed Parishioners

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I will put aside the “leaning direction” of the site and just comment on the info provided.
The report states, “for the first time” they have exceeded. What is not mentioned is for how many years they have been looking at this data before this happened. I believe my point still stands.
Has it changed my opinion? Of course not. Having a single year (three years ago) that exceeded the usual numbers is certainly not a full representation of data collected. How about the numbers for the years following? (I will guess they went down again) I suspect these numbers did not fit the story they wanted to tell, so they were not included. Very common now in reporting, and sad.
Dominus vobiscum
 
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My Greek Orthodox parish has a security guard (retired police officer) who hangs out in the parking lot. It’s a nice knowing that there is someone there to protect us. Also, our greeters go through training in “active shooter” situations.

ZP
 
In the next life, yes. In this life, they’re not the only ones who answer for it. Everybody else in the country (involuntarily) answers for it as well through the social ills and violence brought about through gun culture.

Gun ownership laws negatively impact everybody else, up to and including the right to life.
 
No to the hand grenade. (Destructive device/bomb related). And sorry, your neighbor cannot own a nuclear weapon. (No to that one in church also if they happen to have one.). Neither would be focused enough for self-defense anyway.
I do find the reductio ad absurdum argument amusing however.
Dominus vobiscum
 
TK421 said:
Gun ownership laws negatively impact everybody else, up to and including the right to life.
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I wonder what your response would be to the observation that there are many countries with extremely restrictive gun ownership laws, such as Mexico, Venezuela, Congo, Syria etc, where gun violence is extreme in comparison to countries like the U.S.A.

I don’t think that gun ownership laws are the problem; culture and social stability on the other hand generally are.
 
In the recent church shooting event, one shot ended the bad guy. Several other guns were drawn, but no one fired. They were trained.

What is it with this fantasy scenario where everybody is blasting away and multiple bystanders are shot by good guys?
 
Why even respond to such absurd hyperbole?
Grenades and nukes. What nonsense.
 
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You tell me how you can tell the good from the bad guys in a crowd in a flash of a few seconds. While you are praying and focused on the Mass.
If it is “ fantasy” give thanks. These events as Church shootings are far from common.
What is it with the teaching to stop the aggressor that it has to mean conceal carry?
 
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I have used different resources under different circumstances. Personal resources mostly, and not precisely with a lot of thinking time.None of which I was looking for. Guardian Angel, thank you…
Personally I fear more drunk driving,or texting while driving, if it clarifies.
 
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flamingpuppet said:
Why even respond to such absurd hyperbole?
Grenades and nukes. What nonsense.
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Except it’s not really hyperbole. If you just do a completely literal reading of the 2nd amendment, there’s no arbitrary distinction between a rifle or a handgun or a chain gun or vehicle-mounted guns. Even strongly pro-gun people draw a line at some point, and they do it with or without regard to the Constitution.

You could say “arms” only refers to things you can hold in your hands, but that falls flat on its face because militias had things like artillery and explosives. Nobody was pedantically looking at the amendment with a magnify lens and comparing it to a dictionary definition on Google or whatever it is that kids were into back then.

Some people admit it and some don’t, but the Constitution is ink on a page and there are limits to how useful it can be in guiding laws. Almost all of the amendments have aged well, but the 2nd amendment hasn’t aged well - and in fact has aged pretty embarrassingly poorly - because it’s so closely interlinked with technology, and it’s kind of obvious because of the quirky and acrobatic legal defenses people need to use to justify various laws.
 
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I guess you don’t remember the Garden of Gethsemine. Didn’t an Apostle cut off the ear of a Roman soldier. Apparently even the Apostles carried swords, tool of death.
 
It does discriminate between men and women. If you remember recent history, women had to sue in order to get jobs in the military that were combat related.

Women were not intended to serve in combat based on the founding fathers construction or the current statutes. Only now, if they choose to be part of the militia are they included.

Women are not required to register for selective service. Just the way it is.
 
flamingpuppet said:
Why even respond to such absurd hyperbole?
Grenades and nukes. What nonsense.
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Funny—that’s exactly how many people feel about guns in church.

My point was that we do, in fact, regulate their “basic human right” to carry a weapon of our choosing. The law gives bishops in every state the right to that regulation (either by allowing specific banning or requiring specific permission). When gun owners posit the idea that their gun possession rises above the law, they can no longer position themselves as law-abiding “good guys” out to rescue the rest of us.
 
You have patently misunderstood me. It appeared to me (and still does) that some on this board were advocating for positions that appeared cowardly. Some appeared unwilling to allow guns in church even if those guns were brought in to combat an active shooter. My point was that true Catholicism is not cowardly at all. Rather what appeared to be on display was extreme pacifism in the face of an active shooter.
 
1ke said:
My wife literally fears going to a weekend mass because she says she feels like a “sitting duck.”
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Instead of this indicating some psychological issue, it is more likely indicative of our culture of news and information overload that feeds selected fear. An example is how one could be more afraid of the coronavirus than the far deadlier flu, or be more afraid of the flu than driving.

Thought for the month: He becomes guilty of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor. - Catechism of the Catholic Church.
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You claimed that car deaths were exponentially larger. Now, you could only use that word to imply it was far greater. Now you claim that 2017 was such an anomaly that it the figures changed from an exponential difference. Seriously?

No, you unfounded assumption was way off. There is no doubt. Hence my question.
 
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neophyte said:
Under that circumstance, it is not legitimate for the Bishop to require me to have no effective means of self defense, and to provide no effective means of ensuring my defense, as a condition of receiving the sacraments.
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So next you’ll conclude you ought to be allowed to set up an anti-missile shield?

This notion that self-defence implies a right to possess whatever weapon I deem appropriate is nonsense. Further, I contend that a policy of providing for widespread and easy availability of guns does more harm than good - and if that is so, it would in fact be immoral to promote that widespread and easy availability. Of course, others may judge that such availability is a Nett positive for the society. But if it’s not, if it does do more harm than good, then promoting what some claim to be a “human right” is to promote what is immoral.
 
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