Church Security & Legally Armed Parishioners

  • Thread starter Thread starter childinthefaith
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Let me see if I can put it this way:
Crime has evolved. If a person is out to take what you have, usually that is not the only thing that happens. Get mugged, and beaten up. Career criminal who doesn’t want a witness, you might be killed outright. Womans purse stolen, might be a good pick for rape as well. People have had their family members violated while they were forced to watch. Evil happens.
A firearm is one means of equalizing force between a strong attacker, and giving a weaker defender a “fighting chance.” I am very sorry that the world is in this way. You might not agree with the idea, not everyone will, and it is just fine by me.
With guns in church figure this: murder has been against the law for about 2000 years. As a society, we have the power to punish offenders up to, and including forcibly taking their own life. If this, known by all is not a deterrent, a “no weapons” sign on a door will do nothing. Good people need to act against evil, not just accept, and be subject to it.
Dominus vobiscum
 
VonDerTann said:
, vz, so the guy or gal next to you is secretly carrying a weapon to mass and is in “direct disobedience” to a bishop or priest
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Your sins are not my business.
VonDerTann said:
guess when a nutcase brings an assault rifle into church and starts shooting, you can jump up and say, “hey you! Stop that! You’re in direct disobedience to the bishop!”
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Oh that’s funny…ha ha ha.
Such an eloquently made point.

Do you really fear for your life at Mass?
The original post says their wife is.
Is this fear reasonable?

The bishop has ruled.

No one on this thread has been able to show it reasonable to even question it…much less disobey.
 
Right.

According to Associated Press, there were 41 mass shootings in the US in 2019.

That’s almost double the number of European mass shootings (23) between 2009 and 2018.

In Japan, which has extremely restrictive gun ownership laws, there were 6 (six!) deaths by gunfire in 2014, compared with 33’599 in the US.

Either Americans are particularly violent (which I don’t believe for a second), or there is a link between gun violence and the restrictivity of gun ownership laws.
Agnus-Dei said:
A firearm is one means of equalizing force between a strong attacker, and giving a weaker defender a “fighting chance.”
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I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make sense to me.
 
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VonDerTann said:
OK, vz, so the guy or gal next to you is secretly carrying a weapon to mass and is in “direct disobedience” to a bishop or priest.

I guess when a nutcase brings an assault rifle into church and starts shooting, you can jump up and say, “hey you! Stop that! You’re in direct disobedience to the bishop!”
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Or when the parishioner who heard what the bishop said, but did it anyway, pulled out his weapon to stop the attacker — “the bishop has spoken, put that away, you’re not supposed to have that here, whomever that guy shoots, I guess it’s just their time to go”.

You probably would not have time, or the wits about you, to be quite that nuanced.
 
If a criminal can’t find a gun he or she will just use another means.

In American crooks use guns. In Europe they use knives; vehicles; whatever else.

One difference: in Europe when an attacker goes nuts, everyone screams for the police/paramilitary forces - whose ammunition may be back in their vehicle or back at police HQ. Don’t folks ever wonder why stabbings in places like London cause like 30 injuries? One reason is because the police are “armed but unarmed” and no one around has a handgun in their purse/briefcase.
 
Angus’ point makes perfect sense to me and I agree totally.strong text
 
Yet the churchgoer in Texas who took down a church shooter kept their wits about them.

I don’t think you can find an example of a private citizen who whipped out a gun in church thinking they needed to use it and who did so wrongly and/or made a wrong call. We Can however find growing numbers of cases where,
In retrospect, it would have been great if a congregant had had a pistol with them.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
You probably would not have time, or the wits about you, to be quite that nuanced.
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People keep trying to go that route, but it is not the point.

The original post opened with fear for one’s life.
I do not believe this fear reasonable. And I challenge anyone to put some real statistics together to say otherwise.

The bishop has provided the rule.
There is not reasonable justification to disobey.
 
The 10 commandments provided the original rule: thou shalt not kill.

And yet people still commit murders.

Until we can do away with murder (and we can’t) the need to protect oneself will remain.

The “bishop’s rule” merely creates another gun free zone - and we’ve seen that rules like that don’t work.
 
VonDerTann said:
Yet the churchgoer in Texas who took down a church shooter kept their wits about them.

I don’t think you can find an example of a private citizen who whipped out a gun in church thinking they needed to use it and who did so wrongly and/or made a wrong call. We Can however find growing numbers of cases where,
In retrospect, it would have been great if a congregant had had a pistol with them.
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Anyone who is going to carry, needs to have the mindset about them, and the stability, to know that there is the remote chance they will have to use it, and that they will have to stay focused on what they have to do, and not panic. If they cannot do that, then they should not carry.

I have been told that I have a gift for remaining extremely cool and collected when there is a crisis. Many times I have shepherded others through unexpected crises and potential tragedies without losing my wits — health emergencies, accidents, sudden reception of bad news, and so on. Somebody has to do it. Again, it’s a gift — “something just kicks in”.
 
I also don’t think the OPs fear is so unreasonable. Attacks on churches have increased lately and they are in fact the quintessential easy targets.
 
littlebird said:
I don’t believe that whenever or wherever you die is God’s will
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Every thing that happens happens because God allows it. God sees one sparrow die.

Scripture is clear “it is appointed to man once to die, after that the judgement”. God very much is the giver of life and the one Who has the date, hour, moment when you or I will draw our final breath.

Christ even spoke of this, “how can you by worry add a single hour to your life” Matthew 6, Luke 12.

If you decide to go and stand in front of a train and die, God permitted you to go to that train track and knows/allows you to die.
 
VonDerTann said:
From my American perspective I’ve never understood the modern European fear of guns
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Have to say I don’t get that either. I also don’t see Europe as being somehow magically free of crime or a place where I skip down the urban streets with no fear because of law-abiding people’s aversion to guns.
 
VonDerTann said:
From my American perspective I’ve never understood the modern European fear of guns and over reliance on police in major cities.
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I’m not European, but I live in a gun free country and I would be terrified being surrounded by armed citizens. You just don’t know which one would snap. Then again, we don’t have much violent crime and arming us would probably increase it anyways. Thankfully we are in a safe environment where most of us can walk home at 3am without fearing as much as we would if we were in say, the States. So the idea of defending ourselves with a gun seems absurd. I would definitely want some sort of weapon if I’m American though. The rates are crazy.
 
Yes, but let’s try to give the IP the benefit of the doubt, perhaps and admit that these shhotings have increased drastically. There are 400,000 places if worship in the US. Let’s say there are 5 church shootings a year. The odds of your church being his us 1 in 80,000 per year. That makes your lifetime odds 1 in 1000. The odds of dying in a car crash us around 1 in 100. So giving the OP the extreme benefit if the doubt, it is clear he has an inordinate fear if being in a church shootings. Despite his training with firearms, do we really want people walking around in our Churches with guns who have very inordinate fears. It seems a small step for such a fear to be falsely triggered (pardon the pub) and a tragedy resulting.
 
You said > “Every thing that happens happens because God allows it.”

Is this the same thing as God makes it happen ?
 
God does not move us like puppets, we have free will over our day to day actions, yet he knows what they will be and allows them to happen, even if they are bad for us.

This does not change the teachings of Scripture that we cannot add one hour to our lives.
 
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