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Some community churches are now arming themselves

Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:16 pm
by K9s
Too small to hire guards, too worried to go gun-free, some community churches are now arming themselves

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html
Sunday service had just ended, but Noah Tillman-Young called his small congregation back for another prayer. Shots had been fired at a rural church just down the road — a church a lot like theirs.

As his 30-some parishioners stood in a circle asking God for protection, something changed for the pastor of Joyful Heart. An act of mass violence in his Stockdale, Tex., church was no longer unthinkable. Ten miles away, 26 people were dead at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, the deadliest shooting at a house of worship in the country’s modern history.

That night, Tillman-Young and parish leaders held a vigil for their neighbor church. The next day, they decided to arm their own.

“It’s nothing you ever imagine could happen, but when it hits so close to home, you have no choice — you can’t ignore it and you have to prepare,” Tillman-Young said. “It’s the reality that houses of worship are increasingly becoming targets.”

With a new team of private security officers and an armed corps of volunteers, Joyful Heart joined the wave of small and midsize places of worship adopting security measures to gird against the rising threat of violent attacks.

While there is no definitive tracking of shootings or other attacks on houses of worship, several researchers and the federal government have documented a significant rise in targeted acts — particularly those with high death tolls.

FBI statistics show a 35 percent increase in hate crimes at churches, synagogues, temples and mosques from 2014 to 2018, the most recent year for which data is available. The nonprofit Faith Based Security Network found a 60 percent increase in “non-accidental deaths” at such sites from 2014 to 2017. And of the 88 people killed in mass shootings at places of worship since 1966 — defined as incidents in which four or more people were killed — more than half the deaths came in the last five years, according to The Washington Post’s mass shootings database.

This spike has prompted several state legislatures to write or revise firearm laws to make it easier for people to carry guns in houses of worship.


Since the Sutherland Springs shooting in November 2017, lawmakers in 14 states have introduced 40 bills, according to a Post analysis using Quorum, a database of state and federal legislation. Several are still being debated and six have been enacted, from Louisiana to North Dakota.

In the first weeks of 2020, legislators, most of them Republicans, have introduced 13 bills allowing armed security in places of worship. The flurry of lawmaking began just days after a gunman killed two people in late December at a church in White Settlement, Tex., before an armed volunteer shot and killed him. The volunteer’s action won praise for a state law that allows parishioners to carry firearms.

Laws under consideration in Florida and Missouri would allow anyone with a concealed-carry permit to bring a firearm into a religious building. In New Jersey, a proposed law would allow houses of worship to select one person to carry a handgun for security. And in Virginia, Republicans have introduced four bills to repeal a law that bars the carrying of weapons in a place of worship “without good and sufficient reason.”

Experts say that churches, synagogues and mosques, with their typically welcoming environments and looser safety measures, can make for easier targets, especially as businesses and schools ramp up security. But more places of worship are turning to surveillance equipment and armed guards, especially volunteers from the congregation, who blend in and save the parish money, said Carl Chinn, president of the Faith Based Security Network.

Chinn and other security consultants said they’re getting more inquiries from nervous congregations. Business is always busier after a shooting, and Chinn said recent incidents were “a wake-up call.”

“Churches are waking up to the fact that the way to stop a bad person with a dangerous weapon is a good person with a weapon and training,” he said.

Gun-control advocates balk at the idea that more weapons will create safer spaces, and others suggest that armed security — especially volunteers — may actually bring more risk.

“Whenever firearms are present, there’s always room for error and the possibility that the guns which are intended to protect become liable to endanger,” said James Densley, a criminal justice professor at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota. “Arming parishioners so they can make the kind of split-second decisions that police get wrong worries me a little bit.”

But Chinn, who has tracked the use of deadly force in churches since 1999, said he hasn’t seen an instance in which innocent people were hit by a volunteer’s gunfire.

“There’s risks anytime you have defenders,” he said. “Of course, the risk is that innocent people might get hurt. But here’s what I tell people: That has not happened. We shouldn’t get wrapped around the axle of ‘what ifs.’ It’s not even comparable to the number of times people were hurt and nobody was there to protect them.”

Security teams can minimize the risks by training often and schooling themselves in more than firearm marksmanship, said Steve Padin, a retired police officer who is a chief consultant for the Watchman’s Academy, a church security firm.

The volunteers that Padin sees, mostly men, often have a background in the military or law enforcement. And when they don’t, Padin said, they need to learn to think like those who do.

A well-trained security guard should be versed in de-escalation and disarming tactics, be able to recognize suspicious behavior and be ready to act quickly, said Padin, who travels the country training security teams at churches and synagogues.

“You should not get to the point where you have to use a firearm,” he said.

At Beth Tikkun Messianic Fellowship in Akron, Ohio, Vic Agosta and his small team of volunteer security guards huddle outside the sanctuary before Saturday service. They all carry guns, and every weekend they pray they won’t need to use them.

Agosta helped form the team eight years ago, when the congregation of 200 was growing quickly. Agosta, who is a lineman for a power company, doesn’t have a background in law enforcement or the military like some of his fellow volunteers. But he does have family in the pews, including a daughter with cerebral palsy who uses a wheelchair.

“Just the thought of someone coming into a service of ours and opening fire on us,” he said. “My daughter couldn’t run for cover.”

In Ohio, places of worship must give permission before attendees can bring in concealed handguns — a restriction that Agosta, a Second Amendment advocate, supports.

“I think you should be able to carry a weapon, but I like the control that private entities have, like churches or places of business, to say who can and cannot carry,” Agosta said.

His church asks congregants to leave their guns at home and trust in the security team.

“We don’t want you to carry,” Agosta said. “But we’ll protect you the best we can.”

At Grace Fellowship, a small born-again Christian church in suburban Omaha, Greg Eckert runs a volunteer team with four other men. He’s recruiting more volunteers from the church’s 97 members, but some have trouble passing his test. It has two questions: Will you give up your life for the congregation, and will you kill for it?

“It sounds like a silly thing to ask for a Christian believer, but God doesn’t lay down for that stuff,” Eckert said. “There were people in the Bible who had to kill at God’s command. If they can’t answer yes to that, I don’t want them.”

He requires his team to practice shooting once a month, and he tests their accuracy four times a year, keeping their bullet-pocked targets on file and dated. In Nebraska, only designated security personnel are permitted to carry concealed handguns in houses of worship — and only if the leadership has given permission and informed the congregation.

“I don’t believe any church should be just an open-carry-type situation,” Eckert said. “But I don’t think it would be prudent to have a law that you could never carry in church, either.”

Outside New York City, which has its own gun laws, New York state has no laws prohibiting firearms in places of worship. And parishioners are better off for it, said Jim Woods, the head of security at the nondenominational Niagara Frontier Bible Church, not far from the famous falls. He’s one of 10 volunteers who greet newcomers at the door, keep an eye on the parking lot and carry a weapon.

“Years ago, it wouldn’t even have crossed my mind [that] you would need to defend yourself in church,” Woods said.

One of the most notorious attacks at a place of worship was the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where Ku Klux Klan members detonated dynamite, killing four children and injuring 22 people.

Since then, attacks at places of worship have been divided into two categories: hate-fueled assaults and those related to domestic violence. Both types are increasing in frequency and deadliness, said Densley, who also co-founded the Violence Project, which tracks mass shootings.

In 2012, a neo-Nazi killed six people at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, south of Milwaukee. Three years later, a white supremacist hoping to start a race war killed nine at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. And in 2018, anti-Semitic online screeds were connected to the man accussed of bursting into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and killing 11.

These were some of the deadliest and most high-profile shootings at American houses of worshipBut more common are shootings that are extensions of intimate-partner violence or domestic disputes, like the massacre in Sutherland Springs. In those cases, Densley said, the shooter is usually a member of the congregation.

“We’re often afraid of the stuff we don’t know and don’t understand that’s outside of us, when really the biggest risk is right in front of us,” he said.

At Joyful Heart Church, the new security measures have also inspired Tillman-Young and his wife and fellow pastor, Allison, to look inward. They’ve spent more time getting to know their members and their families.

“When you’re in the community, you see those red flags, and you see them before they come to a head and get ugly,” he said. “That kind of intentional connection, that relationship, showing people love — it helps to prevent that kind of stuff.”

But more than looser gun laws and armed guards, Tillman-Young said it’s his faith that makes him feel safe.

“We’re packing,” he said, “but we’re also packing the power of God and trusting in God to keep us protected.”

Re: Some community churches are now arming themselves

Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:45 pm
by lurker
god helps those who helps themselves?

Re: Some community churches are now arming themselves

Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2020 9:11 pm
by ChipGribble
You think they carve crosses into their bullets like that one scene in Hellboy? That'd be pretty rad.

Re: Some community churches are now arming themselves

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 12:13 am
by JohnNewell
We go to a Cowboy Church. There are several around here and they were doing a ministry session at the Prison but that church seems to have folded.

Anyway, I was Old School. I told the wife that I wouldn't go to church without wearing a business suit. She convinced me that wasn't necessary.

The first time that we went I insisted on carrying my weapon. Wife wasn't too sure.

Now, after a couple of Texas church shootings Wife pretty well is comfortable with me carrying a weapon and actually commented a few weeks ago that if there was a threat at our church then I probably wouldn't be the only one that was armed.

To me, weapons in church are nothing that I would have dreamed of 40 years ago but we live in a new reality today. And the smart man and survivor adapts.

Re: Some community churches are now arming themselves

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:35 am
by K9s
Synagogues and mosques all have heavy and visible security here. They need it and I am glad they have it.

The big Christian churches have big security teams here. Smaller churches have to do what they can.

Re: Some community churches are now arming themselves

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 10:35 am
by Wino
Small rural churches after Sutherland Springs I suspect not many are unarmed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutherlan ... h_shooting

Re: Some community churches are now arming themselves

Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2020 1:58 am
by Tedzilla
I'm not part of any religion but I've read the the Torah, Quran and Bible and have found no admonishment to defending the innocent. I try to be armed unless I'm at the Post Office, including the parking lot, Washington DC and Maryland (possibly the most dangerous places I go).