A sub-thread of another OP about carry in churches resulted in this post.
2. Churches have been targets of crime.
If you are volunteering to provide security for a local church, I'll give you a pass, but I doubt you are.
I asked for evidence that churches are targets of crime. What I got is below with my analysis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kzYEiYOjXM According to the head pastor the shooter “has psychological problems” had been fighting with his family and chose to take it out on the church his mother attended. In the aftermath of Tuscon we are told that the acts of one deranged individual is no justification for regulating hi-cap magazines. So, 1)the same applies to carry in churches and 2)this was not an attack on churches but misdirected anger at his mother.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/29/lay--mormon-... /
According to the shooter’s brother he was mentally ill and was upset with this church’s leadership because in the ‘80s he was shunned to hell. Had to find an outside link for those details.
http://www.heraldextra.com/news/national/article_599d8edb-c02f-5ea2-8edd-11f57ec5de04.html So see above and note that it wasn’t the church targeted but leadership that “shunned him to hell”. It was personal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tiller This is so well known I didn’t bother with further research but again, the target wasn’t the church but Dr. Tiller, an abortion provider.
http://www.truecrimereport.com/2009/03/church_shooting_... From the MSNBC link inside this article, “Sedlacek's attorney, Ron Slemer, told the Belleville News-Democrat on Monday that his client has deteriorated both mentally and physically since contracting Lyme disease.” It isn’t likely that Lyme disease caused the mental decline.
http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2008/11/estra... “A gunman drove across the country to confront his estranged wife, then killed her in a church vestibule.” This is an attack on a church? Really?
http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/33697179.html According to the article the shooter waited outside the church until the pastor arrived, shot him and pursued him as he attempted to escape, shooting him a second time in a nearby park. Does this sound like an attack against a church or a beef between two
men?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville_Unitarian_Univer... Okay, this one comes close but “Adkisson, a former private in the United States Army from 1974 to 1977, says that he was motivated by hatred of Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals” . His wife had been a member of this church and he was angry at the “liberal teachings” of the church. Was this an attack on a church or was it politically motivated? I’ll let you guys judge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Colorado_YWAM_and_New... The shooter had been expelled from a 12 week missionary training course. What could get a guy kicked out of church school? How about, " ‘strange behavior,’ which included playing frightening rock music and claiming to hear voices.” To be sure, he had left a number of threatening messages on Christian web sites and this was his second attack in a church but, seriously, hearing voices? Re-read the first critique about mentally .
http://m.spokesman.com/galleries/2007/may/20/moscow-chu... /
Had to find another source for this one as the link above is to a photo essay with little information. Beginning around 11:00PM the shooter opened fire on anyone in sight at the Moscow, ID court house, shooting one policeman. He then retreated to the church and shot himself. When the SWAT team entered the church and found the deceased shooter and another body, not identified. It was late at night, the church was not holding services and the shooting began with a police officer at the city court house. Can you seriously call this an attack on a church? I think not.
http://www.chron.com/news/photogallery/Church_service_e... Hard to find anything definitive on this one. Gleaning information from several articles these may have been contributing factors: The shooter was not a member of the church. The shooter had molested a 14 year old relative the week before and was under investigation. The Saturday before the shooting there was a fight between the gunman and the family of the man shot first in the church. Was there a link between the molestation and the shooting? Couldn’t find any evidence. What is clear is that this a personal matter between the shooter and victim. The church had nothing to do with the crime.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/21/national/main... Okay, so a guy goes into a church, shoots his mother-in-law and four other people near her, abducts his wife and three children, flees to their apartment where he shoots his wife. This is a domestic dispute, not a criminal attack on a church.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-26-church-s... “The violence grew out of a domestic dispute, said police Second Deputy Chief James Tate.” No criminal church targeting here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Ratzmann “Ratzmann (the shooter) was known to suffer from bouts of depression, and was reportedly infuriated by a sermon the minister had given two weeks earlier.” He was also “on the verge of losing his job”. Sounds like mental illness again and Tuscon is no reason to regulate hi-cap magazines this is no reason to carry in church.
http://articles.cnn.com/2004-12-17/us/cathedral.shootin... This was a suicide which took place at 1:58 AM. Ya’ gotta do better than this!
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-109959060.html The shooter had recently been checked out of a mental hospital by her mother. Some statements indicated that it “was too early” so perhaps it was against doctor’s advice? In any event after Sunday school and before services she shot the pastor, her mother and then herself. Murder/suicide by a mentally ill person. Clearly not a church target for crime, hey?
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1689277.html Couldn’t find anything on this 2002 shooting beyond the tease and I’m not willing to give them a CC# to get a “free trial”. What I got from the tease and a side note to another brief article is that one individual entered the church, shot two monks them himself. The catholic church was to hold a conference the following week in Dallas to discuss whether this might have been related to the sexual abuse scandal of the time, but I couldn’t find a link to that conference. Sorry, not enough information to make a call here.
http://articles.cnn.com/2002-03-12/us/church.shooting_1... Again, had to find another source to get any real info. The gunman had been fired by the priest as the church custodian over theft from the church collection. This was a personal grudge, not a criminal targeting of a church.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2001/05/20/loc_two_die... Another domestic dispute. A man shoots his estranged wife after she got a restraining order for violence. A second victim tried to intervene. BTW, the gunman was a minister at the church. Yeah, preachers need to be armed too, right?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,31191,... “The police and other authorities who searched
home and his life in the next 72 hours found plenty of clues to a deranged mind. The walls had holes punched in them; the toilets had been filled with concrete; a set of journals dating back a decade itemized plots against him. Neighbors would later report about his ranting and exposing himself.” Yeah, this was clearly a criminal attack . . . NOT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_History_Library#199...
“ De Kieu Duy, 24, a woman with a history of mental illness, enters the Triad Center with a handgun at about 3:30 p.m. She fires numerous rounds in the lobby of KSL's broadcast center where she wounds building manager Brent Wightman.” Clearly not a criminally motivated attack.
My conclusions:
Although there are 450,000 churches in America it took 11 years to accumulate these 20 incidents of gunfire in churches. Eight were committed by mentally impaired individuals, four were domestic disputes, four had personal issues with the victims, two suicides, one was strictly political and the remaining is indeterminate. None had anything to do with religion or attacking a church.
Could an armed parishioner have saved any of these victims? There is a very small possibility that in four of the incidents a highly trained individual prepared and at the ready might have intervened before all of the victims succumbed to gunfire. In the others cases there were either no parishioners in the church, the shooter would have dispatched the intended victims and quit or it was a suicide that coincidentally happened in church. On the other hand it could have been like Tuscon where there was a highly trained person prepared to draw his weapon and fire on the guy with the gun only to discover he was planning to shoot one of the heroes who had disarmed the shooter.
It could be argued that being in a church is no safer than being elsewhere, but if that was the intent of the post, to justify a “need” to carry everywhere another human being might be encountered the premise was poorly phrased and the evidence questionable in quality as well as quantity.
Then there’s this: Seven women shot in Russian sauna.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/08/14/us-russia-dagestan-killing-sb-idUSTRE57D0S220090814
One would assume it would be a case for open carry because concealed carry would be, well, pretty uncomfortable.
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