I can see your concern. I do not think we should violate any ones 2a rights to carry in order to protect their families or others if they so desire. Very strong training for the congregation should be implemented. They must agree that an armed member of the congregation who is not a member of the security team should not draw their weapons and enter the confrontation. The only time their weapon should be drawn would be if the shooter is so close to them that their lives are in danger and there is no a security member in position to Engauge the shooter. If they are out of the immediate danger area but in a place of hiding and their position is discovered by a shooter and they have to draw their weapon for protection. They need to have it drilled into their minds that doing a shooting a member of the security team may not recognize them and Engauge them as a backup for the shooter.
I agree with you. If people are not willing to learn we cannot help them. Some where, some time if these people had the knowledge they could help a lot of people. We have so many people that would want us to protect them but do not care about protecting them selves. When teaching the concealed handgun course I asked my students to bring someone who did not believe in gun ownership to protect them self or others. I did require that these people not to interrupt the class and told them I would answer all of their questions after class. After answering their questions I ask them if I could ask them one yes or no question. my question was If one of your loved ones was in a situation that my include their being abducted, raped and murdered would you want me to use my weapons to protect them? I would not except any answer other than yes or no. If they hesitated I would just tell them that it was ok, I would answer their question for them. If you say no then you lying, if you say yes then you are a hypocrite. That would make you a lying hypocrite. I than politely ask them to leave. I have worked many hours on compiling information on the use of deadly force, what is to be expected after the use of deadly force, not using deadlyforce, what they could expect after the shooting, the criminal and civil consequence’s of their decisions etc I live in a senior citizens community and know we have a lot of concealed carrier’s or have weapons in their houses for protection. I have gained a lot of that knowledge from our USCCA community. I have a background of teaching weapons in the military tec schools, civilian police officer and also taught the Texas Concealed Handgun Course for about ten years. Yet I have learned a lot from our USCCA community. If all of us from the community can continue to learn from each other then then the average citizen should welcome this information with open arms. I sent out about 20 e-mails asking people to contact me if they were interested. I received two yes replies over a five day period. I will continue to send e-mails until I contact everyone in my community. I feel if I can save one person from making a fatal life changing decision the time spent will be worth it. If I have only a few students then the time spent will still be worth it. I just pray that those that did not attend never have to regret their decision not to attended my class. Hope everyone has a wonderful week.
Hi Richard, sometimes you have to hit a big rock more than one time to break it. We are having a council meeting at my church this evening. The subject of having a security team will be on the agenda. My gun is loaded. No pun intended. I will be quite and listen to what ever is being said. If things go better than I expect then I will say very little. If we have several objections to the security team then I have a lot of ammunition. Again no pun intended. My rebuttal will be along the same path as my last post about people that do not want to be taught.
Hi Amaranto without radios to contact other team members would be like a chicken running around the yard with his head cut off.
Hi Greg I can understand where you are coming from. A couple of things to keep in mind are we need to get the Lord’s word out to the people. When by chance an incident is picked up on cameras police may have critical information on file. The film may protect the security team’s decisions on the way the situation was handled, maybe not. The audience will see what is going on and those who do not believe in guns in church may change their minds.
Hi I would say that as long as the situation was handled according to the law the church would not be held liable. There is no law that says that someone protecting the church has to be on a security team. Just because they were members of USCCA should not change their legal right to protect your church.
I would like to know more about this situation. If you are saying that the only thing this man did was to place his hand into his pocket and the security guard tackled him, the security guard should have been arrested for assault on this man. There was not in my opinion any reasons to take this action .There were other means to control this situation. Why couldn’t the guard have gotten between the man and the alter. Talked with him quietly and walked him to the back for more privacy. At the least he could have followed behind the man and would have had time to do what had to be done before harm could have been done. Maybe the church needs better vetting of their security team members. Did the guard make contact by radio to other security people to alert them? It is a shame that this incident went down as you explained. He had the chance to help this man find God.
Looks like a sound plan to me.
His actions justified stopping him and questioning him. If he indicated a reluctance to his being stopped and questioned the security person should very politely asked him to comply or please leave the churches property. He should have moved away from the man for his safety and contacted other team members. The main thing is the security person did stop and question the man. Just this action may have made the person change his mind about entering the church for bad reasons. If the person did not want to leave then the local police should have been contacted. Our security teams can only take precautions and try to do their job.
William I completely agree with you about getting the Lord’s Word out to the people. With COVID lock downs a lot of churches have gone to providing their Services online, and this has been an option for shut-ins long before COVID. The conversation my post was trying to start was “do those church services need to be shown in real time”? For example a 1 hour delay would take away the live audience I believe that shooter was looking for, and still preserve the video evidence of the attack and the security team’s actions for the police to review. Of course this is a decision for each church to make for themselves.
Hi Jim The way I see this is that it would not matter if your security team was publicized or not. If an incident occurs and they respond, the liability factor is already there. From what I have read about liability of the church is that the term FORESEE ABILITY. Are there factors known about trouble in your area a few days prior. Were there any factory’s known by the church that may have led them to the conclusion that the same harm could include their church, and the church did not take steps to avoid this trouble. For example had this trouble occurred at several similar establishments in your area.
Joe I do not have all of the details about you incident but I would like to make one comment from my point of view. When this man was spotted on camera, it was obvious he was attempting to keep his identity unknown and the security team was alerted, someone should have immediately contacted the local police about a possible violent person. Other security members should have moved into position to support the security person setting behind him. I cannot see why this person should have died. Looks to me that more training of the security team is needed.
Thank you for the reply Greg. We do have streaming on line for those who would rather stay at home. Several couples have to elected to come back to the live service. The reason they miss seeing and being with other people. I do not look for any improvement in the Covid or the administration we have at the moment. I get up pretty early and started spending time on the community to get the feel of how the program works. When on different screens I some time have trouble finding the link to where I want to go. Hope you have a wonderful week.