12/29/19 CBS Dallas:
Two people are dead and another person is critically injured after a shooting at a church in the Tarrant County city of White Settlement, officials said.
Authorities responded to the shooting Sunday morning just before 10 a.m. at the West Freeway Church of Christ on Las Vegas Trail.
A witness told CBS 11 News the gunman walked up to a server during communion with a shotgun and then opened fire. According to the witness, another church member shot the suspect.
12/29/19 WFAA:
A live stream of the worship service shows a person wearing a large coat stand up and then pull out what appears to be a rifle or a shotgun as communion was finishing. The shooter appears to fire twice before another person appears to shoot back.
Many people in the congregation ducked under church pews while others rushed toward the shooter, holding up handguns, the video shows.
A church leader starts telling people to quiet down and be seated.
"Everything is under control. Our security team did everything they needed to do," the person said.
Video of the event. So many men drew on this guy! Six?
In recent years there have been a number of church shootings; is there any data on seating location of the victims, enough to determine the best place for an armed worshipper to sit?
ReplyDelete30 minutes from me on the west side of Fort Worth. I wonder if the shooter knew the service was being live streamed and if that was a factor in prompting the shooting. The shooting at pensacola was videoed as another recent shooter who set it up to be downloaded to facebook I believe.
ReplyDeleteGranted the shooter didn't stand a chance of getting off more than two shots. Fort Worth is the conservative side of DFW.
And this also explains why the security patrol was by just before the 10:30 service.
How many of those who drew were muzzling the crowd?
ReplyDeleteAnd did the guy on the cell phone really hold his pistol in his armpit while he dialed?
First Rule of Church Security: "No one talks about church security".
ReplyDeleteThe Word of God is replete with admonitions against naivete.
The most naive people that I have routinely encountered are Christians. (I am writing fraternally.) Not being able to recognize trouble from a distance is baked into modern evangelical theory; the "Kingdom of the Nice" is antithetical to wisdom. "The prudent person sees trouble ahead and hides, but the naive continue on and suffer the consequences." https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Proverbs%2022%3A3
I do not want to perform a voir dire for the sake of this, but suffice it to say that if you cannot discern evil-on-the-hoof, you might need to "reform your mind". With a proper functioning "security team", the perp in the instant issue should have been examined, identified, isolated, and secured for LE involvement. ("Sum dood" who enters in a trench coat, hood, fake beard and hair, should immediately set off alarms.)
The first warning might be the only one. It is wiser (and ultimately easier) to prevent than it is to suppress. Four decades ago, while explaining this mindset to the same demo cross-section, the response was the pitiful bleat, "Oh, I could not live like that." My answer was and is "Well, then you probably won't".
And BZ's to the shooter.
idedge: If he did not have a clear shot, 911 is not a bad choice.
ReplyDeleteClayton,
ReplyDeleteI do not think that the criticism (re. phone) was about the phone, but regarding the method of securing his firearm.
Panic is not fear; it is the untrained response to fearful stimuli. It is what those who are untrained do when confronted with a situation that requires tactics AND techniques beyond their level of competency. The situation demands both; one must know WHAT to do, based upon the evolving circumstances, and HOW to do it. When you can perform the evolution with the same level of competence as tying one's shoes in the dark, you then have a level of objectively consistent performance.
Using an armpit to secure a weapon, while other members of the team are holding a subject at gunpoint, is a vivid example of an untrained response. In your holster, or in your hand. If a long-arm (rifle/shotgun), either slung or in hand. You will fight to the level that you train.
Thankfully they were dealing with a mope, but still a mope who got the drop on them. It is never wise to count upon weaker opponents. If any church really wants to get serious about these issues, they need to discard the "well, we want to be welcoming", touchy-feeling, nice-above-all mentality.
Every person entering needs to be discreetly scrutinized. If there is ANY doubt, then secondary and tertiary methods need to come into play. You want hard men, who are willing to be as hard as needed, on a moments notice, with zero regard for emotions. Absent that, there will be plenty of emotions to distribute at the funerals.
(As a brief aside, I always found it sardonically ironic that C.S. Lewis, in his book "That Hideous Strength", labeled the locus of evil an entity called the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) It was a scientific and social planning agency, furtively pursuing its program of the exploitation of nature and the annihilation of humanity.)