As they escorted the young man out of our worship service, I immediately thought, “What if he goes to his car and returns with a gun? We are sitting ducks!” It was obvious the man was not ‘all there’, having some kind of mental illness. He could be upset that he wasn’t allowed “to preach to the people” as he had expressed an intention of doing. Revenge was a possibility. I looked at all possible means of defense. Nothing more formidable than a hymn book or bible was at hand. I sweated out the last 15 minutes of the service. This happened less than two years ago, in our small town of Jackson, Wyoming.
Ever since that day I have concealed a small pistol on me at church. I don’t mind who knows it, because by so doing I am protecting myself, which is my God-given Right which “shall not be infringed.” I am also protecting the rest of the congregation. But what if I shoot at a mass murderer and my shot goes astray and hits an innocent bystander? Well, the alternative is to let him pick us off, one by one. “But we have cell phones. We can call 911,” you say. When seconds count, 911 is only minutes away. Far better to have a couple of good guys there with guns, on the spot, to stop the bad guy. That is simply Cowboy Common Sense.
Crime researcher John R. Lott has spent thousands of hours poring over profiles of mass shooters, including reading their own journals and writings. Mr. Lott says it is indisputable that mass shooters, including Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, the killer at the church in South Carolina, and now the killer at the Grand Theater in Louisiana, deliberately profiled Gun Free Zones for their crime and deliberately avoided sites which allowed guns. Mr. Lott’s analysis of the data is “Gun Free Zones draw mass shooters like a magnet”. Remember that conclusion when you post a “No Firearms Allowed” sign on your church, school, hospital, or business. According to Mr. Lott, every mass shooting except one in the past 65 years has occurred in a Gun Free Zone. And now we have five military and a couple more movie-goers dead, killed with a gun in a “Gun Free Zone”. If it is known that some trustworthy and capable citizens may have a concealed defense weapon, in church or other public place, then potential murderers avoid that location, according to their own writings.
A friend of the Charleston church mass killer said the young man was going to target the College of Charleston, but he was concerned that he couldn’t get past security. He targeted, instead, a helpless congregation of worshippers. It is almost a certainty that if someone in the congregation had possessed a firearm, only two or three would have died rather than nine.
The Aurora theater shooter killed twelve people and wounded seventy others. He had a choice of seven movie theaters within a 20-minute drive of his home. The theater he chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned all guns, even with a concealed carry permit.
I can almost see the looks of horror on some of you readers right now as you are aghast that this cowboy would actually propose that some members of a church congregation be armed. Folks, what part of the above indisputable facts do we not understand? If we make a church or public building a “Gun Free Zone”, it will be targeted by mass shooters, according to their own writings. Why? Why would they prefer for their nefarious deed a place with a sign prominently posted “Firearms not allowed”? Cowboy Common Sense says it is because they are not afraid of getting arrested or our justice system. They are afraid of getting shot before they can complete their devilish act.
If a law, rule, or regulation prohibits guns in a building and people think they are therefore safe from a mentally deranged killer, then by that logic all we have to do is to make a law, rule, or regulation against killing people in our building. How about posting one of these signs; “Thou Shalt Not Kill” or “No Shooting of our Church Members.” Surely that law will be more readily obeyed than “No Guns Allowed.”
The Constitution says I have the God-given Right to defend myself with a firearm. In the recent Heller case the US Supreme Court upheld this as an “individual right”. The Supreme Court also said, “Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rulemaking or legislation which would abrogate them.” The Miranda Decision, 1966.
We don’t need any Court to tell us what we already know inside of us. We inherently know we have the unalienable right to defend our lives from the bad guys. That is simply Cowboy Common Sense.
Remember; “Life is always better when viewed from between the ears of a horse.”