The NRA: American Success

In 1871, a former Union officer, Col. William C. Church, wrote a series of articles in a United States Army and Navy magazine. He was acting as a watchman sounding a clear call for training in marksmanship. Col. Church quoted another veteran officer who complained, “The general ignorance concerning marksmanship which I found among our soldiers during the Civil War appalled me.”

Col. Church went on to propose that an association be formed “to promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis….” Continue reading “The NRA: American Success”

Resisting the Wicked

10 If you falter in times of trouble,
how small is your strength!
11 Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
12 If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it.

Proverbs 24:10-12

He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms. -Psalms 18: 34

The Scripture tells us in the Book of James that believers must have compassion for the poor:

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?

James:14-16.

In James we see a view of the rich that indicates that the rich often deprive the poor of justice:Continue reading “Resisting the Wicked”

Does Your Church Have a Threat Response Plan?

SOME GUIDELINES FOR CHURCH THREAT RESPONSE PLANS

The following are some thoughts and observations based on suggestions we have received from a church member in Texas. Although the strategy is focused on preventing violence at churches, the material may also apply to other workplace settings, especially in situations where it becomes cost prohibitive to retain professional security officers.Continue reading “Does Your Church Have a Threat Response Plan?”

The Last Men Standing

THE DEFENDERS OF RORKE’S DRIFT

On January 22, 1879, Britain’s standing army suffered one of its greatest calamities. A few days later 150 ordinary men withstood 4,500 Zulu warriors to provide an example of “pluck” in the face of extraordinary odds. What is to be learned from history about the character of those men that can guide our attitudes toward leadership and how to endure in the face of impossible circumstances?Continue reading “The Last Men Standing”

Can Airsoft People Survive in a .50 Caliber World?

AMERICA’S GUN CULTURE

On January 28, 2009, in a Federal Way Mirror article about the 1994 assault weapons ban, we reviewed some important issues raised when the men that drafted the U.S. Constitution disagreed about the question of whether to authorize “standing” armies. There were those on one side that felt national security might be neglected without a Constitutional provision mandating a full time, professional army. On the other side were men like Thomas Jefferson that saw the potential for the proposed federal government and full-time standing armies (like we have today) to become a new form of tyranny.Continue reading “Can Airsoft People Survive in a .50 Caliber World?”

Should You Bring Your Gun to a South King County Crime Scene?

NEVER AGAIN: REMEMBERING THE KATRINA GUN-GRAB

Some Federal Way, Washington residents have devoted many evenings and weekends preparing for earthquakes, fire, WMD attacks or other disasters. One of the primary ways to get ready is to attend CERT training. Community Emergency Response Teams obtain first aid skills, learn how to use fire extinguishers and practice other skills like prioritizing assistance to victims and communicating with professionals. The professionals that normally respond to criminal activity, fires or other hazards may become totally overwhelmed by the damage that occurs to people, structures and communication networks when disaster strikes.Continue reading “Should You Bring Your Gun to a South King County Crime Scene?”

Roundheads, Firearms, and the American Rifleman

Shooting Clubs.There are dozens of shooting ranges and clubs in Western Washington and all over the United States. As early as 1466, firearms culture and shooting clubs developed in Switzerland and, by the 15th Century, Schutzenfahnlein companies in Germany and the Swiss cantons boasted flags depicting crossbows and target rifles. Before long, many armies were combining pikemen with units of smoothbore musketeers. The muskets could be almost accurate at 200 hundred yards.

The combined units could break up squares of massed troops.

Advent of the Rifle. By the 1600s, weapons with grooved rifling began to show up on European battlefields.Continue reading “Roundheads, Firearms, and the American Rifleman”

Churches Developing Tactical Response Capability

Churches have been coming under attack for many years from many quarters. Now well armed individuals, often with a grievance or just hatred for Christianity have been literally invading churches to kill the worshippers within:

Killer’s rant filled with profanity, hate
By The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 12/11/2007 09:24:12 AM MST

A message posted between the Youth With a Mission shooting in Arvada on Sunday, Dec. 9 and the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs is believed to be Matthew Murray’s last posting. It contains language which many may find objectionable:

“You christians brought this on yourselves!”

—————————————————————————–

“I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ….God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.

Well all you people out there can just kiss my ass and die. From now on I don’t give a @#%$ about what all you muthaf#*kers have to say, unless I respect you which is highly unlikely, but for those of you who do happen to know me and know that I respect you, may peace be with you and don’t be in my line of fire, for the rest of you, you all better @#%$ hide in your houses because I’m coming for EVERYONE soon, and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth, and I WILL shoot to kill and I WILL @#%$ KILL EVERYTHING! No I am not crazy, crazy is just a word, to me it has no meaning, everyone is different, but most of you @#%$ heads out there in society, going to your everyday @#%$ jobs and doing your everyday routine shitty things, I say @#%$ you and die, if you got a problem with my thoughts, come to me and I’ll kill you, because……..God damnit, DEAD PEOPLE DON’T ARGUE! My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If you don’t like it, you die. If I don’t like you or I don’t like what you want me to do, then you die. If I do something incorrect, oh @#%$ well, you die. Dead people can’t do many things, like argue, whine, @#%$, complain, name, rat out, criticize, or even @#%$ talk. So that’s the only way to solve arguments with all you fuckheads out there, I just kill. God I can’t wait till I can kill you people, I’ll just go to some downtown area in some big city and blow up and shoot everything I can.

You break my back but you won’t break me…..all is black but I still see…shut me down, knock me to the floor…..shoot me up, @#%$ me like a whore….trapped under ice, comfortably cold, I’ve gone as low as you can go….. feel no remorse, no sorrow or shame……time’s gonna wash away all pain I made a God out of blood not superiority I killed the king of deceit and now I sleep in anarchy…”

We pieced together the following account of what happened next from various websites:

In Denver, a woman, fresh from a three day fast, in which she prayed to God for guidance in choosing a career path, was thrown right into the path of this mad-dog killer:

Amid deafening cracks of gunfire, smoke-spewing canisters and the flight of thousands of New Life Church members, Jeanne Assam said she suddenly saw the hallways clear and a gunman come through the door.

“I took cover. I identified myself. I engaged him. I took him down,” the 42-year-old former law officer and volunteer church security guard said Monday at a news conference in the Colorado Springs police station.
Murray was carrying two handguns, an assault rifle and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition, said Sgt. Jeff Johnson of the Colorado Springs Police Department.

“It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God,” she said.

Assam worked as a police officer in downtown Minneapolis during the 1990s and is licensed to carry a weapon. She attends one of the morning services and then volunteers as a guard during another service.

New Life’s Senior Pastor Brady Boyd called Assam “a real hero” because Murray “had enough ammunition on him to cause a lot of damage.”

Boyd said Assam was the one who suggested the church beef up its security Sunday following the Arvada shooting, which it did. The pastor credited the security plan and the extra security for preventing further bloodshed.

Boyd said there are 15 to 20 security people at the church. All are volunteers but the only ones armed are those who are licensed to carry weapons.

The security guards are members of the church who are screened and not “mercenaries that we hire to walk around our campus to provide security,” Boyd said.

About 7,000 people were on the church campus at the time of the shooting, said Boyd….

“I just said, ‘Holy Spirit, be with me.’ I wasn’t even shaking,” Assam said. “I give the credit to God. I say this very humbly. God was with me.”

The female security guard who shot and stopped a gunman at a Colorado Springs church yesterday is crediting God for helping her to resolve the threat by killing the assailant…

“This has got to be God, because of the firepower that [the gunman] had vs. what I had was God. I did not run away and I didn’t think for a minute to run away, I just knew that I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse. I just prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide me.” …
“I heard shots fired. It was chaos. There were a lot of people in the church,” she described.

“The halls cleared out and I saw him coming through the doors. I took cover, waited for him to get closer, came out of cover and identified myself, engaged him, took him down,” she said.

Church officials said they have a contingent of volunteer security officers because of the high profile of the church.

“Obviously if we had not had an armed person on our campus, 50 or 100 people could have lost their lives,” the pastor said. …

…victims Stephanie Works, 18, and her sister Rachael, 16, adorned the program for services Sunday.

The two were killed when gunman Matthew Murray, armed with an assault rifle, a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, opened fire in the parking lot as a service was letting out. The girls’ father and two other people were wounded.

A volunteer security guard shot and wounded Murray, 24, before he turned the gun on himself. Twelve hours earlier and about 65 miles away, police said, Murray killed two staff members of the Youth With a Mission missionary training center in Arvada and wounded two others….

A Vietnam vet’s eyewitness account:

Larry Bourbonnais, a combat-tested Vietnam veteran, said it was the bravest thing he’s ever seen.

Bourbonnais, who was among those shot by a gunman Sunday at New Life Church, watched as a security guard, a woman later identified as Jeanne Assam, calmly returned fire and killed the shooter.

“She just started walking toward the gunman firing the whole way,” said Bourbonnais, who was shot in the arm. “She was just yelling ‘Surrender,’ walking and shooting the whole time.”

Bourbonnais, 59, was chowing down in the chuch cafeteria when he heard the shots. He headed in the direction of the gunfire, asking “where’s the shooter?”, as people ran past him.

Near an entryway in the church, Bourbonnais came upon the gunman and an armed male church security guard who was there with his gun drawn but not firing, he said.

“Give me your handgun. I’ve been in combat, and I’m going to take this guy out,” Bourbonnais recalled telling the guard. “He kept yelling, ‘Get behind me! Get behind me!’ He wouldn’t hand me his weapon, but he wouldn’t do anything.”

There was an additional armed security guard there, another man, who also didn’t fire, Bourbonnais said.

…Bourbonnais yelled at the gunman to draw his attention, he said.

“First, I called him ‘Coward’ then I called him ‘S—head’ ” Bourbonnais said. “I probably shouldn’t have been saying that in church.”

No, indeed, it only attracted the shooter’s attention:

That’s when the shooter pointed one of his guns at Bourbonnais and fired, he said.

Bourbonnais ducked behind a hollow, decorative pillar and was hit in the arm by a bullet and fragments of the pillar.

Enter our heroine:

Assam turned a corner with a drawn handgun, walked toward the gunman and yelled “Surrender!” Bourbonnais said.

The gunman pointed a handgun at Assam and fired three shots, Bourbonnais said. She returned fire and just kept walking toward the gunman pressing off round after round.

After the gunman went down, Bourbonnais asked Assam, a volunteer security guard with the church, how she remained so calm and focused.

Bourbonnais said she replied:

“I was asking the Holy Spirit to guide me the entire time.”

JAG Warriors: Seattle On-Site Update

The fact that detainees are often subjected to a judicial process under the UCMJ or similar procedures administered by military tribunals has caused a great deal of heartburn in some quarters. The fact is that every military lawyer has a professional code of ethics that constrains him or her to represent clients zealously and that requires remaining free from any command influences. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift probably sacrificed his military career in order to comply with the professional code of zealous, ethical conduct- i.e., the same code under which private civilian lawyers work.Continue reading “JAG Warriors: Seattle On-Site Update”

JAG Lawyers and the Rule of Law

Every year I attend a seminar presented by the 6th JAG LSO in Seattle, Washington. In years past, the Army lawyers have discussed the procedures for dealing with WMD incidents on U.S. home soil and the chain of command during national emergencies. One component of the legal instruction is pure gold. The subject matter is broadly classified as Rule of Law– a big concept for JAG Corps lawyers, as it should be for all of us.

It may not be immediately obvious but the commitment to rule of law is what stabilizes a nation. The ability to honor contracts, respect minorities and manage conflict is what makes the difference between prosperous and peaceful societies and societies that descend into chaos. It just seems like prosperity, technological achievement and military might is the source of American power.Continue reading “JAG Lawyers and the Rule of Law”