A special word of thanks to Rich “Gun Dude” Heller who provided some of the historical research in this article. The Heller Team is responsible for the Supreme Court Case – and Justice Scalia’s magnificent 2nd Amendment Decision – that bears his name. The Heller Foundation continues to further Second Amendment rights through targeted litigation.
Some have called it the most “dangerous hour” of the week. It’s the hour where the “sheep” gather (typically on a Sunday, but also on a Saturday for some denominations and people of the Jewish faith) to worship in their local church, synagogue, or temple – and it’s the hour where wolves prey on the vulnerable. Since the April 20, 1999 Columbine school shooting, there have been 24 fatal church shootings.
For those wishing to do harm and inflict mass casualties, churches appear to be easy targets – and in many unfortunate cases, they have been. Often, either by law, or by rule, they are ‘gun free zones’ which criminals duly ignore and target anyway. With attendees closely packed together, usually facing in the same direction with their undivided attention on their service, it presents the proverbial “shooting fish in a barrel” scenario.
The numbers tell a dramatic and grizzly story. Ed Monk, (police officer, schoolteacher, firearms trainer, and Army officer) has been researching and providing training on the active shooter threat for over 16 years and has compiled a tremendous amount of data on the subject.
In an interview with Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network, Ed noted that:
…an active shooter–it is almost always someone who has not attended that church. Big church shooting attacks usually start in the parking lot….shooters almost always pick a gun-free zone where no one can legally have a gun to shoot back. They are using math and time against us. From when they start shooting, the clock is running up the time it takes for someone to call 911.
How disproportionately lethal is the average active shooter situation?
- An active killer will take one victim every ten seconds. However, in the first minute of the attack, on average he will take one victim every six seconds – that’s approximately the time it took you to read the previous two sentences.
- It takes victims on the scene of an active killer incident an average of a minute and 30 seconds to call 911. In that timeframe, unchecked, an active killer will have killed nine people.
- The national average response time for law enforcement is somewhere between seven and 14 minutes. That is an eternity in a scenario where someone is killed every ten seconds. And even if they arrive as timely as possible, law enforcement still has to locate, identify, and stop the killer.
The only solution to minimizing the catastrophic damage of an armed attack is an armed, trained, and prepared church security team.
Nothing New Under the Sun
The idea of protecting oneself (and those around them) in a church setting isn’t new. In fact it goes back to our country’s very founding era (and even earlier as we’ll learn below). A study on the history of gun control shows that laws “…in Connecticut (1643) and at least five other colonies, required ‘at least one adult man in every house to carry a gun to church or other public meetings…’ “
An article in the Federalist Society documented a similar law in Virginia in 1632 providing that, “masters of every family shall bring with them to church on Sundays one fixed and serviceable gun with sufficient powder and shott.”
Violent Times
Today we live in an era where violent crime is increasing and the federal government is actively trying to deceive the public to this fact. The FBI originally claimed that violent crime fell during 2022 when it published its October 2023 report (the most recent data available). However, Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., head of the Crime Prevention Research Center, broke the news that the FBI secretly updated their data for 2021 and 2022, and the true facts are that violent crime increased 4.5% with 80,029 more violent crimes, 1,699 more murders, 7,780 more rapes, 33,459 more robberies, and 37,091 more aggravated assaults.
The likelihood of another targeted church shooting is only increasing and unfortunately inevitable with the passage of time. Which brings us back to our original story thread: how do we protect the flock?
A Faith-Based Approach to Church Security (Yes, guns, too)
This past weekend a member of the News2A team attended an intensive one-day course designed specifically for church security teams at Paladin Tower Tactics in central Tennessee. This wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill training session, however. Owner, lead instructor, and Pastor, Scott Willey has designed the course from a faith-based perspective with the intention to “prepare armed protectors for the gunfight, the legal fight, and the spiritual fight.”
The course was highly structured, beginning with a cold, live-fire baseline drill, and then progressed through fundamental shooting principles and into advanced scenarios that ultimately prepared the class to shoot the FBI qualification course of fire.
The instruction was well organized, highly technical, and delivered at a rapid but efficient pace – and we expected nothing less. Scott is a combat veteran who served as an infantryman and paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. He then served eight years in law enforcement where he was assigned to the patrol division and SWAT team as well as a firearms instructor and armorer. Today he runs his training business full time, and also still serves as a Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy for an agency in middle Tennessee and is assigned to the SWAT team there.
The Biblical View
Scott holds many other impressive accolades but perhaps the most impressive is his Christian, Biblical-based approach to building a course curriculum to prepare men who are serving on their church security teams. While the tactical and shooting skills are necessary, many men wrestle with the theological imperative of protecting the flock, and just how far to take it.
The mandatory, midday Bible study we all attended, entitled, “The Gatekeepers” answered these questions and more, setting Scott’s program far above the typical standard for such training, in the opinion of this writer. In it, he illustrated the Biblical history and precedent for church security teams. (Hint, the ‘Gatekeepers’ mentioned in I Chronicles were a subset of the Levites who were skilled and trained in war with a special mission of safeguarding the entrances to the temple.)
The Assessment
Jared leads a church security team in Nashville and brought his team of five to attend the recent weekend training. His assessment targeted the physical and spiritual preparedness:
The enemy on the earthly battlefield is easily recognizable. The opposite is true on the spiritual battlefield. The church is a home for all people and must maintain open arms to everyone as Christ exemplified. This makes the job of the church security members more challenging than most. Our skills, discernment, training and spiritual attunement must be as excellent and as comprehensive as humanly possible all of the time. The calling of being a “gatekeeper” in today’s church in today’s environment is a very real challenge.
He added:
There are a plethora of training classes in the marketplace but few combine the attributes that I want for my team. I want the spiritual calling of being a ‘gatekeeper’ front and center with tactical training being top shelf. I found exactly this with Scott Willey, founder of Paladin Towers Tactics in Tennessee.
In speaking with Scott, we asked him to add a little more of his own perspective regarding mindset for those serving in this capacity:
I think the proper mindset needed for someone serving on a church security team is rooted in love for Jesus and His church. Love is a far greater motivator than fear or paranoia. Those serving on the church security team should be mature Christians who have a very intimate relationship with Jesus and a dependency on the Holy Spirit (consider 2 Timothy 1:7). That relationship will create a mindset for the team to be honest about the reality of evil, serious about training, and consistent in practicing skills at arms which will prepare them to protect their church family. Failing to save the innocent because of complacency or willful ignorance is just as evil as taking the lives of the innocent.
(Our gratitude to Scott’s wife, Carmen, and sister, Susie, who made an excellent chili which they very graciously shared with students.)
To learn more about Paladin Tower Tactics, visit their site: https://paladintowertactics.com
12¶“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
13“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
I watched as these men learned to be ‘gatekeepers’. Their physical and mental transformation was truly inspiring.
I love these guys. They are my friends.
Thank Scott.