When Evil Visits The Church: Active Killer Response Class to be held in July

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

Early last year, Rep. Ron Maag (R-Lebanon) introduced HB 48, which sought to remove places of worship from the list of "no-guns" victim zones. Before it was allowed a floor vote, however, the Republican-led House State Government committee adopted substitute language which stripped the fix for places of worship from the bill. Unless the Senate reinserts that language when it addresses the bill, the law will remain as it has before, with concealed carry being prohibited in places of worship unless the applicable governing boards permit otherwise.

Unfortunately the mindset of many congregants is similar to that of these Republicans: Guns don’t belong here. As the good people of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (9 killed) in South Carolina and New Life Church (2 killed) in Colorado found out, being prepared for evil within the walls of your house of worship is as important as fighting the evil that seeks to corrupt the soul.

For anyone that tends to fall on the side of pacifism in the face of murderous evil, I would suggest a reading of the book ‘A Time to Kill – The Myth of Christian pacifism’ by Greg Hopkins. In the book, Hopkins makes a really good point in that through the entirety of the Bible we are told to resist evil in deed and thought, yet the pacifist would want us to not fight evil if our life is in danger. They seem to believe that evil attacking the soul deserves more attention than evil attacking the physical body. Seems a little incongruent to me.

Look back at the numbers of killed above. One church had a security response team, one did not. Both churches had God-loving parishioners, but one was prepared for evil to walk through the door, and the results can be measured in lives lost.

Tom Givens, President of Rangemaster, stated in an interview:

Referencing a national church security conference in 2011. First, serious crimes reported at churches had gone up 200% in the preceding five years, which was a rather dramatic increase. From January 1999 to August of 2011, one study found 473 incidents resulting in over 200 fatalities. Not injuries, fatalities. That was five years ago, and things have gotten worse now than they were then.

It is my mission as Buckeye Firearms Association Training Coordinator to get good training to those who want to learn life-saving skills with a firearm, a knife or a med-kit. Currently church response training is something that BFA and the Buckeye Firearms Foundation are actively planning for future event offerings, but are still working through the logistics.

If you are a parishioner at a church that is looking to create a response team or to obtain continued training for the team you have, I highly recommend the partnership of Tac*One Consulting and Global Tactical. They are going to have two one-day classes (July 15th and 16th at a church in Lithopolis). The 10 hour course will be Simunition® driven “reality based” training. Force-on-Force training is a critical element to self-defense and active killer training in that it puts you under a significant level of stress in which you must perform to save lives. As stress increases, skill levels (and logical problem solving) decreases. Sim training/FoF helps to stress inoculate you so you can perform.

If you are interested please visit their registration website:

http://www.taconeconsulting.com/personal-protection/active-shooter-respo...

Click Lake is a Buckeye Firearms Association Leader and Training Coordinator.