Should guns be allowed in places of worship?

OPINION:

In researching my forthcoming book “Security for Holy Places” (Morgan James Publisher), one of the most important questions I looked into was whether members of congregations should carry guns.

The benefits of gun carry were illustrated recently at the West Freeway Church of Christ in the White Settlement, Texas. There the shooter, Keith Thomas Kinnunen, armed with a shotgun, was killed by a parishioner, Jack Wilson, who had a Sig Sauer pistol. Mr. Wilson himself is a firearms instructor and owns a gun range.

At least five other congregants had guns, including a woman who helped move members of the church out of harm’s way. Two members of the church were killed by Kinnumen (one of them carrying a firearm) before Kinnunen killed. The entire episode lasted six seconds.

The Washington Post said that the shooter never should have had a gun if the gun laws worked. Kinnunen was a well-known troublemaker, had been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial in Oklahoma. He had been convicted of a number of felonies. Nonetheless, The Washington Post blamed Texas gun laws for the tragedy, forgetting that Kinnunen could not get a gun legally in any U.S. jurisdiction. So did some presidential candidates, including Joe Biden.

My research shows that in the vast majority of cases of mass shootings in the United States guns were obtained legally by the shooter no matter in what jurisdiction. 

Texas, like many other states, has a concealed-carry law which many credit for saving lives in the Church of Christ shooting. In addition, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law making it legal for Texans with concealed-carry licenses to bring their weapons into places of worship (although strictly speaking the law wasn’t needed).

Some states put lots of restrictions on concealed carry, and a few, like Vermont, don’t allow concealed carry at all.

The Texas case shows that congregants can defend themselves against active shooters. But there still are some issues.

One hurdle is how professional the concealed-carry gun owner is and how capable he may be in a violent active shooter situation. A congregation is like a theater where people are packed together and if a gun is fired people are going to panic, making it difficult to take down the shooter without others being hit by gun fire.

Inexperienced volunteers with guns may not always be successful or avoid significant collateral damage. They also risk their lives putting themselves in the front line, so to speak, without any protection such as bullet resistant vests which law enforcement officers wear.

With one exception, concealed-gun carry laws do not have any standard for training for gun owners, neither do they require experience.

The exception is the Law Enforcement Officer’s Safety Act (LEOSA), which allows active and retired (now called “separated from service”) law enforcement officers to be allowed to carry firearms even if prohibited under any state or local laws. For faith-based organizations, this means that retired policemen, including military police and civilian police who worked for the federal government, can carry weapons if they are “qualified,” and therefore can be employed as armed security guards.

The advantage of the LEOSA is that it requires at least 10 years experience in law enforcement and approved firearms training. Some states, like New Jersey, don’t recognize LEOSA and the matter is still pending in the courts.

A second hurdle is how to know who the concealed carry persons are within a congregation. If there is an active shooter situation, armed security guards could be just as likely to shoot an armed congregant with gun drawn instead of the actual shooter. Prior registration could help mitigate the problem, but probably not if outside law enforcement is called in.  

A third hurdle is that congregations with concealed-carry parishioners may think that is all the security they need. They would be wrong.

One of the problems clearly illustrated by the West Freeway Church of Christ incident is that the man with the shotgun got into the church with the shotgun concealed under his coat. He was “watched” by a command center with CCTV cameras, because they were concerned about him, knowing he was a potential threat. But there was no one at the door checking visitors, apparently, and no metal detector looking for hidden weapons.  

The bottom line is that concealed carry without security at the entrance is a poor substitute for effective security measures that screen potential risks.

Not all holy places will allow guns inside, no matter what the law provides. And guns inside holy places by themselves are not a guarantee of security.

• Stephen Bryen served as a deputy under secretary of Defense and as the director of the Defense Technology Security Administration. He is a senior fellow at the American Center for Democracy (https://acdemocracy.org/ourteam/).