New security measures for church events


Fether
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4 hours ago, let’s roll said:

Styln’s post didn’t say anything about being a conscientious objector

Really?

7 hours ago, Styln said:

...focusing on following the teachings of Christ's non-resistance attributes...

My personal rest and peace lay with God in knowing if I am martyred, it would be at the moment of divine dedication to my Lord in heaven as were my forefathers in the Anabaptist movement.

Sounds like either she's (if Styln is a she) is either a conscientious objector or a person with a martyr complex.  I was being more complimentary in assuming which one.

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2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

The pavilion of the gospel is big enough to cover both pacifist and warrior.  Folks willing to die before using violence, and folks willing to defend the lives of innocents in ways likely to kill an attacker.  Both get to be who they are, and be good disciples of Christ.

If the "pacifists" are refusing to defend only their own lives, especially if that's a result of their own "many murders" for which they are desperately struggling to repent -- as was the case with the Lamanites who were the people of Ammon and refused to fight even in the face of death -- then I can respect that. For the rest, I am reminded of the words attributed to the Prophet Joseph Smith:

Peace be still, bury the hatchet and the sword, the sound of war is dreadful in my ear. [But] any man who will not fight for his wife and children is a coward and a bastard.

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32 minutes ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

Leave your gun behind or stay home.

That's the second time you've said that.  I have a third choice.  I can bring my gun to church with me.  And, as has been shown before, it is not prohibited. 

If you feel unsafe around people having concealed guns, then you're being a bit nosy.  If you feel perfectly safe at church with no guns, then why do you feel worse off in a church with guns in the hands of law abiding gun owners?

32 minutes ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

And what happens to the dozens of people behind the shooter when you open up on him?

While it is always something to look for, I have never heard of any active shooter situation in an enclosed space where innocents are running near the assailant.  They're usually doing their best to duck or cover or run AWAY from the assailant.

Fun fact about CCW permit holders:

Quote

I think the people that are out there who do carry concealed right now are at least as proficient with their weapons as police officers are. Actually, my deputies have to qualify with their pistols twice a year and for many of them that’s all the shooting they do; whereas, people who chose to carry are typically into guns, so they shoot more and are probably even better with their weapons than most cops are.

--Sheriff Paul Blarcum of Ulster County, New York (yes, that's right.  New York)

And it's true.  While we have folks like Mirkwood who is both a cop with training as well as many hours at the range, the average cop does not have that much practice with a firearm.  People like me, well, I'm a bit above average.  But I know I've got a long way to go to be "really good".  So, if I ever had to use my gun, I'd wait for a time when I could really site in my target.  There really is no such thing as a quick draw who is perfectly accurate.  Only one in a million are that good.

I also admit that many gun owners simply feel like "having a gun" makes them feel better.  I think that's dangerous  But the fact is that those with permits really do tend to be the type that go to the range and practice as I do.

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1 hour ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

And what happens to the dozens of people behind the shooter when you open up on him? Leave your gun behind or stay home.

Regardless of my stance on guns, here is my motive. 

I don’t ever want to be in a position where a man that wants to harm or kill me or others is the only with power. If that comes in the form as someone in the room having a gun or me having a riot shield I don’t care. 

There is no way anyone would be ok being in a room with an armed assailant and having no protection.

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31 minutes ago, Fether said:

Regardless of my stance on guns, here is my motive. 

I don’t ever want to be in a position where a man that wants to harm or kill me or others is the only with power. If that comes in the form as someone in the room having a gun or me having a riot shield I don’t care. 

There is no way anyone would be ok being in a room with an armed assailant and having no protection.

Allow me to clarify. I have no problem with someone carrying a concealed weapon. I simply think a General Conference is not the place to have one. Cheers and may you never need it.

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1 hour ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

Allow me to clarify. I have no problem with someone carrying a concealed weapon. I simply think a General Conference is not the place to have one. Cheers and may you never need it.

Oh I fully agree. General conference is a terrible place to bring a weapon.

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16 hours ago, Fether said:

I for one am disappointed in the decision not to allow fire arms, I am one that feels comfortable knowing that I’m in a room where 10% of the people have guns.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, a mass of people in the conference center with guns would could easily turn into a disaster. 

Personally, the announcement doesn't disappoint me as I understand what they are emphasizing. I also personally wouldn't be bothered if they mentioned guns were allowed with the caveat as long as you have a CCP. If the Church opened guns to "all" I think this would lead to crazy people bringing in guns. I would say people who have a CCP are more likely to be responsible.

I would say there is security also knowing that others around you might have a CCP and are carrying, and the "EDIT" doesn't really bother me. This is a possibility in any scenario; however, I agree with @Carborendum's thoughts on the matter pertaining to our wards. The same goes for any mall shooting or school shooting. How do the cops and CCPs know who the shooter is if other people have guns drawn. These I think are very tricky, and I have no understanding of how cops would handle such in their trainings @mirkwood?

As to the "inappropriate" argument for guns at church and the Church's policy that @Carborendum mentioned. I am not personally fond of this argument between "allowed" and "inappropriate." I think we are mincing words rather than focusing on what is actually being said.

It is highly inappropriate to come to church in my garments only, but nothing says it isn't allowed. When the Church specifies "inappropriate" on a scale from one to ten I am pretty sure they are specifying "10."

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14 hours ago, Fether said:

My only fear is to be in a situation where only the criminals have the guns. In the conference center this isn’t a huge issue as there are security guards, but I would much rather have 3 untrained trained armed citizens in a room with an assailant than only an assailant.

I understand what you said Fether, but I've seen untrained armed people and that scared me to death.

I would probably yell 'NOOO!' at some untrained fool with a gun in a crowded place. An untrained citizen would probably shoot innocent people by mistake and not even get close to the gunman.

 

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9 minutes ago, Lindy said:

I understand what you said Fether, but I've seen untrained armed people and that scared me to death.

I would probably yell 'NOOO!' at some untrained fool with a gun in a crowded place. An untrained citizen would probably shoot innocent people by mistake and not even get close to the gunman.

 

As I agree with your fear... I can’t think of a single story where this is the case. Rather I hear stories of assailant having free reign over powerless victims or an armed citizen stopping the shooter from doing more damage than he/she already had done.

Can you find a single story where an armed citizen accidentally shot a civilian while going after a gun man?

Edited by Fether
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4 hours ago, Lindy said:

I understand what you said Fether, but I've seen untrained armed people and that scared me to death.

I would probably yell 'NOOO!' at some untrained fool with a gun in a crowded place. An untrained citizen would probably shoot innocent people by mistake and not even get close to the gunman.

 

This is a false statement born of fear, not reality.

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6 hours ago, Anddenex said:

I am not personally fond of this argument between "allowed" and "inappropriate." I think we are mincing words rather than focusing on what is actually being said.

I know that there are many who play semantics to get out of certain responsibilities or justify bad behavior.  And I recognize that I'm being accused of that right now.  So, let me tell you how I look at it.

  • I was making a statement as to the legalities of the situation because I viewed the statement to which I was responding as an attempt at a legal statement as well. (I'm using the term "legal" in the broad sense.)
  • The garment argument is false because we have been specifically instructed to not expose them to the world.  It's just not in the "church attendance" section of the Handbook.
  • Any time a person challenges a rule, one must decide how strongly one feels about a course of action vs. the strength of the request to do otherwise.  I feel very strongly about gun rights.  So, the language must be equally strong to dissuade me.  Is that so much to ask?
  • Notice the bold part above.  I have yet to hear any decent argument to indicate why a legally authorized CCW holder should be barred from carrying a concealed gun is in any way "bad behavior".  How does my carrying a concealed gun make anyone else worship any differently?  I'm just not seeing it.  And should I choose to carry a gun to church, it would not affect my worship any more than if I carried my credit card or cell phone to church.  So, give me a compelling reason why my carrying a concealed gun changes anything with regard to the worship service.
6 hours ago, Anddenex said:

It is highly inappropriate to come to church in my garments only, but nothing says it isn't allowed. When the Church specifies "inappropriate" on a scale from one to ten I am pretty sure they are specifying "10."

Give me a compelling reason to believe that.  And I'd really like to understand why.  Without any additional commentary from the brethren specifically addressing those who feel strongly about gun rights, I don't see this as any stronger than "it is requested that those administering the sacrament wear white shirts when available."

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6 hours ago, Fether said:

As I agree with your fear... I can’t think of a single story where this is the case. Rather I hear stories of assailant having free reign over powerless victims or an armed citizen stopping the shooter from doing more damage than he/she already had done.

Can you find a single story where an armed citizen accidentally shot a civilian while going after a gun man?

There aren't a lot of these stories, if any, though there have been some cases where police have missed their targets and injured bystanders.

But the inadvertent casualty from a concealed carrier trying to stop an active shooter is not where the greatest risk to the population lies. When more people carry weapons, the risk of escalating violence in personal, civil disputes goes up. that is the risk that must be managed when talking about more citizens carrying. As I've said earlier, this should not an easy balance to find.

And just as a discussion point, it kind of irritates me when people say things like "law abiding citizens don't commit gun violence." Yes, that is tautologically true. But a great deal of gun violence is committed by people who purchased their weapons legally and were law abiding citizens right up to the point that they lost their cool and illegally committed an act of violence. The metric I want to see, and have yet to see, is the incidence of offenses by people who purchased their weapons legally and had no prior criminal record. 

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7 hours ago, Anddenex said:

These I think are very tricky, and I have no understanding of how cops would handle such in their trainings @mirkwood?

 

That is a hard one to quantify.  In an active shooter scenario, anyone out of uniform runs a high risk of being shot if they are holding a gun.  The upside of that is we identify our targets before shooting them.  

 

IMO, the word "inappropriate" was deliberately vague.

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Guest MormonGator

This issue with saying a weapon is "inappropriate" or not allowed at general conference is that a mass shooter doesn't care what is or isn't allowed. Frankly, I'd be much happier and feel much safer is people like @mirkwood and @zil were allowed to carry their guns at GC. 

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35 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

This issue with saying a weapon is "inappropriate" or not allowed at general conference is that a mass shooter doesn't care what is or isn't allowed. Frankly, I'd be much happier and feel much safer is people like @mirkwood and @zil were allowed to carry their guns at GC. 

I have carried at the Conference Center.  Pretty much if you see me in public I'm carrying.

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17 hours ago, Carborendum said:

I totally respect your belief in being a conscientious objector.  But that is not the way of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  In our faith, we have seen first hand what giving up our guns does.  It gets our people slaughtered.  You can call in martyred.  But we call it genocide.  That is what these people wanted to do to us. 

The government of Missouri told them that if they gave up their guns "as a token of good will" then they would be left alone.  We complied and gave up all our guns.  As a result, the ones promising us that we'd be left alone came and raped our women in the most vile manner possible.  They slaughtered our children with a level of butchery that was as violent as the worst horror movies you see today.  And our men were tortured to death.

As a result, one man named John Moses Browning who was trained as a gunsmith (by his gunsmith father) since he was a youth decided that he would do everything he could to make sure that his people would never be left defenseless again.  He devised most of the mechanisms that make modern guns function the way they function today with pin point accuracy.  Such mechanisms are used in military machinery including the canons on battleships.  

The United States government named him as the one man who has contributed most to the defense of this country than any other.

I can appreciate your desire to not be violent.  And if it were left to us, we'd certainly be all for it.  But the Lord has told us:

We do not subscribe to non-resistance in ALL circumstances.  We believe in defending ourselves when we've exhausted all other options.  And we believe it to be in perfect compliance with the teaching that Jesus gave us.

I sort of agree with @Anddenex here.  When we talk about the “way of the Church”, we need to look at what they’ve actually said rather than delve into its history and split grammatical hairs to suggest that they actually mean the exact opposite of what they’re saying; or that we have some sort of cultural/historical duty to flout the counsel of at least the last three Church presidents. 

If you can’t bring yourself to put your life into the hands of your fellow saints, I can at least sympathize with that.  But I submit that it would be an error to justify yourself by pretending that disobedience in this instance actually  constitutes some “higher standard” of Mormon life.  

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1 hour ago, mirkwood said:

That is a hard one to quantify.  In an active shooter scenario, anyone out of uniform runs a high risk of being shot if they are holding a gun.  The upside of that is we identify our targets before shooting them.  

 

IMO, the word "inappropriate" was deliberately vague.

I went to a state active shooter training out in by some Davis County cops early this spring, and that question came up.  They answered more or less as you did, and bluntly added “when you break out a gun in that kind of situation, that’s just one of the risks you’re taking; and if you aren’t willing to take it you shouldn’t draw your gun.”

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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30 minutes ago, mirkwood said:

I have carried at the Conference Center.  Pretty much if you see me in public I'm carrying.

I had my CC license in NH but I never carried unless I was hiking. I haven't bothered to get on in Florida because virtually all the places we go to don't allow it. 

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1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I sort of agree with @Anddenex here.  When we talk about the “way of the Church”, we need to look at what they’ve actually said rather than delve into its history and split grammatical hairs to suggest that they actually mean the exact opposite of what they’re saying; or that we have some sort of cultural/historical duty to flout the counsel of at least the last three Church presidents. 

If you can’t bring yourself to put your life into the hands of your fellow saints, I can at least sympathize with that.  But I submit that it would be an error to justify yourself by pretending that disobedience in this instance actually  constitutes some “higher standard” of Mormon life.  

They said it's inappropriate.  That does not equate to prohibited.  You know that.  This is not a grammatical hair.  You know that.  And my desire to exercise a Constitutional right in a legally approved manner is not the opposite of what they've stated.

Are people forgetting that The Constitution of the United States is an inspired document?  Is not the right to bear arms an important (and I'd say integral) part of that document?  Is it not a continuing principle in the Lord's eyes?  To me it is.

So, when I see something written in what I consider scripture that is a principle we're told still applies vs. a single line of a policy statement, I feel justified in making a decision that a scriptural injunction is more important.

This is not some whimsy or frivolous reason.  It's not a choice of hair color or clothing.  It is not a tattoo or a pair of sunglasses.  It is the right to bear arms

It is not a sinful motivation where I'm trying to justify a sinful lifestyle.  It is something that we've been told is a perfectly acceptable life decision.

It is not an intrusive or distracting choice.  It in no way distracts ANYone from their worship.

Tell me what reason I would have to go against what scriptures justify and the Constitution gives me a right to do?

Scriptural injunction vs. policy "request".  Tell me which is more important?

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1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:

If you can’t bring yourself to put your life into the hands of your fellow saints, I can at least sympathize with that.  But I submit that it would be an error to justify yourself by pretending that disobedience in this instance actually  constitutes some “higher standard” of Mormon life.  

Do you remember when we had this discussion before and you gave the analogy of the virus in a safely contained petri dish?

I relented and stated that if a friend really objected to my bringing a gun to their home, I'd have a discussion with him about it and explain my position the best I could.  If he still objected, then I would have to make a choice to either not go to his house or leave the gun at home.

The equivalent here is that I've spoken with the bishop and he doesn't have a problem with it.  So, what more do you expect?

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3 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

But the inadvertent casualty from a concealed carrier trying to stop an active shooter is not where the greatest risk to the population lies. When more people carry weapons, the risk of escalating violence in personal, civil disputes goes up. that is the risk that must be managed when talking about more citizens carrying. As I've said earlier, this should not an easy balance to find.

I wonder if that is true.  As the saying goes, "an armed society is a polite society".  Switzerland is proving that to be true, is it not?

The theory is that when everyone is aware that any simple altercation may escalate to a deadly situation, people will do what they can to stay clear of that line.  Again, I'm not sure how true that is either.  But I at least see the logic in it.  And I've heard at least a few anecdotes where that has proven to be true.

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45 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

They said it's inappropriate.  That does not equate to prohibited.  You know that.  This is not a grammatical hair.  You know that.  And my desire to exercise a Constitutional right in a legally approved manner is not the opposite of what they've stated.

Are people forgetting that The Constitution of the United States is an inspired document?  Is not the right to bear arms an important (and I'd say integral) part of that document?  Is it not a continuing principle in the Lord's eyes?  To me it is.

So, when I see something written in what I consider scripture that is a principle we're told still applies vs. a single line of a policy statement, I feel justified in making a decision that a scriptural injunction is more important.

This is not some whimsy or frivolous reason.  It's not a choice of hair color or clothing.  It is not a tattoo or a pair of sunglasses.  It is the right to bear arms

It is not a sinful motivation where I'm trying to justify a sinful lifestyle.  It is something that we've been told is a perfectly acceptable life decision.

It is not an intrusive or distracting choice.  It in no way distracts ANYone from their worship.

Tell me what reason I would have to go against what scriptures justify and the Constitution gives me a right to do?

Scriptural injunction vs. policy "request".  Tell me which is more important?

I’m with Just_A_Guy on this one.  His post seems prescient in light of your reply.  

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