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truempathy · 8 years ago

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“ There's something so foreign about family. Like an ill-fitting suit. I never connected to the concept. ”

Will’s mother left when he was young. He doesn’t really remember her that much, he was only four. There’s the blurry image of curly brown hair, the faint smell of sweet perfume, and then she was gone. Like a ghost. Like the memory was just a dream he’d made up in his mind. He never had any memories of her being particularly loving or caring, but he knows it wasn’t from resentment or hate. She wasn’t mean, she wasn’t abusive, she was just ... Reserved. A little sad. Even at his young age, Will felt that a lot around her. In both her, and in himself.

He felt that around his father a lot too, after she left. Packed up one day and was gone without a word. She’d left him for something else : a better life. His father had never been rich, neither had she, but Will guesses living in some rural town, surrounded by nothing but the outskirts of community, was never part of her plan.

They moved around a lot after that, never staying in one place for long. Will’s pretty sure it’s because that, even in his tired life, his father was still subconsciously hoping he’d find her again someday, somewhere. That he’d get some answers. They never did. Dad was distant, and always had a glass of whiskey with his dinner. He wasn’t an alcoholic, but Will knows he found comfort in that nightly glass that he didn’t in motor oil or fishing lures. He didn’t spend a lot of time with Will, but he cared for him. Loved him, in his own broken way. There was the occasional hand on his head, the even rarer hug, but he always made sure they had something to eat, that Will had clothes on his back even if they were hand me downs. It used to confuse Will at first, seeing the nuclear families, pretty like presents wrapped with a bow. Two parents, a kid or two, a dog to tie it all together. Smiles and walks in the park and family photos. He didn’t have that.

Then he realized not every family was the same, and -- that was okay. He didn’t have a mother to tuck him into bed or a father who would play catch with him, but he learned how to fish. How to fix boats. He had something. That was enough for Will. Maybe there was a bit of jealousy along the way -- envy, and some poorly thought out moments where he put himself in the shoes of the other kids and parents to see how they felt, what was missing in his own life that he didn’t have that -- but it was, like many things in Will’s life, short lived and tucked away.

As five turned to twelve turned to fourteen, Will grew up but he didn’t change. Oh, he grew taller, and his voice started to crack, and he entered that all - too awkward phase of puberty where nothing ever seemed to fit right and his limbs never seemed to move the way he wanted them to, but he was still Will. No temper tantrums, no rebellious phase, no sudden flurry of cursing or running away or pulling illegal stunts with his friends late at night. He’d kind of need friends in the first place, to do that. He moved around too much for that : Louisiana one day, Texas the next. There was a lot of deep south in Will’s early life, before they finally settled in North Carolina when he was sixteen. They stayed there for three years -- the longest they’d ever stayed anywhere. But while the scenery changed, his father didn’t. He’d always work funny hours, under - the - table jobs, fixing boats and helping make them, recommending engines and oil and masts and other equipment. He’d catch fish, sell it to the local sometimes, but he’d cook them more often than not.

Fishing was, in Will’s life, one of the few constants he had, and one of the few times he’d spend hours in his father’s company. His father taught him everything he knows about fishing and boats, helped him make his first lure, gave him direction and lessons on how to sail a boat after teaching him the parts of a boat, and how to prepare it for sailing. Fishing was more quiet, more personal : sitting on a lone dock in the wilderness, nothing but nature to talk to them, sometimes standing in the constant bubble of a stream or small river and waiting for the inevitable bite and pull on their lure.

It was as close as Will ever got to his father, strange and gruff in his own way, and maybe Will never had a real idea on what family was like, but it influenced him, anyway. An absent mother and a distant father, and growing up with that in mind -- literally, in his mind, affecting the way he thought and looked at things, Will guesses there was never really much of a chance that he’d be able to fall far from the tree.

He doesn’t resent his father for it, or even his mother for not being there : But it does leave a bitter taste in the back of his mouth that he tries to swallow down, sometimes. It was hard to separate himself from his father, or even his mother -- someone he’d never known but thought of often, knew enough about in her absence and disappearance that he could imagine what she was like, her emotions leading up to her decision -- growing up, and even now, Will’s not entirely sure how much of him is ... him. He’s usually left wobbly on his feet and blurry in his mind when consulting on cases, the lovely effect of connecting with the crime on an emotional level often too much to bear, but the Lost Boys case dredged up old emotions, memories he’d stored far away.

Will’s averse to the idea of family and disconnected from the knowledge of what a healthy family is like. But with Abigail Hobbs - with her father - that changed. Will isn’t her father. He’s not Garrett Jacob Hobbs : He’s never wanted to be, and he never wants to be. But he’s stepped into his shoes, Garrett’s shoes. Garrett, who haunts him in his dreams and at day in equal turns, and Will isn’t Garrett Jacob Hobbs but that part of Garrett that was a father to Abigail has stuck. It stuck and manifested itself, in all its twisted glory until Will grounded himself and found himself again. He doesn’t love Abigail like a daughter in the way Garrett loved her: but he still loves her like a daughter nonetheless, connected to her by the trauma and horror they shared and his responsibility for what happened to her family, as well as who they are when facing the world and when hidden away from it.

His idea on family changed with Margot too, in that brief, beautiful, terrifying moment where he almost had a son, before it was ripped away. It changed with Molly, who already had a son, and loved him more than anything. Molly, who would give up the world for Wally, who wouldn’t even have to talk about Wally for Will to see how much she valued her family. Will felt that deeply with Molly, and felt it in himself too, as a result. Her own emotions stitching themselves into him until they were, inevitably, a part of him, too.

Everything blurs into itself in his mind, after all, and with each new case and each new person he finds himself inhibiting and becoming. But Will knows that the idea of a family -- wanting to have one and take care of them -- didn’t start with Molly, and it didn’t start with Abigail or Hannibal. It started with his father, who tried his best, who tried to make a family, who wanted one, and failed. Will knew he wished for it more than anything, and while Will would never know from first-hand experience what that would be like, that part of his father stuck with him. Will never connected to the concept on a personal level, as far as experience and understanding of it goes, but emotionally, Will has always, subconsciously, wanted it.

It’s a different use for his empathy : where he can connect with others in a way that doesn’t involve murders or death or questions of morality and sanity. It’s connecting with others in a way that means stability, protection, and love. People he could care for, in ways the world never cared for him, in the ways the world never allowed him to care for others, and people who could understand him. It’s a distant desire he doesn’t know how to connect with fully, but that want persists regardless.

#( META / HC. ) ˢᵗᵃʳˢ ʰᶦᵈᵉ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᶠᶦʳᵉˢ ﹕ ᶫᵉᵗ ᶰᵒᵗ ᶫᶦᵍʰᵗ ˢᵉᵉ ᵐʸ ᵇᶫᵃᶜᵏ ᵃᶰᵈ ᵈᵉᵉᵖ ᵈᵉˢᶦʳᵉˢ⋅#i've had this sitting in my drafts for the past like #WEEK #i'm not completely satisfied with the end of this because there's a lot more to say #but my brain is mush rn so i'll expand on it later !#long post tw

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investmart007 · 6 years ago

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WASHINGTON | Protesters flood US cities to fight Trump immigration policy

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/j5XhYs

WASHINGTON | Protesters flood US cities to fight Trump immigration policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — They wore white. They shook their fists in the air. They carried signs reading: “No more children in cages,” and “What’s next? Concentration Camps?”

In major cities and tiny towns, hundreds of thousands of marchers gathered Saturday across America, moved by accounts of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, in the latest act of mass resistance against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Protesters flooded more than 700 marches, from immigrant-friendly cities like New York and Los Angeles to conservative Appalachia and Wyoming. They gathered on the front lawn of a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, near a detention center where migrant children were being held in cages, and on a street corner near Trump’s golf resort at Bedminster, New Jersey, where the president is spending the weekend.

Trump has backed away from family separations amid bipartisan and international uproar. His “zero tolerance policy” led officials to take more than 2,000 children from their parents as they tried to enter the country illegally, most of them fleeing violence, persecution or economic collapse in their home countries.

Those marching Saturday demanded the government quickly reunite the families that were already divided.

A Brazilian mother separated from her 10-year-old son more than a month ago approached the microphone at the Boston rally.

“We came to the United States seeking help, and we never imagined that this could happen. So I beg everyone, please release these children, give my son back to me,” she said through an interpreter, weeping.

“Please fight and continue fighting, because we will win,” she said. The crowd erupted.

In Washington, D.C., an estimated 30,000 marchers gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House in what was expected to be the largest protest of the day, stretching for hours under a searing sun. Firefighters at one point misted the crowd to help people cool off.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical “Hamilton,” sang a lullaby dedicated to parents unable to sing to their children. Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys read a letter written by a woman whose child had been taken away from her at the border.

“It’s upsetting. Families being separated, children in cages,” said Emilia Ramos, a cleaner in the district, fighting tears at the rally.

“Seeing everyone together for this cause, it’s emotional.”

Around her, thousands waved signs: “I care,” some read, referencing a jacket that first lady Melania Trump wore when traveling to visit child migrants. The back of her jacket said, “I really don’t care, do U?” and it became a rallying cry for protesters Saturday.

“I care!! Do you?” read Joan Culwell’s T-shirt as she joined a rally in Denver.

“We care!” marchers shouted outside Dallas City Hall. Organizer Michelle Wentz says opposition to the Trump administration’s “barbaric and inhumane” policy has seemed to transcend political lines.

“This is the issue crossing the line for a lot of people,” said Robin Jackson, 51, of Los Angeles, who protested with thousands carrying flags, signs and babies.

Singer John Legend serenaded the crowd and Democratic politicians who have clashed with Trump had strong words for the president, including U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters who called for his impeachment.

The president took to Twitter amid the protests, first to show his support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as some Democrats called for major changes to the agency. Tweeting Saturday from New Jersey, Trump urged ICE agents to “not worry or lose your spirit” and wrote that “the radical left Dems want you out. Next it will be all police.”

He later tweeted that he never pushed House Republicans to vote for immigration overhaul measures that failed last week, contradicting a post three days ago in which he urged GOP congressional members to pass them.

In Trump’s hometown of New York City, another massive crowd poured across the Brooklyn Bridge in sweltering 90-degree heat, some carrying their children on their shoulders, chanting, “Shame!” Drivers honked their horns in support.

“It’s important for this administration to know that these policies that rip apart families — that treat people as less than human, like they’re vermin — are not the way of God, they are not the law of love,” said the Rev. Julie Hoplamazian, an Episcopal priest marching in Brooklyn.

Though seasoned anti-Trump demonstrators packed the rallies, others were new to activism, including parents who said they felt compelled to act after heart-wrenching accounts of families who were torn apart.

Marchers took to city parks and downtown squares from Maine to Florida to Oregon; in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico; on the international bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico; even in Antler, North Dakota, population 27. People braved the heat in Chicago and Atlanta to march.

Some of the demonstrations were boisterous, others were quiet.

Five people were arrested outside an ICE office in Dallas for blocking a road. At least one arrest was made in Columbus, Ohio, when protesters obstructed a downtown street. Light-rail service temporarily shut down in Minneapolis as thousands of demonstrators got in the way of the tracks. A rally in Portland, Maine, grew so large that police had to shut down part of a major street.

But in Dodge City, Kansas, a 100-person rally led by a Catholic church felt more like a mass than a protest.

In rural Marshalltown, Iowa, about 125 people gathered for a march organized by Steve Adelmund, a father of two who was inspired after turning on the news on Father’s Day and seeing children being separated from their families and held in cages.

“It hit me in the heart. I cried,” he said.

“If we can’t come together under the idea of ‘Kids shouldn’t be taken from their parents,’ where are we?” he asked. “We have to speak out now while we can, before we can’t.”

Drum beats and horns sounded as thousands of protesters took to the streets of San Francisco.

“We came here to let the president know that this is not acceptable,” said San Francisco resident Barry Hooper, who attended with his wife and two daughters.

His 7-year-old daughter Liliana clutched a sign she made, saying, “Stop the separation.”

Three thousand miles away in Washington, protesters ended their march at the white-columned Justice Department. They stacked their protest signs, written in English and Spanish, against its grand wooden doors.

“Fight for families,” one sign demanded.

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER by Associated Press

#Concentration Camps #Donald Trump #Immigration Policies #TodayNews #U.S.-Mexico border #Washington

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kansascityhappenings · 6 years ago

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‘We care’: Family separation protests flood US cities

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WASHINGTON — They wore white. They shook their fists in the air. They carried signs reading: “No more children in cages,” and “What’s next? Concentration Camps?”

Activists march and rally against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Trump administration’s immigration policies, across the street from the ICE offices at Federal Plaza, June 29, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“Do you know where our children are?” one protester’s sign there asked. Another offered: “Even the Trump family belongs together.”

Trump has backed away from the family separation policy amid bipartisan and international uproar, and those marching Saturday demanded the government quickly reunite the families that were already divided.

Composer Lin-Manuel Miranda joins MoveOn, National Domestic Workers Alliance, and hundreds of allies at a rally at the White House to tell President Donald Trump and his administration to stop separating kids from their parents on June 30, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for MoveOn.org)

In the president’s hometown of New York City, an estimated 30,000 marchers poured across the Brooklyn Bridge in sweltering 90-degree heat, some carrying their children on their shoulders, chanting, “Shame!” Drivers honked their horns in support.

“It’s important for this administration to know that these policies that rip apart families —that treat people as less than human, like they’re vermin — are not the way of God, they are not the law of love,” said the Rev. Julie Hoplamazian, an Episcopal priest marching in Brooklyn.

The families split up as they tried to enter the U.S. illegally were largely fleeing extreme violence, persecution or economic collapse in their home countries, often in Central America.

In Washington, D.C., another massive crowd gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House in what was expected to be the largest protest of the day, stretching for hours under a searing sun. Firefighters at one point misted the crowd to help people cool off.

“It’s upsetting. Families being separated, children in cages,” said Emilia Ramos, a cleaner in the district, fighting tears at the rally. “Seeing everyone together for this cause, it’s emotional.”

Around her, thousands waved signs: “I care,” some read, referencing a jacket that first lady Melania Trump wore when traveling to visit child migrants. Her jacket said, “I really don’t care, do U?” and it became a rallying cry for protesters Saturday.

“I care!! Do you?” read Joan Culwell’s T-shirt as she joined a boisterous rally in Denver.

Watch Video

“We care!” marchers shouted outside Dallas City Hall. Organizer Michelle Wentz says opposition to the Trump administration’s “barbaric and inhumane” policy has seemed to cross political party lines. The “zero tolerance policy” of prosecuting people caught entering the country illegally led officials to separate more than 2,000 children from their parents before being abandoned.

Trump took to Twitter to show his support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid calls from some Democrats for major changes to the agency. Tweeting from New Jersey on Saturday, Trump urged ICE agents to “not worry or lose your spirit.” He wrote that “the radical left Dems want you out. Next it will be all police.”

Though many at the rallies were seasoned anti-Trump demonstrators, others were new to activism, including parents who said they felt compelled to act after heart-wrenching accounts of families torn apart.

Nationwide, groups came together in city parks and downtown squares, while others converged on the international bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico.

At the border, they protested what speakers described as unconstitutional overreach by the Trump administration and heavy-handed tactics by immigration agents. They carried signs with slogans like “We are all immigrants” as they chanted “Love, not hate, makes America great.”

Marchers took to the streets in Raleigh, North Carolina; Louisville, Kentucky; Pittsburgh; Houston; cities in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, as well as Antler, North Dakota, population 27.

Steve Adelmund, a father of two, was inspired to organize a protest in rural Marshalltown, Iowa, after turning on the news on Father’s Day and seeing children being separated from their families and held in cages.

“It hit me in the heart. I cried,” said Adelmund, whose event drew about 125 people.

“If we can’t come together under the idea of ‘Kids shouldn’t be taken from their parents,’ where are we?” he asked. “We have to speak out now while we can, before we can’t.”

Watch Video

In Columbus, Ohio, at least one person was arrested when protesters blocked a downtown street, the Columbus Dispatch reported. But most of the rallies remained peaceful.

In downtown Los Angeles, John Legend serenaded the crowd while Democratic politicians who have clashed with Trump had strong words for the president, including U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters who called for impeachment.

Margarita Perez held up a Mexican flag as speakers addressed the crowd in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“Those children that they are incarcerating and separating, they are our future generations. We need to provide for these children,” she said. “They will be our future leaders.”

Two thousand miles away in Boston, a Brazilian mother separated from her 10-year-old son at the border 37 days ago approached the microphone.

He son has pleaded with her on the phone to bring him home.

“I beg you all,” she said. “Please fight and continue fighting, because we will win.”

In Washington, protesters ended their march at the white-columned Department of Justice. They taped their protest signs, written in English and Spanish, to its grand wooden doors.

“Fight for families,” the sign declared.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2018/06/30/1111681/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/we-care-family-separation-protests-flood-us-cities/

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h-bailey · 7 years ago

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In wake of church shootings, pastors and worshipers arm themselves to shoot back

The First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, the site of last November’s deadly mass shooting, has turned its sanctuary into a memorial for the 26 victims. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

SANTA ANNA, Texas — When Kevin Roman thinks about what happened at that tiny church in Sutherland Springs last November, he considers the clock: seven minutes.

That’s how long it took for a masked gunman to spray hundreds of bullets in the sanctuary of First Baptist Church during the Sunday morning service on Nov. 5, killing half the congregation of around 50 and wounding 20 others. Seven minutes is all it took to enact the worst mass shooting in Texas history and the worst ever at a church in the United States. Just seven minutes was all it took to rip out the heart of a tiny community, to inflict the kind of pain on families that will never heal.

Roman lives hundreds of miles away, in a tiny unincorporated West Texas town called Valera. Like Sutherland Springs, Valera is a blip on the map, a one-stoplight village of roughly 80 people where everyone knows everyone else. There’s a post office, a barbecue restaurant and the Valera Baptist Church, where Roman has been pastor for the last three years. The congregation of 30 or so meets Sundays in the small white chapel a few blocks off state highway 67 in heavily rural Coleman County that appears to have more cows than cops.

Last year, when the barbecue restaurant was robbed, it took the county sheriff almost 30 minutes to respond. Roman thought of the robbery on that fateful November morning, as he heard early reports of the massacre in Sutherland Springs. He considered the fate of his own church, smaller but equally remote. What would they do if a crazed gunman suddenly showed up on their doorstep? Would there be anyone to protect them? Could they protect themselves?

Like Sutherland Springs, Valera, Texas, is a one-stoplight town. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

“Sutherland Springs was a punch in the gut because, out in the middle of nowhere, you forget about danger,” Roman said.

His congregants also watched the news and began to think about their safety. Some of the Sunday regulars began bringing their guns to church, including a woman who kept one in her handbag. Nobody talked about it. It just happened. They started locking the church door during services, and a man positioned himself in the last pew to keep watch. It still didn’t feel like enough.

Roman resolved to come up with a plan for how to keep his church safe in the event of the unthinkable. “Even if nothing happens, I didn’t want to be that pastor who wasn’t prepared,” Roman said.

On a recent Wednesday night, Roman found himself 15 miles down the road on one of the front pews at the First Baptist Church in nearby Santa Anna. He was one of about 50 small-town pastors and church congregants from around the region attending a $25-per-person seminar on church security taught by Jimmy Meeks, a retired police officer-turned-minister who travels the country advocating for churches to be better prepared for violent attacks like the one in Sutherland Springs. Unlike other church security experts, he makes little money on the ministry. The tickets usually cover his travel costs and that’s it.

Meeks calls his mission the Sheepdog Seminars, and in recent months, he’s been on the road almost nonstop, traveling to churches throughout Texas and as far away as Nevada, Florida, Kentucky and Ohio, called upon by pastors to spread awareness that not even the sacred house of God is immune from bloodshed in an era of seemingly endless mass shootings.

Jimmy Meeks of Sheepdog Seminars delivers a church security seminar at the First Baptist Church in Santa Anna, Texas (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

“What happened in Sutherland Springs, as horrible as that was, it was not unique,” Meeks said as he prepared to take the pulpit in Santa Anna. “Violence happens all the time in churches or on faith-based property, but for some reason, people in the church still operate as though this could never happen to them. (They say) ‘No, Lord, not at my church.’ And I say, ‘Don’t you remember Charleston? Don’t you remember Colorado Springs? Or Fort Worth? Don’t you remember this town or the other?’ People need to wake up.”

For almost three hours, Meeks, dressed in a Western-style shirt, faded jeans and cowboy boots, marched up and down the aisle of the small sanctuary in Santa Anna, alternating between the calm voice of the cop he used to be in the suburbs of Fort Worth, where he still lives, and a fire-and-brimstone preacher passionately trying to stir the church body out of what he describes as “complacency.” Invoking a litany of past church attacks, often with his voice choked and tears in his eyes, Meeks again and again warned that what happened in Sutherland Springs could happen anywhere, in any church, big or small.

Although recent headlines might suggest otherwise, it is still safe to go to church on Sunday morning. Unlike school shootings, the FBI does not keep a specific tally of acts of violence at faith-based institutions, so the research is largely left to outside experts. But given the millions of institutions of faith in the country, the ratio of deadly crime is, on average, small.

Since 1999, there have been around 1,700 “deadly force” incidents at houses of worship, including mosques and synagogues, according to Carl Chinn, a church security expert in Colorado Springs, Colo. Even though there are few incidents on average, church shootings are often high profile. According to Chinn’s data, roughly 1,000 of those deadly force incidents included the use of a gun, and in nearly 500 cases, someone was killed.

Experts say that what’s happening at churches is not necessarily a sign of growing anger at religion, but rather a sign that houses of worship are not immune from the rash of deadly shootings that seem to be growing in number in recent years. People like Meeks argue that churches need to be prepared and aware of what is happening in the society around them.

“You need to be ready!” Meeks shouted. Citing the Old Testament story of David versus Goliath, he rejected the interpretation that the young warrior was an underdog who had simply overcome his enemy with the help of the Lord. David, he said, had “trained” to face his enemy — just as churches must now train and prepare for potential attacks.

“David was conscious of the threats,” Meeks declared. “Are you conscious of the threats?”

For churches, the more difficult question now may not simply be whether they are aware or even preparing for the threats. Just as Meeks’s schedule is crammed with dozens of seminars in coming months, consultants and other organizations that specialize in church security have been overwhelmed with training requests from congregations all over the country in the aftermath of Sutherland Springs as shaken churches grapple with the fear that an attacker could target their place of worship. Some waiting lists are reportedly more than a year long, already scheduled well into 2019.

Valera Baptist Church, in remote West Texas, reconsidered its security plan after the Sutherland Springs shooting. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

In Texas, the question of security has ignited a separate debate over how far a church should go in trying to protect the flock, especially small-town churches that can’t afford to hire police or professional security guards. Many law enforcement officials and security experts say it is a risk for churches to rely on volunteer security or gun-toting congregants who may not have the proper training to interpret a genuine threat or how to respond. But Texas officials, including state Attorney General Ken Paxton, have said what happened in Sutherland Springs is an argument for more armed parishioners since they may be a church’s only line of defense.

“We need people in churches … at least arming some of the parishioners or the congregation so that they can respond if something like this, when something like this happens again,” Paxton told Fox News on Nov. 5, hours after the Sutherland Springs shooting.

But even in gun-friendly Texas, where an open-carry law has been on the books since 2016, some churches have been reluctant to allow congregants to carry their weapons during service, even concealed. The churches are fearful of the tension the presence of a gun might cause or the message it might send in an environment that is supposed to be welcoming to outsiders. Even now, some churches around the state say they believe they should rely on their faith in God to protect them from potential attacks, not guns.

“There is a fundamental question about who is the church and what are we about. Are we going to be gun-carrying and put trust in redemptive violence?” Kyle Childress, the pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, told the Austin American-Statesman in December. “I don’t believe the way of Jesus Christ teaches that.”

Before the Sutherland Springs shooting, several major church groups in Texas, including leaders of the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, had advised their membership to ban weapons from services. Citing the Catholic doctrine that the real presence of Jesus Christ exists inside the sanctuary, dioceses in major cities, including Dallas, San Antonio and Houston, banned guns. But in the aftermath of Sutherland Springs, church leaders of various denominations have faced pressure to reconsider their positions on weapons.

In November, just a day after the shooting in South Texas, the Diocese of Dallas said it would not formally lift its ban on the open or concealed carry of firearms inside its churches, but it advised its parishes to consider removing outdoor signs that advertised the prohibition on guns out of fear it would make the churches more vulnerable to attack. But the move effectively allowed the carry of weapons, since state law requires any business banning guns to install a public sign formally stating that policy.

A family stands near 26 crosses set up in a baseball field a few blocks from the site of the shooting during a memorial service�� in Sutherland Springs, Texas. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

Outside of Texas, the Sutherland Springs attack sparked new calls for gun control measures — the same response that happened just weeks earlier after the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas and other deadly events before that. But in the Lone Star state, the opposite happened, especially in the small towns around Sutherland Springs. Worried residents increasingly saw firearms as their only reliable line of protection in an area where law enforcement isn’t always around the corner.

Gun stores in Wilson County, where Sutherland Springs is located, have reported an uptick in the sale of firearms and applications for concealed weapons since November, including from local pastors looking to protect their flock. It’s not unheard of for a pastor to carry a gun in the pulpit. Frank Pomeroy, the head pastor at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, told reporters after the shooting that he regularly carried his weapon to church. But on that Sunday morning when his church was attacked, Pomeroy was in Oklahoma City taking a class to be a licensed gun instructor for a youth class on pistols. His daughter Annabelle, just 14, was killed in the shooting. The pastor has admitted to agonizing over whether he could have stopped the attack.

“In a way, I think that if I were there I could have done more,” Pomeroy told the New York Times after the shooting. “But who is to say?”

Church leaders in the heavily rural area had operated on a mostly “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to carrying firearms during services even before the Nov. 3 shooting and now say they have noticed more guns on Sunday mornings. “I honestly welcome it,” said a pastor from Floresville, Texas, a town neighboring Sutherland Springs. The pastor declined to be identified by name because he did not want his church to be a target. “People are nervous, but they aren’t afraid of guns around here,” he said. “They are afraid of someone barging in and shooting them.”

In Sutherland Springs, Devin Kelley, the gunman, was ultimately stopped when he left the church and came under fire from Stephen Willeford, a church neighbor who had grabbed his own weapon when he heard gunfire across the street. Although he was wearing ballistic armor, Kelley was shot twice, in the leg and torso, causing him to drop his gun — an AR-556 assault rifle — and flee. He later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after Willeford and another man, Johnnie Langendorff, pursued him in a high-speed chase into the countryside.

Vice President Mike Pence speaks Wednesday outside the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, the site of the Nov. 5, 2017, mass shooting. He was joined by Johnnie Langendorff, fourth from right, and Sherri and Frank Pomeroy, far right, the pastors of the church. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

Police have speculated that Willeford may have stopped Kelley from killing more people. The gunman was believed to have targeted the church in a dispute with his estranged wife’s mother, but she wasn’t in church that morning. Inside Kelley’s vehicle, police found two more guns and additional ammunition. Investigators have hinted he may have had more targets, although they have offered no other details.

In the aftermath of the shooting, some churchgoers in the region appointed themselves to be unofficial guardians of their church, taking inspiration from Willeford’s gun battle with Kelley. At the same time, some churches, especially smaller congregations in rural areas, have sought to set up security teams made up of volunteers — something they couldn’t legally do until recently.

In September, just two months before the Sutherland Springs attack, a new state law went into effect that allowed churches to form security teams without having the training, licensing, insurance and background checks usually required of security guards in the state. Before that, churches who were caught relying on armed volunteers that did not meet state licensing requirement faced fines up to $10,000 and potential jail time — though there’s no record of any organization being charged. Backers of the new law, including Meeks, argued that the old regulations unfairly penalized small churches that couldn’t afford to hire outside security or formally license members of the congregation, leaving them vulnerable.

But opponents of the law have raised concern about the potential danger caused by untrained volunteers who don’t know how to properly use their weapons or identify and respond to a potential threat in the heat of the moment. They say it’s no different from having an unlicensed vigilante sitting in the church pew and have expressed concern about accidents — which have happened in recent weeks.

Just days after the shooting in Sutherland Springs, a 81-year-old man was accidentally shot in the hand and his wife was grazed in the stomach at a church in Tellico Plains, Tenn., after he pulled out his weapon during a church discussion on bringing firearms to church.

That unease over potential accidents and guns in the hands of untrained congregants has only increased in the rush to protect churches in the aftermath of Sutherland Springs.

“Having Bubba there with a gun is not necessarily the best idea,” said Chuck Chadwick, a longtime church security expert and founder of the National Organization of Church Security and Safety Management. He has been training churches on how to protect themselves for more than a decade through Gatekeepers Security Services, a Dallas-area private security firm he and his family operate.

William Chadwick, an instructor at Gatekeepers Security Services, demonstrates defense tactics against potential church attackers during a defense class in Pilot Point, Texas. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

The program, which costs $800, has trained and certified more than 350 parishioners, church staffers and even pastors as state-licensed personal protection officers. It’s based on a curriculum that closely mirrors requirements for private security officers, including training in handguns and hand-to-hand combat. Participants are trained in church-specific scenarios, such as distinguishing potential troublemakers from those who may be showing signs of emotional distress and are seeking help.

“Churches have a unique dilemma because nobody wants to shut the doors to people who need help,” Chadwick said. “But you also have to have people who can detect the difference between whether someone is going up for prayer or whether they are going up to attack the pastor. You don’t always know, and you have to be prepared to act. … That comes from training.”

On a recent weekend, the Gatekeepers class in a suburb outside Dallas included six men from a small church in San Marcos, Texas, a town about 45 minutes north of Sutherland Springs. The group, which included the pastor, had signed up for training after the Nov. 5 shooting.

All the men were gun owners, skilled marksmen who regularly hunted and spent time at the range. But in training the week before, the group had spent time practicing their skills in a simulator designed to give them an idea of what handling a gun might be like in an active-shooter situation. The experience had been overwhelming. “You imagine it’s going to be stressful and chaotic, but it’s so much more intense than you imagine,” one of the men said. “Hopefully, we never experience anything like that in person.”

Congregants from Texas-area churches participate in a class on security and defense tactics offered by Gatekeepers Security Services in Pilot Point, Texas. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

That morning, the men were going over potential defense tactics in what would be their final hours of training before testing. They practiced punches and kicks on a rubber dummy at the center of the room, moves designed to neutralize a potential assailant without having to use a gun. The training emphasizes that using a gun in the sanctuary should always be the last resort.

Chadwick’s son, William, a licensed bodyguard who runs security for a prominent Dallas pastor, had spent part of the class standing at a dry-erase board, scratching x’s and o’s on the board like a football coach trying to lay out the best possible plays. A circle represented the church sanctuary, and inside the circle were even-smaller circles — barrier rings that led to the pulpit in the center. He talked about setting up cameras and where to position security and staff, and walked the men through how to de-escalate potentially bad situations.

“Where’s your first line of defense?” he asked. He drew an arrow just outside the circle. “You always need someone here, keeping on eye on the parking lot.”

It was the parking lot outside the church in Sutherland Springs where Kelley had first attracted notice. The gunman had barely parked his SUV, leaving it in the street, when, according to witnesses at a gas station across the street, he jumped out and began firing at the exterior walls of the church before he headed inside the sanctuary.

A diagram of security scenarios to combat a potential active shooter at a church is shown on a whiteboard during a class on defense tactics offered by Gatekeepers Security Services in Pilot Point, Texas. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

William Chadwick, a serious but affable man, grows angry just thinking about it. Along with his dad, who was running church security when he was just a kid, he had spent most of his adult life trying to spread the word to churches to be more mindful of potential threats. What happened in Sutherland Springs just seemed senseless to him and preventable.

“There was no one there to confront him, no one there to stop him,” he said. “I remember people were saying how heartbroken they were, and I was, too. But I was so furious. I was actually angry. There was not a single person there, no gatekeeper, no one to stand in that threshold and tell him no. … When are people going to get serious?”

In Santa Anna, Meeks’s presentation was far more informal. The retired police officer outlined some of the same suggestions emphasized in the Gatekeeper training, including locking certain doors and where to position church staff.

“Get in the parking lot. They are all coming from the parking lot. Nobody’s coming on an airplane. They’re going to pull up in the car in the parking lot, get out and start,” Meeks said. “If you are there to deal with them, there’s a good chance they won’t get inside. You cannot let the shootout take place in the sanctuary, are you hearing me?”

Congregants from Texas-area churches participate in a class on security and defense tactics offered by Gatekeepers Security Services in Pilot Point, Texas. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

Meeks repeatedly advised the congregants to study mental illness, accusing churches of dancing around a subject that is a more realistic threat than an ISIS-inspired soldier storming the sanctuary. “You need to know what schizophrenia is. You need to know what bipolar means. You need to understand aggression. You got people in your church that got all these diseases,” the former cop said. “Study these things. Why is the church so scared of everything? You ought to be on the phone next week and get somebody out here from mental health services and say, ‘Educate us.’ … Can I get an amen on that?”

“Amen!” a man shouted.

Meeks was blunt that his seminar did not teach the congregants everything they needed to know. “You ain’t ready,” he said. He advised them to enroll in a class like Gatekeepers, if they could afford it. But he acknowledged that many small churches simply didn’t have the money. So he repeatedly advised them to go back to their churches and train and practice security scenarios repeatedly.

Jimmy Meeks, a retired Texas police officer, runs Sheepdog Seminars, which focuses on church security. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

“If your church safety team is not trained, I don’t even know that you should have one. You’re nothing but a liability to the whole church,” Meeks said. “Because when he shows up to kill, it is going to be sheer chaos and hell like you never dreamed possible. You better start training, you better be practicing.”

Before he ended the service, Meeks took up a collection, asking for donations to buy a new bulletproof vest for a local police officer who sat in the back. He had recognized instantly that the one the cop was wearing was so old it could barely withstand a conventional gunshot, much less fire from the kind of military-style assault rifles used in recent mass shootings. Then Meeks sent his audience off with a prayer — though he kept his eyes open and his head up, one of the tips he had offered his audience.

“Never EVER close your eyes,” he said.

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