This week some Southern California Church Leaders came to that very same conclusion, and took up a position advocating not only a very discreet security presence of professionals, but also took the advice of their consultants and adopted the policy of advocating concealed carry of handguns among the congregation. Permit required, please.

Realities are the core of solving the problem of church violence, and having the stomach to face those realities and to meet them. For too long, for example, employers, churches, schools and others have said many different ways that they are sad to see that things have to come to this, but this is a trap which serves not the people, but the killers. Other objections have also delayed facing the reality of how best to meet the reality of murders and mayhem on campus. Fifteen Southern California church leaders refused to fall into that trap, and they sought out expert advice. It involves concealed carry of handguns in church, and they took it. Yes, concealed carry of handguns by the members who come to worship.

This is huge. Especially in California.

The Southern California churches’ consultant is Interfaith Intruder Response, a security firm who respects church worship and sanctuary deeply while elaborating specific realities the church needs to accept in where threat assessment is a new function. Some of those realities involve not only understanding how families fall apart or how political sentiment can act out, but how to meet it with action at the most critical moments, and some of that action may involve lethal force of their own. I might be just as good an idea to have, for instance, a CPR program for every large gathering of people.

Other churches around the nation have their own story to tell on the subject of not only how they have become pro-active and prepared, as in Bring-Your-Gun-To-Church Day has done, but also real experience in stopping murderous assailants the moment the assault begins. It works. So does announcing it publicly. Very shrewd.

Some of the most helpful components of the one-day course from Interfaith Intruder Response is how the church is urged to accept a new understanding, such as grasping the tactical in the moments between a violent attack and the arrival of police not as incapacitating, but as opportunity to stop them cold. Cases of mass murder of congregants taught to offer no resistance ("Give them what they want") hasn’t cut it, and instructions on how to hide or even to urge children to toss books at an active shooter do about as much. Yes, some have taught the kids to throw books.

The answer is not to ban handguns from visiting parents, or to arm faculty who may or may not be present at the critical moment, or to have uniformed guards who are so easily recognized, but to do as these churches are now announcing: discreetly invite the armed citizen to join you, fellow congregants who wear a concealed sidearm when they come to services. These congregants who have a concealed carry permit are welcomed now. 

Killers can kill in moments before a request for aid can even be processed, much less dispatched and on-scene. Not all killers use guns. Many have a knife, and a knife does not run out of ammunition. Some acts involve multiple assailants. The law in nearly all states is on the side of the target when it comes to life-threatening danger and the use of lethal force in reasonable response. Individuals may use lethal force when in reasonable apprehension of grave danger. Individuals may come to the aid of another. For these churches, perhaps their authority and law were the easy part. The hard part was more likely understanding better where their religious authority would lie in even consulting experts on the subject of violence. To the comfort of many, several liberty purists have commented on Christian authority in the righteous use of force. Some of that insight has been part of the Gun Rights Policy Conference which is held every year in September. [Please go to KeepAndbearArms.com for instance on this very important issue.] A lot of Christians are gun owners. Millions of us.

Gun owners, who number around 90 million adults right about now, are part of an interesting finding by experts who research the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report among other sources. The finding is that about 2.5 million times every year, someone, somewhere in America uses their personal gun to stop a violent crime in progress, and only a tiny percentage of those even see the need at the last second to fire their weapon. Death by citizen in justifiable homicide for 2007, for instance, was only 194 reports. 2.5 million non-shootings is a lot of crimes stopped without violence, but which were de-escalated in the absence of police. Those were stopped on citizen authority and their superior force, the same authority we give police. These de-escalated a potential crime millions of times.

There are reports in 2008 and 2009 of how specific church assaults were similarly interrupted by an armed citizen and to a happy conclusion.

Let me emphasize my support and praise for any church or school or workplace who elects to go concealed carry on its premises: It took a lot of courage and faith to make it policy that armed members with concealed carry permits may attend church armed. To invite them, as a matter of fact.

More than forty states have some provision for concealed carry, and some states have no requirement for a permit to carry open or concealed.  This is because this majority recognizes citizen authority to act in fighting crime; that law enforcement derives its own authority from that of the people it serves and not the other way around. The major cities, though, seem to balk at this.

How we meet and fight crime in America in the major cities may begin to turn around to reduce violence on our authority, and when it begins with schools (colleges who have affirmed concealed carry for years) and churches, we build a very useful community contact.  

The belief of many Americans is that the new Administration will change many things, judging by official remarks. Examples would be predominantly how crime is managed, what is ignored or allowed in a double-standard, watering down of victim rights, choking the system with cases in the administration of justice, police asset response times, budgetary changes and priorities, programs and policies on self-defense, new technologies of evidence and evidence collection, electronic surveillance, and other abstracts which bring a powerful truth to the minds of these tens of millions now — the idea that we are on our own in the first moments of a violent crime, the first days of civil disturbance, and all the first weeks of widespread disaster. And here is the frightening part: though there is nothing new in the fact that we are on our own – I said it myself after Hurricane Katrina – what is new is the banking scandals and utter defiance of the electorate accompanying these new changes in respect for the law. There is a very serious movement of officials in a greater and greater defiance of the electorate.

Let's catch up with some truths many non-gun owner Americans do not know in what it is about guns. Think personal independence from our servants and a suspicious resentment of any insistence to give more than we want them to give. The right to carry a gun was preceded by the right to carry our own burdens. Put another way, we are on our own not by adversity or bad luck, but by choice. Preferring to carry our own burdens is not a family value of pride, it is a national safeguard, and more Americans are coming to appreciate this truth as a safeguard of independence from our servants that has been pushed aside, especially in the last few years. Millions will be emphasizing this in 2009 as a matter of personal dignity as much as an essential of liberty, and they feel their liberty is threatened if not defied.

Nowhere is this very first burden more evident than in how we meet violent crime and love our families on various levels. The very first burden we carry is that, for ourselves and for our loved ones, we are the first line of protection in all things, and the first line of defense in time of violence, and no police and no policy will every change this. No one will ever be able to take your place as the first line of defense, no matter what they promise.

Each of us is loved, each of us is important to someone, each of us is precious, and the first obligation of gun ownership is not in the safe operation of a lethal mechanism, but in accepting and rising to the responsibility of protecting self and loved ones in the absence of first responders. The safe operation of the weapon will always be second to its purpose in first acquiring it.

What it is about guns is not only that we alone are responsible for our safety, but that the armed citizen's insistence on being on our own is essential to keeping dozens of silly programs at bay. Defiance of this insistence claims to manage life better if only the citizen will surrender, but in the process of officially insisting on lifting our burdens, these programs lift our liberty with them. This is what has awakened people in 2008 and 2009 -- the idea that we are urged to cooperate with officials when the very reason officials are hired is to cooperate with us.

With awareness of your authority, then, the freedom to exercise the right to carry a gun anywhere at all times and the authority to bring it to bear if necessary are a prime indicator of the overall health of our nation by what sort of anti-violence programs conflict with that authority to act.

Why a gun for the household and for family away from home? Why not pepper spray, a whistle, a big dog, or baseball bat? Because less-than-lethal doesn't cut it. Dogs, whistles and baseball bats don't work well on multiple assailants or other common conditions. How does one make a choice at this hour to limit your response at that hour of facing grave danger? Less-than-lethal limits the target's ability to match force to threat assessment. Without the choice, the target's response in a ladder of force cannot become the superior force necessary to de-escalate the situation. One of the smartest moves this year has been the affirmation of the armed citizen in our National Parks. Wilderness itself is dangerous, and it’s tough enough to locate visitors in the expanse of parks, not to mention effect urgent rescue. Such expanses even forbid requests for aid, much less arrival in time. the armed citizen is one of the best assets of the United States, for it is more than a right, it backs our very authority.

You can see how the anti-violence movement, then – a movement which discourages the very idea of resistance – has obfuscated choices and the use of your own authority, and this adversely affects whole communities. Obfuscating citizen authority has adversely affected the nation. This has become a model for various other programs, creating the sudden, awakening experience of 2008.

Remember that crime is not fought by chasing it after-the-fact – once a criminal act is completed, crime has won. Crime is not fought by chasing it, crime may only be caught by chasing it. How does one now prepare for during-the-fact choices on their re-invigorated authority to act?

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John Longenecker is author of Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns. Safe Streets is the only Second Amendment book in the Dr. Laura Family Reading Corner Catalog.