Georgia church ‘heartbroken’ after member charged in Atlanta killings

Never good when a “member” goes on a murder spree.

It is interesting how many people who commit mass murders just bought the weapon they use. It does seem like a reasonable delay in gun purchases is warranted.

Once a student of mine told me they bought a gun that day intending to kill themselves, but “the store was out of bullets.” I have wondered since then if the seller suspected something and didn’t let the person buy bullets as well. Though they did sell them the gun, so…

Crabapple Baptist Church has gone dark. They shut down their website by turning it private. They also removed their facebook page.

Is this a good idea? What would you do?

https://www.crabapplefbc.org/

They tracked the accused because his parents id’d him and the police used the GPS on his SUV to see where he was. And no COVID-19 vaccine microchip was needed!

….let’s let an investigation proceed here. The bright side of waiting periods is that it theoretically does give someone a chance to cool down; the down side is that people also die as they’re waiting for a weapon. One thing that comes to mind in particular is that somehow the individual killed 8 people—that’s very hard to do unless one is familiar with firing a pistol. Occasionally it’s documented among those playing a lot of video games, but usually it means that the person already had access to pistols and knew how to use them.

To draw a picture, when I started firing pistols, it took quite a bit of practice for me to hit a target, and it depended strongly on the particular “feel” (weight, barrel, trigger pull, grip, etc..) of the gun whether I could hit a target or not. An Osama Bin Laden target someone posted was very helpful, actually.

Another thing that needs to be investigated is precisely what the individual’s “sexual addiction” meant, and how it worked out in his life. Does it mean he had a degree of mental illness that might have been diagnosed (and would have prevented him from buying that pistol), and was his addiction fed in part by “happy endings” (prostitution) at some massage businesses? Or was he just lashing out because he had an addiction to some other kind of pornography or sexual behavior, and the massage businesses were easy targets?

Not that this ought to make a huge difference in the verdict this individual ought to get—life in prison or the death penalty both seem appropriate to me—but an investigation with answers to questions like those I’ve written here might give us a hint as to how we can avoid such problems in the future.

Another thought, courtesy of two heroes of mine, the Denhollanders, is that we really ought to examine our theology with regards to this; were women consistently blamed for lust by men and the like?

It’s NOT! But consider the blame game here:

https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2021/march/religion-race-an…

From Jim’s link, follow to USA Today. We find that all three spas were prominently on lists of spas where “extra services” might be available, and a look at the facades suggests they were not exactly in the good part of town, or designed to attract legitimate business. You generally don’t put rows of pink lights outside a business because you’re trying to attract families, to put it mildly. 24 hour service, blacked out windows, parking in back—do the math, brothers. Left undetermined; did he ever patronize these businesses, or was it just a crime of opportunity?

Young man had run off with his girlfriend, leading to a police search and report at the request of his parents, and he apparently spent some time in inpatient counseling for sex addiction at Maverick Recovery of Roswell, GA. Maverick follows a 12 step inpatient model for treatment. Also in church most weekends, dad was still a pastor despite his son apparently living in sin with his girlfriend and being in treatment for sex addiction. Roommates from the past year relate a guy with crushing guilt, according to USA Today—and also had had guns since he was eight. Whether or not he owned other pistols is TBD.

Church is not off the hook, but we also have to ask the question of whether things might have been helped if the police had been able and/or willing to investigate allegations of prostitution at businesses like these. Evidently they’re hotbeds of human trafficking as well—so it’s entirely possible that some of those killed were essentially sex slaves.

[Bert Perry]

To draw a picture, when I started firing pistols, it took quite a bit of practice for me to hit a target, and it depended strongly on the particular “feel” (weight, barrel, trigger pull, grip, etc..) of the gun whether I could hit a target or not.

Then how many people have died because they needed a gun to defend themselves tomorrow, and not 10 days from now, given you can’t hit the broad side of a barn without a lot of training?

FYI Bert, if you read the article, it says the accused bought the pistol Tuesday.

One possible benefit could be the spotlight of unwelcome attention on these businesses. Left to operate in the shadows with a “see no evil” indifference, they will continue to practice illegal activities. Now, they will find it difficult to continue, at least for awhile.

The perp here has owned guns since he was eight or nine. While it’s not certain he owned a pistol before this, the lethality of his shooting suggests he did. So it’s doubtful that a waiting period would have saved lives here.

Regarding the possibility of waiting periods costing lives, it is documented. On the flip side, the person who wields a gun in self-defense actually doesn’t generally fire it at all. Rather, the attacker tends to see the gun in the hands of his intended victim, and tends to decide that he doesn’t want to find out how well the intended victim knows how to use it, or whether the intended victim will “luck out” and hit her (his) target without extensive training.

Unfortunately, waiting periods are just one of many gun control proposals that would have a cost in terms of freedom, but would not really save lives. Another one recently is proposed bans of ~205 semi-auto rifles championed by Nancy Pelosi—who ignores the fact that total long gun (e.g. not pistol) deaths are just a few hundred each year, and to eliminate that, you’d need to spend tens of billions of dollars. There are far cheaper ways to save lives, to put it mildly.

Bert,

The young man said that he did frequent the places and that he killed them to “remove the temptation.”

Also, to your point about trafficking, there was one near my house that was recently raided by the police. There were several slaves there. Terrible thing.

Obviously a set of undercover brothels. I realize that it’s hard to police vice, but it sure would be nice if we had something where police could act on the obvious signs that something was amiss. Maybe a law that states that when a massage business is open, the front door has to be open, too, and massage therapists need to have a basic license with the state, starting with an immigration check and an annual audit of pay stubs.

And if those working at these parlors were indeed sex slaves, we have a list of people who are virulently cruel to Asians on an ongoing basis—the Asian owners of the brothels. Some victims of this kind of sexual abuse comment that it was in a way worse than death.

There’s a great deal of work going on to combat human trafficking, including sexual exploitation. But like quite a few social problems, the resources are limited and the problem continues to exceed them.

I don’t have data on whether human trafficking/sex trafficking is still on the increase or is starting to level off, but I know that it’s been on the increase for a good while. My hunch is that it hasn’t peaked yet in the U.S., and certainly hasn’t globally.

But there’s a lot of work going into it. (e.g. https://www.theiacp.org/projects/anti-human-trafficking-training-and-te…)

As for acting on “obvious signs,” even if legal standards for reasonable suspicion and probably cause were lowered (this would actually have many unwanted consequences), the result would be more arrests but not more convictions—unless the courts changed the rules of evidence also…. again, many unwanted consequences. There might be room for a bit of reform in this area, but not much.

There are social problems that can’t be solved coercively—or at least not mainly by coercion. The many non-governmental factors that shape a culture have to do the lion’s share of the work. Otherwise, what happens is that you get increasingly oppressive government (the coercive arm), and often still don’t solve the problem being targeted.

It’s probably fair to say that some of these problems are the price we pay for not living in a police state.

Aaron, there are things that can be done. If we have a tendency to find that massage spas are undercover brothels that enslave people as prostitutes, then any number of towns have figured out how to address this in part.

• Require massage therapist license, including background check, citizenship/visa check, and evidence of training. You don’t need to go to Chaska’s requirement for something like 1000 hours, but enough to weed out those who are really just prostitutes.
• Require an open front door during business hours. See the anti-slavery advocates pointing out that this is really to figure out who’s a customer and who’s a cop.
• Limit hours that a spa can be open. Open 24 hours a day is not necessary for most legitimate businesses.
• Periodically audit the books to see if people are actually being paid.

No doubt that you don’t want a force to spend all their time doing active “busts”—I know my wife would not want me to be a vice cop interacting with prostitutes, going almost all the way before cuffing them (not my desire either, BTW)—but if we can require liquor licenses, open doors, and limited hours for bars, why not massage spas? Really, in this case, the police have been caught actively looking the other way as there were unmistakable signs that something horrendous was going on.

Please correct me if I’m out of line but this Patriarchy and Purity Garbage is out right Satanic.

You are out of line. The responsibility for murder lies with the person who murders. It’s hard to know what you mean by patriarchy and purity garbage, but sexual purity is a well established Christian doctrine as is male headship. I have no idea what this church taught and it is likely you don’t either. So it is better to not comment on it.

Joeb, you might consider a softer approach to posting. There is no need for the brashness and harshness that seems to characterize some of your posts. It doesn’t help further the conversation. It often seems more like brawling than anything. I would encourage you to give a second thought to your approach here.