This morning, a man with a rifle went on a shooting spree in an IHOP restuarant in Carson City. I don’t know who the man is or what his reasoning was. But I know that the people of Carson City are very shook up right now. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families as well as the rest of the small town.
A lot of my Nevada neighbors believe that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in our community. It does. We have car jackings, robberies, muggings, rapes, gang violence, shooting incidents. Reno had a Walmart shooter. UNR has been experiencing its own crime wave with several shootings a week for a couple of weeks this fall. Now Carson has had its own tragic incident.
A lady at church once asked me if I carried to church and if so, why. At the time, I taught her two boys in my Sunday school classes. I looked her in the eye and told her that I do carry at church because if there were a shooter at church, I’d want to protect her kids from him. The LDS Church had a shooter situation at a chapel in Utah. But it hasn’t happened in Nevada, yet. She accepted my responses with respect for my decisions, but I could almost hear her thinking that “things like that don’t happen here.”
For the Nevadans who realize that these things do happen here… buy a gun. Learn how to use it. Get your CCW permit. Carry everyday, everywhere you can. Help keep our town safe by being ready to act responsibly when it isn’t.
