Opinion: Takeaways from
things I saw on August 27
(Image: MSN.com)
By Brock Friedman. Aug 28, 2025
Yesterday was a bad day, to put it mildly. The attack on the Catholic school kids during prayer in Minneapolis was gut wrenching. An act of evil for evils sake. The perpetrator was as monstrous as he was cowardly.
Afterwards, a parade of people trying to provide commentary made things worse, only to be outdone spectacularly by the usual idiotic anti-gun politicians.
I have a few observations I wanted to share:
- 1. To my understanding, there was no one guarding these children.
- 2. The attacker appears to have preplanned his actions with some degree of detail and preparation including surveillance of the premises.
- 3. The actual attack went on for about 2 minutes, starting just before 8.30am.
- 4. The first 911 calls are at 8.27 AM. It took police a couple of minutes to arrive by which time the attacker had already ended himself.
- 5. The media in the absence of actual information will say pretty much anything.
- 6. At least 2 tough on crime, supposedly pro 2A conservative media figures, had an on-the-spot appeal for gun control.
- 7. A number of others asked to comment pointed out #1 and said there are plenty of people including retired LEO's who are well trained that could guard such sites.
- 8. Anti gun politicians quite literally called for gun control before the living and the dead could even be accounted for.
- 9. The attacker appears to have had an intense, lethal hatred towards Jews as well.
The truths here are self-evident. Defenseless people are easy targets in gun free zones and we can probably speculate with reasonable certainty that the target was chosen because there would be no resistance. More over, no one appears to have noticed a heavily armed guy with 2x4's walking up and barricading the doors. This is an unfathomable failure of that sites' security.
For those of you who guard a synagogue or a church, this is not a one person task. Someone (a team of two) needs to physically guard the entrance and another (preferably also a team of two) needs to do a roving patrol. That creates early warning and defense in depth. That roving patrol should also be highly visible and dressed so as to make no mistake about what they are there for as that will help create deterrence. No suits. These are not greeters or ushers. Moreover, they should be carrying rifles. If they encounter an attacker, they need the power and the ability to push the attacker back. Distance equals more difficulty for bad people to hurt good people. Your security team should also take note of who is watching them and be ready to record and photograph license plates and suspicious people.
As I often say, bullets travel faster than police cars and faster than all the very heartfelt and heroic and noble good intentions of first responders. That goes both for the harm evil people try to inflict and for the ability of armed and trained civilians to fight back in the moment. It is also very hard for terrified, confused people to dial 911 in the middle of insanity and mayhem. Adrenaline can scramble people who naturally want to flee. Conversely, good training with firearms can tap into the "fight" response and that can save lives. I'm not talking about going to a range and shooting at static targets while standing still. Real defensive pistol training where there is lots of movement, and learning to coordinate with other defenders, as we were taught in the service. Whatever you can do to suppress the attacker means less lead heading towards innocents.
We all know the gun grabbers will never waste an opportunity to push their anti 2A agenda. I don't believe any of them care at all about life, and even less so when it comes to Christians and Jews.
On the other hand we can see that there are good people who are so horrified in the moment that they may speak and act rashly and even stupidly. They will advocate throwing away our rights. Those who wrote the 2nd Amendment understood this, both the tendency to speak out of legitimate emotion and that there is always someone ready to take advantage of it. That is why the 2nd is a right and not a privilege.
There is zero reason why well-trained citizens can not guard their own houses of worship. They do not have to be retired cops or soldiers.
Lastly, I have the feeling that the target could have very easily been a Jewish one. We must as a community and as individuals dramatically increase our situational awareness and the number of well-armed and well-trained Jews.
After several hours of enduring anti 2A politicians on TV, I started making phone calls to their offices and telling them exactly what I thought of the blather they were spewing. Much as I wanted to, I didn't swear or yell. I just stated exactly how they were wrong and how what they are saying is incredibly offensive. Thinking you will stop bad people by making good people helpless is insane, and we must communicate that. I urge you strongly to pick up that phone and let them know what you think.
