I personally place my family between two exit points at church. We have volunteers that stand guard at all the entrances, but I've never asked if they carry or not. We have a good size congregation, with two morning services, about 600-700 total. I try to be aware of folks I don't recognize and try to introduce myself before services start, as do several others. I do it partially to be welcoming and partially to get a feel for how they are acting.
It's a shame things have to be that way, but it's the world we live in.
One time, I heard that a meteorite killed a man on the other side of the world. As a result, I live 24 hours/day in a bunker built 50 feet underground.
It's a shame things have to be that way, but it's the world we live in.
Let me provide some facts for just how ridiculous people like Banker and these armed places of worship are:
There are over 350,000 places of worship that hold services at least once a week (many of which hold far more than just one service) in the United States. Even with the bare minimum of 350K places of worship, and even at the bare minimum of just one service each per week, that means there are over 18 million religious services per year in the U.S. (and, of course, more accurately 2-3 times that number).
On average over the last decade, there have been one of these mass shootings per year at a place of worship (there have been more shootings at places of worship, but they have been domestic violence situations where the target is just one person).
So this fear of your place of worship (not your particular service, just your place of worship) becoming the target of a mass shooting per year is less than 1/350,000. Even if your place of worship only holds two services per week, and even if you go to worship once every single week, the chance of your service becoming the target that week is less than 1/36,400,000 million. Again, not you dying or getting shot, but simply your service getting shot up.
The chances of
anyone dying in a commercial plane crash that you are on in the U.S. is 1/7.3 million. The chances of you getting killed by a bear while visiting Yellowstone National Park is 1/3 million. The chances of you drowning in a bathtub is 1/900,000.
But by all means, keep choosing seats based on being an equal point to multiple exits. Keep introducing yourself to people so that you can judge if they are going to shoot up the church or not. But by all means, continue flying in the U.S., continue going to national parks, and definitely continue taking showers.