Opinion | A Gun Killed My Son. So Why Do I Want to Own One?

Post-Grossman I have a very different scenario of what takes place in my fantasy library in 1992. Professional trainers are largely in agreement that there’s really no predicting how a person will react in a combat situation. No matter how diligently Betsy DeVos and I might have prepared, we’d be in the midst of a giant mess.

That was it for me. I airlifted myself out of there.

Happily, I didn’t die of peritonitis in a hospital in southern Chile. I wound up in a house of worship in northern New England. In the preface to “On Combat,” Colonel Grossman wrote that he spends nearly 300 days a year traveling the country evangelizing the sheepdog mind-set. According to the Sheepdog Seminar website, he was coming soon to a church near Bangor, Me. I decided to go up there and hear what they had to say about the idea of people with guns keeping people safe from people with guns. One foot in front of the other.

A few of us were carrying openly; many more had pistols concealed in baggy cargo pants.

About 150 of us were gathered at Calvary Chapel, a large modern building across the river from Bangor. Mostly men of middle age and beyond, with a smattering of women and teenagers. A few of us were carrying openly; many more had pistols concealed in baggy cargo pants or beneath untucked shirts. Jimmy Meeks, a minister and the director of the seminar, scooted back and forth in front of us, an agitated, white-haired penguin of a man, making Fox News jokes, church jokes about the uselessness of deacons, even a New England Patriots joke about deflation. Then he gave us the real news: Our country was in a season of violence, a holocaust of unprecedented dimension. Immigrants were pouring over the border like a freight train. Angry people were everywhere. “Our Heavenly Father’s heart is broken over the violence,” he announced, looking up toward the presumptive source of this information. “Our Heavenly Father intends to respond to the violence.” He paused for a beat, then turned on the audience. “His response is … you!”

I had some acquaintance with Mr. Meeks. He’d called me shortly after I submitted my online application for the seminar, to tell me that he’d looked me up and learned that there was a Gregory Gibson in my town who’d lost a son in a school shooting. (Being good sheepdogs, I supposed, they researched every seminar applicant who hadn’t been vetted by the sponsoring church.) Was I that Gregory Gibson? I said that I was, and that he could call me Greg, since Gregory was merely my internet moniker, to distinguish me from the Major League Baseball umpire named Greg Gibson. That elicited a cackle and then a moan, as he told me how sorry he was for the unimaginable loss I had suffered. He was calling, he said, because he was concerned that I hadn’t understood the nature of the Sheepdog Seminar. It was primarily about how church people could keep their churches safe, though the information would be useful to anyone. He was worried that I might be traumatized by some of the material in the presentation.

Perhaps it was the twang in his speech, so fresh to my ear. The way he’d said, “It breaks my heart” gave me the feeling that if I had burst into tears at that moment, he would have wept with me. He began telling me his story. He was 61 years old, a retired cop and a preacher, Southern Baptist. There were issues with his family back home in Texas. He wanted so much to be there with them but he couldn’t stop traveling. He was driven by love. His voice wobbled. He took a breath and told me, “I’m a very emotional guy.” Despite my reservations about sheepdogs and preachers, I found myself falling for the Rev. Jimmy Meeks, calling me out of the blue the way he had, to be sure I wouldn’t be traumatized, to tell me how sorry he was for my loss and to share with me a glimpse of his own travails.

On either side of the stage at the front of Calvary Chapel was a big screen. “Matthew 10:17” appeared on both of them. Mr. Meeks read it, loud and slow, to be sure he had our attention. Then, for those of us — probably a minority — who hadn’t memorized chapter and verse, he flashed the text beneath it. “Be on GUARD against men; they will flog you IN their synagogues.” This was followed by a list of 50 headlines, also projected onto the screens, highlighting some of the “811 VIOLENT DEATHS” that had occurred on faith-based property since 1999.

Over the course of the two-day seminar, two case studies were presented and analyzed in detail by people who had shot and killed, or participated in the shooting and killing of, armed persons attempting mass murders. There were important things to be learned from these brave presenters, a great many things, ordered, elucidated and drilled into us by Jimmy Meeks — urging, weeping, scorning, confessing, praying. He called me out at one point, actually called my name and asked me to stand as he told my story, his voice quavering again. Poor planning. No training. Officials in denial. People approached me after that, shyly offering their condolences.

Yes, there would be guns, but the people carrying them would be the right people.

In the evening, at the end of the first day, we recited the Pledge of Allegiance, hands over hearts, sang the national anthem and “America the Beautiful” with lyrics to all the verses projected onto those same screens that had listed the grisly church crimes. Then we prayed, as Jimmy admonished us, “with your eyes open and your heads up!” and I thought how sweet it would be, if Christ had ever come into my life, to be dwelling in the bosom of the church with these strange, earnest people. How comforting it would be to know what to do. To have a plan. Yes, there would be guns, but the people carrying them would be the right people, carefully selected, thoroughly trained. In that moment of communal prayer, I had no doubt that I could trust these people with guns.