Gunman in church shooting subdued by usher with his personal firearm.

The scene of the shooting. Washington Post/Getty.

A gunman in a church shooting in the Nashville area was subdued by an usher who retrieved his personal firearm. Washington Post. The shooting killed one woman and wounded six others of the 50 people in the church at the time. During the rampage the suspect pistol whipped one of the ushers who was involved in a struggle with the attacker. The suspect, a Sudanese immigrant named Emanuel Kidega Sampson, was shot with his own weapon in the struggle, allowing the usher, Robert "Caleb" Engle to escape and retrieve his weapon from his car. Engle was able to keep Sampson from continuing his attack or escaping until police arrived by holding his gun on him. Sampson has been charged with murder and attempted murder and the U.S. Attorney's office has opened up a civil rights investigation as well. No motive has been released for the attack at this time.

The suspect, Emanuel Kidega Sampson. Police handout.

My Comment:

Good on the usher for fighting this guy. From what it sounds like he was able to subdue this attacker unarmed, which is pretty amazing considering this guy was armed with two handguns. And the first thing he did after he beat this guy up is retrieve his handgun. 

That's some serious heroism there. It's a brave enough thing to fight a guy like this when you are armed, but to fight when you accidentally left your carry piece in your car? Hugely brave. Doing so probably saved several lives. 

I do have to say that this case makes a strong case for concealed carry. Sure, this time someone was able to take the attacker down long enough to retrieve his weapon from his car, but if he had it on him, he probably wouldn't have been hurt in the melee. And even after beating this guy up and injuring him with his own gun, the usher didn't feel safe until he got his own gun back. He was still a threat after being shot and the good guy in this case still needed his gun. 

The choice of target in this case is disturbing. This seems like an attack on a religious place of worship. Just like the Dylann Roof shooting awhile back, this attack is disgusting and horrible. I'm not very religious myself but that doesn't mean I won't be outraged when someone attacks a church. 

Nobody has said anything about what the motive could be. I think we can probably rule this out as an ISIS attack though. Why? Because even though the suspect comes from a Muslim country, his social media didn't make it sound like he was active with any terror groups. Plus the fact that the US Attorney opened up a civil rights case instead of a terror case probably means that this wasn't terror related. 

My guess is that this is a run of the mill hate crime, the black equivalent of Dylann Roof. It may not have been because of race but because of religion, but either way the man seemed to be targeting white Christians. That means this was a hate crime and should be treated as such. 

One wonders if this isn't related to the NFL protests in anyway. My guess it was just a coincidence, but there is a chance that this attack was due in part to the reaction to the NFL protests. That's just speculation though and I doubt it had much to do with it. 

I do have to point out something I find particularly disgusting that I noticed in the article. This church was very active in helping the Sudanese community in the Nashville area. They helped feed the homeless and provided support for Sudanese refugees. As a member of the Sudanese community, Sampson returned that support and help with murder and mayhem. I doubt that the members of the church will hold that against other Sudanese people, but it's still fairly disgusting that he attacked people that were trying to help...