Recent Shootings Are a Wake-Up Call To Take Responsibility for Your Own Defense

My son spent last week training in defensive pistol use at Gunsite Academy, in Arizona. The scheduling couldn’t have been timelier given the double terrorist attacks on Thursday. Both incidents were stopped by people at the scene who were willing and able to end the threat without waiting for police to arrive.

It’s not something most of us want to think about. But if somebody decides to take out their grievances on innocents, any of us could become default defensive details for ourselves and the people around us.

The attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, is an especially disturbing case since more than 100 children were attending school at the facility. The terrorist, a Lebanese immigrant named Ayman Ghazali, drove his incendiaries-laden truck into the synagogue and down the hallway where he was confronted by security.

“At approximately 12:20, Ghazali’s vehicle gets jammed between hallway walls and he begins firing through the windshield of his vehicle,” according to FBI Special Agent Jennifer Runyan, who described events during a press conference. “Ghazali and the first security officer engage in a gunfight through the rear window of Ghazali’s vehicle. And at this point, Ghazali is unable to extract himself due to the vehicle being jammed in the hallway. At approximately 12:22 p.m., a second security officer engages Ghazali in a gunfight from the front of the vehicle. And soon thereafter, Ghazali’s vehicle, his engine compartment catches on fire.”

Under fire from defending synagogue guards, stuck in a burning truck, and undoubtedly aware he’d loaded the bed of his vehicle with commercial fireworks and gasoline, Ghazali ended the incident by shooting himself in the head.

Besides light injuries to the synagogue’s director of security, Danny Phillips, and fire damage, Temple Israel got off relatively easily for the target of a terrorist attack. The same can’t be said of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where U.S. Army Lt. Col. Brandon A. Shah was killed by an attacker while teaching a Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) class. Two others were sent to the hospital with wounds. Fortunately, those on the scene prevented the situation from becoming worse.

“There were students that were in that room that subdued him and rendered him no longer alive,” FBI Special Agent Dominique Evans responded to a question about the incident. “I don’t know how else to say it, but they basically were able to terminate the threat.”

According to some reports, one ROTC student stabbed to death terrorist Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, presumably with a pocketknife, though pens and pencils will do in a pinch. Apparently, though it’s not the recommended course of action, you can prevail with a knife in a gun fight.

Like synagogues across the United States, Temple Israel was prepared for an attack amidst a rising tide of antisemitism. Its staff conducted a training session with the FBI just weeks prior to the attack. The ROTC students probably were less worried about being targeted, but when targeted anyway, their mindset and preparedness were up to the challenge.

Both Ghazali and Jalloh appear to have been Islamists. Ghazali’s brother was reportedly a Hezbollah commander killed by an Israeli airstrike, so terrorism was something of a family trade. Jalloh was released from prison in December 2024 after serving time for attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he launched the Old Dominion attack.

While violent crime overall has resumed its decades-long decline, political violence of various flavors is up across the country. On Friday, the Justice Department announced nine convictions in the prosecutions of Antifa members who shot up an ICE center last summer and wounded a police officer. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September. Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman (D–Brooklyn Park) and her husband, Mark, were murdered in an attack in which state Sen. John Hoffman (D–Champlin) and his wife, Yvette, were wounded. Luigi Mangione is currently being tried for, allegedly, the ideologically motivated murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Short of lethal consequences, a large number of mostly conservative figures have been targeted for harassment and swatting attacks. That’s a very incomplete list of this country’s ongoing problems with political violence.

Which is to say, it’s a good time to take your own safety seriously. If something happens, police will no doubt show up, as they did in West Bloomfield and Norfolk, to investigate the crime. But dealing with the immediate threat is left to those who are there when it occurs.

“If my family were being attacked by bloodthirsty terrorists like those in Kenya or Paris, then I would want armed citizens to defend and protect them,” former Interpol Secretary General Ron Noble, an American who previously worked in the U.S. Treasury and Justice Departments, concluded in 2016. He raised similar concerns during his term in office following the 2013 Westgate mall attack in Nairobi.

Unfortunately, not all authorities are open to people possessing the means to defend themselves. Old Dominion University bans weapons, including knives with blades over three inches long. That policy didn’t stop Jalloh, who also illegally purchased the gun he used from another criminal. Despite the abject failure of policy and law, Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi called on lawmakers to pass tighter gun restrictions. He must be furious that ROTC students found the means to resist a terrorist.

But the students at Old Dominion University did successfully halt the attack on their class, as did the guards at Temple Israel. Likewise, parishioners and staff at Crosspointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan, engaged and killed an armed attacker last June. And Elisjsha Dicken shot and killed a would-be mass murderer at Indiana’s Greenwood Park Mall in 2022.

Hopefully, nobody else will ever again have to shoulder such responsibilities. But hope isn’t a plan. Being ready and able to take on unpleasant situations should they arise offers a better chance for good outcomes.

My son is now better prepared for threats after his defensive pistol class, which follows over a decade of martial arts training. My wife and I graduated last year from that same pistol class, practice frequently, and we have another session scheduled through her synagogue with a private trainer.

They might mean us well, like the officers who responded to Temple Israel and Old Dominion University, or they could resent empowered members of the public, like the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney, but government officials can’t always be in place to defend us when malicious people attack. Whether we want it or not, we all must shoulder the responsibility for protecting ourselves and our loved ones.