Deranged Gunman Opens Fire on Shooting Range

Deranged Gunman Opens Fire On Shooting Range

SAN ANTONIO—A man described by eyewitnesses as “unsettled” and “disturbed” walked into the local Guns Galore Shooting Range early Tuesday morning, paid for a half hour’s worth of time, and then calmly opened fire on dozens of unsuspecting targets.

Sources said the man, now identified as Bryon James Woodrich, entered the establishment at approximately 8:30 a.m. armed with a pistol. After a brief exchange with the gun range manager, Woodrich purchased a box of ammunition, showed two pieces of ID, signed in, walked to stall No. 17, and at once began his crazed shooting spree.

“He just kept firing, over and over again—bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,” said manager Clyde Jenkins, recalling the chilling scene. “From the moment he stepped into Guns Galore, it was clear that this man only had one thing on his mind.”

Witnesses said Woodrich displayed no emotion whatsoever during the 29-minute barrage. Many watched in silence as the gunman unloaded 12 shots at extremely close range into the chest and head of a defenseless target, pausing only to reload. One witness said that the shooter actually exited the gun range with a “look of relief” on his face.

“I should have seen this coming,” said San Antonio resident, Carlotta Vasquez, who has known Woodrich for over 10 years. “He’s been having a tough time since [ex-wife] Sheila left him, and they recently cut his hours at the plant. And he was always talking about needing to blow off some steam, but I never would have thought that this is what he meant. Had I known, I would have tried to be there for him, to say something.”

“It didn’t have to come to this,” Vasquez continued. “We could have gone fishing or bowling or whatnot.”

A handwritten note on the gunman’s refrigerator warned the shooting spree would occur “after he picked up groceries.”

Close friends of Woodrich, who is believed to own at least two other handguns and an unknown number of rifles, said he displayed many warning signs in the months leading up to the shooting. A loner, Woodrich was known to be quiet and withdrawn, channeling all his energies into his work and violent hobbies, like hunting.

“I once saw Bryon shoot a beautiful six-point buck like it was nothing,” friend Kenneth Schlissel said. “In the end, I guess I’m not surprised he ended up at the gun range.”

According to his ex-wife Sheila Mann, Woodrich was “obsessed” with firearm and hunting magazines, which he would frequently read alone in his basement “for hours and hours on end.”

“He and his friends were always talking about guns and the shooting range and how they couldn’t wait for the weekend to come,” Mann said. “They’d argue about who was the best shot and what guns they were going to buy and whose gun was the biggest.”

“It scared me,” she added.

After exhausting his final two clips, Woodrich reportedly fled the premises still carrying the loaded weapon. He was then seen entering a bank, a gas station, and a fried chicken restaurant before returning home and voluntarily disarming himself.

Thus far, no charges have been brought against the deranged shooter, nor has the gun range taken any extra precautions to prevent a similar incident in the future.

In fact, some residents, like Guns Galore assistant manager Ken Marshall, said they only have themselves to blame.

“Looking back, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened,” Marshall said. “Bryon pretty much comes in here every Tuesday.”

Story from the Onion.
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My only question is this: in light of recent news stories such as this, how long will it be before this isn’t satire?

Give the Onion credit for the perfect mainstream media “rampage” story template.

The Mass that Dare Not Say Its Name– or, What Passes for the Current State of the "Reform of the Reform"

The Church moves slowly. This is a truism for anyone who has joined or followed the effort to accomplish the great task of the Church in our time– cleaning up the wreckage of liturgical and theological destruction left in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.

In fact, one of the most notable things about the destruction is that it was accomplished with great speed and violence in a very short time. It takes years to build a Gothic cathedral, or even a beautiful parish church. It takes minutes to smash an altar or tear out a communion rail. For the Catholic faithful, forms, rites, and rituals of venerable age, developed organically and in a real sense “handed down” as gifts of the Church for more than a thousand years (some nearly two thousand years old) were changed radically by liturgical experts in committee. And by “experts”, I mean by those who claimed the term, much like global warming experts have claimed their exalted status.

Speed. That is what was necessary. Why? Because the changes made to the Mass and the architecture of sacred spaces, not to mention the nuancing of traditional Catholic doctrinal formulations, would never have been accomplished had these come as a result of the normal process of things Catholic– had these taken the time to develop organically, to be desired by the faithful and justified in the light of Tradition and prudential considerations.

Speed was needed; it was a blunt force weapon. Take a 1,500 year old Mass and simply remove it. It’s there one day and gone the next. The altar ripped from the wall, or replaced with the “table of plenty”. Shock and awe. The only problem is that the shock of these changes did not produce awe. They weren’t designed to. They were designed to elevate the banal. They were designed to desacralize and make vulgar the mysteries of faith.

Once the damage was done, and the seminaries, convents and churches were denuded of their doctrinal, human and architectural beauties, it was clear that the Church was in decline. Of course, the Church will exist to the end of time, and cannot ever be defeated. Yet it was not only down in temporal terms. The faith of her members also went through a kind of desert. In this Octave of Pentecost (which by way of fitting illustration no longer exists in the new calendar) I would point to the words of Christ Himself:

He that shall drink of the water that I will give him shall not thirst for ever. But the water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting. (John 4:13b-14)

The Church is Christ’s holy spouse, and this fountain will never be extinguished. But by way of imperfect analogy may I suggest that the flow “springing up” within her was in some sense diminished?

The traditional Mass, now called the Extraordinary Form, was never abrogated. It was always in principle permitted. Yet it was essentially choked off and practically suppressed nearly everywhere. Without going into the history of the recognition of the Extraordinary Form’s continued liceity and vitality, it is enough to point to Summorum Pontificum, and the Pope’s accompanying letter to Bishops, for recognition of its continued status.

During the leanest years it was, practically speaking, a kiss of death for any priest in the typical diocese or order to stand for the principle of celebrating this Mass. Celebrating it was a very good way to ensure that one would never advance. Discretion, silence, heroic suffering and forbearance were the keys for survival. Priests attached to the traditional Mass were practically forced to live an eremetical life within the diocesan setting.

Moreover, the de-coupling of worship and belief that was made possible by the way the new Mass was typically celebrated produced a generation or more of Catholics who were not taught their faith outside of Mass, nor reinforced in their faith during Mass.

To address the serious problem, many good-hearted and well-intentioned priests, religious and faithful opted to attempt to “reform the reform”– to fix what went wrong with the new Mass in the aftermath of Sacrosanctum Concilium. This was seen by most as the only practical way to find a solution, since it did not “reject” the new Mass in favor of the old, but rather was an attempt to get at what the Council fathers “really wanted”.

It is now decades later, and I ask what has done more to address the problem of reverence in the liturgy: the reform of the reform, or the wider celebration of the traditional Mass and the growth of traditional Catholic societies? Some would say this wider celebration is itself part of the reform of the reform. I concede that for many this is part of the strategy. But I maintain that the Mass itself, the Extraordinary Form itself, is the catalyst for whatever resurgence is slowly but steadily taking place. Three years of the motu proprio have done more than forty years of trying to defend the Maginot Line within the new liturgy, or spackling the more obvious cracks from without.

All of which leads me by a very long route (as usual) to my point. It is time to celebrate the return of the classical forms of Mass and the other sacraments. It is time to celebrate what makes us Catholic. As I said in an earlier post, why should the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite be a matter that seems so embarrassing that it must be hushed up, as though one saw their grandfather going to a nightclub? Why do faithful Catholics have to tip-toe around modernism and its adherents, whether they are in parishes or rectories?

Even in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, considered one of the most vibrantly orthodox Archdioceses in the world and a leader in liturgical restoration, there is still great reticence by priests and faithful to take up the standard in a public way. It is thought best to continue to keep this restoration low-key, to avoid sticking our necks out for fear of offending some, or of having our necks cut off. Perhaps it is the province of a blogger to lack patience, but I ask you–Why should this be?

I think it might be uplifting to many of beleaguered faithful who attend parishes throughout the Archdiocese– who have suffered through years of “Table of Plenty” and “Gather Us In”, liturgical committee politics, inclusive language, rubrical abuses and questionable homilies– that many more priests are now being trained in the Extraordinary Form, have an affinity for beauty and reverence in the liturgy, and have sound theological formation. More and more priests are regularly celebrating the classical Roman Rite as part of their priesthood.

These priests are bringing this approach to the life of the typical parish setting; they are bringing beauty and reverence to both Forms of the Mass, they are preaching from the pulpit in such a way that parents don’t have to be on high alert to explain to their children after Mass “what Father really meant to say” in order not to scandalize them. They are the first signs of that New Springtime we have been promised. Can we not celebrate this?

Or should we just pretend that the Extraordinary Form is for those crackpots who are (to paraphrase someone famous) bitter, clinging to their [Mass] and religion?

The Pope has spent the five years of his Pontificate calling for priests to be formed precisely in this way. For the traditional Mass to come back into the life of every parish precisely in this way. For faith and liturgy to support and enrich each other precisely in this way. For the faith we profess and the liturgy we pray to inform our lives, and our culture, in precisely this way.

But if this restoration of faith, liturgy and culture continues to be ignored in the Catholic press and in Catholic rectories, is it any wonder it remains unrealized in Catholic homes?