God's Army of One

Big wtf moment this evening after reading a Plain Dealer article about a clergy member and the disturbingly large cache of weapons he was storing at a Cleveland homeless shelter.  It seems the Rev. John Henry's vast arsenal included some 230 assorted handguns, rifles, assault weapons and 2000 boxes of ammunition.  Building inspectors discovered the store of munitions (hilariously dubbed a 'severe over-storage of miscellaneous items') in the complex Henry presided over for decades.

This story is all kinds of weird.  Henry has resigned his post and will undergo a psychiatric evaluation as a mandatory part of what is being called a 'crisis intervention.'  Good move, I'd say.  Who knows what this guy was thinking or planning or which angel was telling him to stockpile.  Maybe they'll end up giving him a clean bill of health, but in my book, behavior like this falls way, way, way beyond the parameters of normalcy, even for a priest.

Not everyone thinks the good reverend is being treated fairly, though.  PD readers rushed to the defense of Henry, who, as they would have it, was just exercising his constitutional right to own as many firearms as he pleases, and to store them wherever he pleases, like in a homeless shelter, where the collective mental stability of the general populace may be subject to question.  Far more alarming than owning enough guns to form a good old fashioned American-style 2nd Amendment militia is, they say, how the police invaded Father Henry's privacy and seized his personal property.  

Such warped opinionating leads this blogger to seriously question his own judgment.  What the hell was I doing poring over the comment section of the Plain Dealer?  Wasn't there something more productive I could have been doing?  Like counting my leg hairs? 

I know I've been hitting the gun thing hard lately, but here's a tiny morsel to chew on, for what it's worth:

Violent gun deaths in Great Britain in 2007: 41
Population of Great Britain: 60 million

Violent gun deaths in Ohio in 2007: 391
Population of Ohio: 11.5 million

nwb