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067 - Kia Kaha

March 17, 2019 21m 44s Full transcript available
067 - Kia Kaha
0:00 / 21m 44s
In this episode, we confront the horrific mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, and discuss the implications for men of faith. We must not only mourn the loss of innocent lives but also prepare ourselves to respond to evil in our world.
Transcript
526 segments
0:00 (upbeat music)
0:02 - This is Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
0:13 I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
0:15 Our guys today is a little bit of a bonus episode
0:17 and we haven't done this before
0:19 and the circumstances are not very good
0:21 for the reason why we're doing this.
0:23 We're gonna be talking about the mass shooting
0:25 that took place in Christchurch, New Zealand.
0:27 So I wanted to record this within just a few days
0:31 of the attack, but I wanted to let some
0:34 of the information come out because you know
0:35 the initial reports, sometimes you get initial reports
0:38 that are fabricated in one way or another.
0:41 Things seem worse than they are.
0:42 Things aren't nearly as bad as they actually are.
0:44 And so I wanted to get there to be a little bit of time
0:46 in between that, but as we sit right now,
0:49 this is actually just after midnight Sunday morning,
0:52 I'm recording this podcast
0:53 and just basically putting it out immediately.
0:55 And guys, I guess the easiest way to do this
0:57 is there's so much information out there.
0:59 So what I just wanna do is I found an article on BBC news.
1:03 I felt like they did a really good job of breaking down
1:06 what happened and then we're gonna talk about
1:07 some of the ramifications of that and some things
1:09 that thinking Christians and men of God
1:12 like the guys that are listening to this,
1:15 the ways that we should maybe react to this
1:17 and some things that we should be thinking about.
1:18 One thing before I read this,
1:21 I'm gonna do what we've seen a lot of new
1:25 news organizations doing now.
1:26 Unfortunately, it's more the smaller news organizations,
1:28 not many of the bigger ones.
1:30 I'm not gonna be reading the killer's name
1:33 or any of the people involved
1:34 because there is quite a bit of research coming out now
1:38 saying that when we glorify or not necessarily glorify,
1:41 but when we name these mass shooters,
1:45 when we show their manifestos and we show their pictures
1:48 and when we show their videos,
1:49 when we do any of things like that,
1:51 people that are considering mass shootings,
1:53 it doesn't deter them and actually emboldens them.
1:56 And so I don't wanna do that here
1:58 for anyone that might be thinking this
2:00 or anyone that might get their hands on this podcast.
2:02 So as I read through this,
2:04 I will just be saying the shooter or the killer
2:06 or something like that.
2:07 I will not actually be using the person's name.
2:09 So I'm just gonna read this.
2:10 It's an article that was posted,
2:12 I guess it was posted today,
2:14 but it's called Christ Church Shootings,
2:16 how the attacks unfolded.
2:18 So here we go.
2:20 50 people have been killed
2:21 and another 50 wounded in shootings
2:22 at two mosques in Christ Church, New Zealand.
2:25 In the deadliest attack in the country's history.
2:28 New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden called it
2:31 one of New Zealand's darkest days.
2:32 Here's what we know so far about how the attacks unfolded.
2:36 The first shooting took place
2:37 at Al-Nur Mosque in Central Christ Church.
2:40 A gunman using the name,
2:42 again, we will not use his name just the shooter,
2:44 livestreamed footage of his rampage to Facebook,
2:47 filmed with a head-mounted camera.
2:49 Footage showed the man armed with semi-automatic weapons
2:52 firing indiscriminately at men, women and children
2:54 from close range inside the mosque.
2:56 The attacker's head cam footage begins
2:58 in an industrial estate on Leslie Hill's drive,
3:02 just west of Al-Nur Mosque.
3:04 It shows him driving south on the Mandeville Street
3:07 and Blenheim roads towards the city center
3:09 before turning North up Dean's Avenue.
3:12 He reaches the mosque a few minutes later,
3:14 pulling the car into an alleyway at the side of the building
3:16 and turning the car around to park facing Dean's Avenue.
3:19 The suspect gets out, selects a weapon
3:21 from the boot of the car,
3:23 that's the back of the car,
3:24 and walks to the building where he begins his deadly attack
3:26 on worshippers inside.
3:28 This was approximately 1340 local time.
3:30 Six minutes later, he drives along Dean's Avenue
3:33 around the Botanic Gardens to Beasley Avenue,
3:35 where his head cam footage cuts out.
3:37 The second attack then took place a little later,
3:40 five kilometers away at Linwood Mosque,
3:43 east of the city center.
3:45 So here's the kind of a breakdown of the first attack
3:47 at Al-Nur Mosque where it left 42 dead.
3:50 By 1411, police confirmed they were attending
3:52 an evolving situation and schools went into lockdown
3:55 on a few minutes later.
3:57 At 1430, police confirmed the incident involved a gunman.
4:00 The head cam images show the gunman passing from room to room,
4:05 killing as he goes and shooting the wounded from close range.
4:08 The attacker targeted both the men's and women's
4:11 prayer rooms.
4:12 Witnesses told local media they ran for their lives
4:14 and saw people bleeding on the ground outside the building.
4:17 There were bodies all over, one man said.
4:19 And so now the second attack at Linwood Mosque
4:21 where eight people were killed,
4:22 one of whom died in the hospital later from the injuries.
4:25 There were fewer details about the attack
4:27 in the Christchurch suburb of Linwood.
4:29 Survival's told media that they saw a gunman
4:31 in a black motorcycle helmet open fire
4:33 on about 100 people praying inside.
4:36 Police Commissioner Mike Bush described the twin attacks
4:38 as a very well planned event.
4:40 Firearms were recovered from both scenes.
4:42 Two IEDs and provides explosive devices were found in the car
4:46 and neutralized by the military police set.
4:48 Australian National, again, the, I'm not gonna use the guy's name,
4:51 it was a 28 year old.
4:53 He appeared in court on Christchurch
4:54 a day later charged with murder.
4:56 The New Zealand resident was remanded in custody.
5:00 A man with the same name appears to have published a manifesto
5:02 before the attack outlining his intentions.
5:05 He identified himself as a 28 year old Australian citizen
5:08 and espoused far right in anti-immigrant ideology.
5:11 Two other men and one woman were detained nearby
5:14 and firearms seized.
5:15 Officers are investigating whether they are involved.
5:18 Okay, so a couple of other things
5:20 that I'd like to add to the information here.
5:22 So the gunman actually had a bunch of names written
5:25 on the semi-automatic weapon that he was using.
5:27 It was an assault rifle of some kind.
5:30 And there were some of these names that were, you know,
5:32 like PewDiePie from YouTube.
5:34 And like there were people that were named in the manifesto.
5:37 The thing that seemed very clear about this individual,
5:40 the manifesto that he posted out there.
5:44 He's trying to just gin some stuff up
5:46 because in one place he'll say things
5:48 that are for a certain political character
5:51 or political person and then just a sentence or two later
5:54 he'll say something against that person.
5:56 So we don't know if he has like an exact ideology
5:58 but we can say with pretty good amount of assurance
6:03 that this individual was a white supremacist
6:06 that had white supremacist ideology
6:08 and was acting out on it.
6:10 The video actually went viral again.
6:13 It was about a 17 minute long video if I can recall correctly
6:16 that he was live streaming to Facebook.
6:19 And of course it went to Twitter and Instagram
6:21 and it's all over the place.
6:22 And those organizations to their credit
6:25 have done all that they can to get those videos gone.
6:28 But unfortunately they didn't recognize
6:30 what was happening with the video until it was too late,
6:32 until it had been copied and pasted pretty much everywhere.
6:35 And to be honest with you guys,
6:36 I actually did watch the first part of the first video
6:39 where it was the attack of him at the original mosque.
6:42 And this guy was just kind of talking to himself, you know,
6:45 laughing.
6:46 It was absolutely brutal.
6:47 It was absolutely gruesome.
6:48 Again, I don't know why I watch it.
6:51 I don't know that I would suggest that you guys watch it.
6:53 Again, I don't really turn away from depravity
6:56 and sinful things that we see in human beings.
6:59 It's just not something that I think we should look away from.
7:02 But I honestly don't know what it added to my life
7:04 to watch what this person did.
7:06 But I guess it is good to know
7:08 even from a defensive standpoint
7:10 kind of how this person operated
7:12 because he literally just walked right through the front doors
7:14 with an AR-15.
7:17 It was either an AR-15 or an AK-47.
7:19 I couldn't remember from the video.
7:21 But he just had it just walking right in front of him.
7:24 He's just walking right in with it.
7:25 And then just started shooting people.
7:26 He literally was systematic.
7:28 He would leave and go into the hallway
7:30 and put a new magazine into his gun
7:32 whenever he needed to reload.
7:33 And then we'd come back in
7:34 and he would systematically kill people.
7:36 Just absolutely, absolutely brutal.
7:38 I guess at this point, after talking about enough,
7:41 I don't know that I would suggest that you guys watch it.
7:43 I mean, it's as bad as you could possibly imagine.
7:45 But there's a few quick thoughts.
7:48 This will not be a long podcast, guys.
7:50 But there are a few quick thoughts
7:51 that have basically hit me since this happened.
7:53 And so I want to go ahead and share those with you here.
7:55 I guess the first thought is
7:58 an attack on any group of religious people
8:00 while they're observing their religious ceremonies
8:03 is especially troubling.
8:04 And so the thing about it is,
8:06 is this just so happened to be a group of Muslims.
8:08 But there are plenty of people on this planet
8:11 that hate people of all religions.
8:13 There are people that hate Christians,
8:14 they hate Sikhs, they hate Muslims, they hate Hindus,
8:17 they hate just pick a religion Jews.
8:19 I mean, there's just people to hate out there.
8:21 So there are groups of people that will hate those people.
8:24 And typically, those people like to display their hate.
8:28 Some of them use words,
8:29 some of them use things that they write online,
8:31 some of them will use their fists,
8:32 other people use bullets.
8:34 And so, but it's just something different.
8:37 It's just a whole different brand
8:38 of something to see people attacked
8:41 while they were worshiping
8:43 in the way that they chose to worship.
8:45 A second thought would be,
8:47 if this didn't hit you that hard
8:50 when you heard about it,
8:52 because it was Muslims that were massacred,
8:54 you need to check yourself, okay?
8:57 'Cause I've heard some things
8:58 and I've seen some things so far
9:00 that were like, oh, well,
9:02 I wonder how they feel now being on the other side of this.
9:07 And those are pretty disturbing to hear people think,
9:10 to talk about that.
9:11 'Cause these are 50 innocent people,
9:13 men, women, and children that were absolutely massacred.
9:16 You might disagree with how they worship
9:18 or who they worship or how they go about certain things.
9:22 But the idea that, oh, well,
9:24 now the shoe's on the other foot.
9:26 So I wonder how it tastes from their perspective now.
9:29 That's an especially egregious and gross thing to think.
9:32 So again, for any of you guys that are thinking that right now,
9:35 if maybe this didn't hit you as hard as the church shooting
9:38 from Texas or something like that,
9:40 because it wasn't Christians,
9:41 I just don't really know what else to say to you other than,
9:44 that's incredibly disappointing
9:45 and you're a gross person for thinking something like that.
9:48 Another thought here would be,
9:50 if you immediately went political with your reaction,
9:52 you also need to check yourself.
9:54 So you're a very atypical, very much expected reactions
9:59 from certain people like, oh, this is a gun problem
10:02 or oh, this is a white supremacist problem
10:04 or oh, Donald Trump's responsible for this
10:06 or oh, Fox News is responsible for this.
10:09 The NRA is responsible for this somehow.
10:11 But to be real, the gun laws in New Zealand
10:15 are incredibly restrictive.
10:17 So this is not a country that has a whole lot of gun violence.
10:20 I think the statistics last year,
10:22 there were like 35 people total
10:24 that were murdered in New Zealand last year.
10:26 And not all of those were using a gun.
10:28 And so, but everyone just has their quick political take, right?
10:33 Like that's what they kind of need to just get out there, right?
10:36 Get it to their followers.
10:37 They got a blue check mark by their name.
10:39 And so they got to throw some sort of piffy
10:41 political statement out there.
10:42 Gosh, for the love of God, now is not that time, guys.
10:46 I mean, this is horrible.
10:47 This is one of the worst mass shootings that we've ever seen.
10:50 We've ever seen, you know, done by civilian
10:53 in any country, in any circumstances.
10:55 Like, you want to give it maybe 48 hours, maybe 72 hours,
10:59 before you start throwing out your political, you know,
11:01 ideological phrases.
11:03 Let's just save it maybe for a little bit.
11:06 And another thought that came to mind,
11:07 and because we saw people basically rush to do this,
11:09 if you mock quote, unquote, thoughts and prayers right now,
11:13 go screw yourself.
11:16 So AOC, or otherwise known as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
11:20 she is a House member, a Democratic House member
11:22 from the state of New York.
11:23 She's an all around village idiot.
11:25 But here's something that she decided to tweet
11:28 basically right after this shooting.
11:30 So here we go.
11:31 At first, I thought of saying, imagine being told
11:33 your house of faith isn't safe anymore.
11:36 But I couldn't say imagine.
11:39 Because of Charleston, Pittsburgh, Sutherland Hills.
11:43 What good are your thoughts and prayers
11:45 when you don't even keep the pews safe?
11:48 What an evil, just horrific [inaudible] she is.
11:53 Like, honestly, that was the first thing
11:56 that came to her mind.
11:57 Good grief.
11:59 I'm so ecstatic.
12:00 She's been ripped up and down for this.
12:02 And the thing is that she kind of doubled down,
12:04 but also tried to walk it back a tweet or two later,
12:07 'cause she was just getting destroyed for it.
12:09 She basically insinuated that the phrase,
12:12 thoughts and prayers was made up by the NRA,
12:15 the National Rifle Association.
12:17 How stupid of a person do you have to be
12:21 to say something so inane and so moronic?
12:24 The NRA came up with thoughts and prayers, really?
12:28 Disunbelievable, just absolutely unbelievable.
12:30 So again, if you're one of those people,
12:32 like it's so hard to even come up with something
12:37 to say to you because the level of understanding
12:41 and the level of neurons basically firing in your brain
12:43 at the same time have to be so low for you
12:46 to be able to think and actually say something like that.
12:48 It would be a complete waste of my time
12:51 to even address you.
12:52 It's just insane.
12:53 A another quick thought here.
12:56 If you aren't left of bang while at church, you are sheep.
13:01 So just phraseology here, left of bang,
13:05 that's basically right of bang is okay,
13:08 after a shooting has happened
13:10 or after the bomb has gone off, right?
13:12 Left of bang is all the things that happen
13:15 before something goes down, right?
13:17 Because typically these shootings or these bombings
13:20 or things like that, these attacks,
13:21 they don't just fall out of the sky.
13:23 There are signals in their signs
13:24 if you're paying attention, okay?
13:27 So the reality is, is so many people
13:29 that walk through the churches in America,
13:31 even in cities and towns and states where,
13:35 there's a lot of guns in the room probably.
13:37 Most people are just kind of walking around
13:39 not paying any attention.
13:41 They're not paying attention to the exits.
13:42 They're not paying attention to the person
13:43 that sat down next to them.
13:44 They're not paying attention to the person
13:46 that walked in a little bit late.
13:47 They're just oblivious to everything.
13:50 And again, as we know from on combat,
13:52 you're either a sheep, a wolf or a sheep dog.
13:55 And unfortunately, the majority of the people
13:58 that get killed in these type of mass shooting events
14:01 are sheep.
14:03 These are people that just absolutely freeze up
14:05 and they don't exactly know what to do.
14:07 I saw a video the other day of,
14:09 I think this was a week or two ago
14:11 where there was a school shooting in Brazil.
14:13 I think there were eight or nine young people
14:15 that were killed, but basically the shooter,
14:18 the killer walked into the lobby,
14:21 pulled a gun out of his waistband and just started shooting
14:23 people.
14:24 And there was some sort of a signal or alarm that went off
14:27 because basically anybody that would kind of come
14:29 through this area, he would shoot them.
14:31 And I think he had like a hook or some sort of a knife
14:34 or something like that that he was like stabbing people with
14:36 and hooking people with as they were kind of coming through.
14:38 But the video was especially crazy
14:40 because he's standing there in the middle
14:42 and then all of a sudden we see dozens and dozens
14:44 and dozens of students that are running for the door.
14:47 They're literally running right past this guy
14:50 who's waving around a gun and a knife.
14:52 And again, I'm certainly not dogging on these kids
14:55 and I'm not getting on them.
14:56 But at that point, if two or three of those students
14:59 turned and attacked that person
15:03 or basically confronted that person,
15:05 it would have saved several lives.
15:08 But they were all in that moment of sheer terror, right?
15:11 They were acting as a sheep.
15:12 They weren't mentally prepared to go after this guy
15:17 to try and stop him, okay?
15:20 Because here's the thing in this,
15:21 I guess gets into the last point here,
15:23 which is you have to be prepared to fight back
15:25 and stop those that intend to do evil.
15:27 This is part of the reason why I can still carry.
15:31 This is part of the reason why I also carry a knife.
15:33 This is part of the reason why I trained jujitsu.
15:36 And I train those things not only because they can be hobbies
15:39 and they can be fun, I train to be lethal.
15:42 I mean, honestly, that's what I'm training to do.
15:44 I'm training to be lethal with every weapons system
15:47 that's at my disposal.
15:49 And if there is not a weapons system directly at my disposal,
15:52 then it's something that I want to be able to make do with.
15:56 So if I don't have a gun or a knife or anything else,
15:58 and I have to use it, a chair or a stool
16:01 or a book or something like that,
16:03 you just do what you can.
16:04 But it's a lot about the mindset.
16:06 And I'm really concerned for people in America
16:10 that walk into a place of worship,
16:12 which we've obviously seen around the world,
16:14 is not the safest place in America.
16:16 And they just walk in oblivious to everything
16:18 and they're not prepared to fight back.
16:21 And I just don't really know what to say
16:24 to these individuals.
16:25 But I'm talking to y'all right now.
16:27 I've at least got part of your attention right now.
16:29 And so this is what I would say to you guys,
16:32 is you have to be left of bang.
16:34 Win at church, especially win at church.
16:37 Because I mean, you should be left of bang
16:40 at the post office at Walmart, at your kid's soccer game
16:43 or whatever the thing is,
16:44 you need to be left to bang at all times,
16:46 but especially at church.
16:48 Because, I mean, we're sitting ducks at church.
16:51 I mean, if you think about it, think about your church,
16:53 I don't even know what church you go to,
16:55 but I can pretty much guarantee you,
16:56 there are one or two main entrances or exits.
17:00 I mean, I used to tend a massive, massive church
17:03 here in Edmond, Oklahoma.
17:04 There are basically four exits.
17:07 One on either side and two in the back.
17:09 And I just remember thinking,
17:10 even when I was helping on the security team,
17:12 I remember thinking, man, if I walked in here
17:16 with a serious weapon system,
17:19 like, it would be literally like shooting fish in a barrel.
17:22 No, I mean, no one would be able to stop me.
17:25 I could put myself in a corner
17:27 where no one could literally get to me.
17:29 And these people would literally be trampling each other
17:32 just to get out.
17:33 Most churches, and then you have these old school churches
17:36 where there's one entrance and one exit,
17:38 and it's in the very, very back.
17:40 So, again, it's hard.
17:45 It's hard even thinking through these scenarios.
17:47 And I know for some of you guys,
17:48 you don't really have that mindset.
17:50 It's kind of an ignorance as bliss type of thing.
17:51 And I'm the weirdo that stays up late at night,
17:53 running scenarios of if somebody breaks in this side of the house,
17:56 what do I do?
17:57 And if someone breaks in to this window,
17:59 which gun am I going to grab first?
18:00 Like those types of things.
18:01 But that's just part of being prepared.
18:03 That's part of having the right mindset.
18:06 It's having that sheepdog mindset
18:08 that you're going to be prepared to do what you need to do.
18:10 And the reason why I say that, guys,
18:12 is because this massacre that happened in New Zealand
18:14 could have been a whole lot worse.
18:16 But apparently, and there's not a whole lot of information
18:19 out there right now about that,
18:20 but apparently there was a good guy with a gun
18:22 near or at that second mosque
18:24 who returned fire against the shooter,
18:27 basically stopping him.
18:29 And it allowed the police to catch up with him
18:31 and eventually catch this guy and arrest him.
18:33 And so, again, we don't know anything about this guy
18:37 with a gun, but we don't know if this was just the second
18:42 of multiple mosques thereafter that he was going to go to.
18:45 But let's say that he was just going to indiscriminately
18:47 walk room to room in the second mosque.
18:49 Maybe there's a hundred, 150 people dead now.
18:51 And then what if he had plans to go to a third mosque,
18:53 fourth mosque, fifth mosque?
18:55 What if he was planning to go into a synagogue
18:58 or a church there?
18:59 I mean, those are certainly things that could have happened,
19:03 but there was a good guy with a gun.
19:05 And so, for those of you in America
19:07 that are listening to this, please start training.
19:11 Start training with a weapon system.
19:13 Start training your body.
19:14 Start training your mind to be prepared to launch
19:16 into those different situations.
19:17 And I'll just leave it there.
19:20 We talked about it a lot.
19:21 And guys, we're going to be back on our normal schedule
19:26 after this.
19:27 I know this is kind of a somber podcast.
19:28 We're not going to do a quick resilience boost
19:30 or any type of outro or anything like that.
19:32 But I do just want to leave a message
19:33 for anyone in New Zealand that might listen to this
19:38 or might see this or you might have a Kiwi
19:40 that's close to you.
19:42 There's a phrase that is used in New Zealand.
19:45 It's Kia Kaha.
19:46 So that's KIA, K-A-H-A, two words there, Kia Kaha.
19:51 But it's a Maori phrase in the Maori
19:53 or the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand.
19:56 But it's basically an affirmative statement
19:58 that means stay strong.
20:00 And especially Christchurch.
20:03 I mean, that city has gone through so much
20:05 with earthquakes and just really bad things have happened there.
20:10 And then now this, I mean, it's just,
20:12 I mean, it's a city without that many people.
20:14 It's a country without that many people.
20:16 And even for, you know, in small of a city
20:19 as Christchurch to have felt this much pain and tragedy,
20:21 it's absolutely ridiculous and it's crazy
20:24 and it's just really hard, you know?
20:26 So this is our message from Undaunted Life
20:28 to anyone listening to this podcast,
20:29 especially those that are in New Zealand.
20:32 Kia Kaha, New Zealand, stay strong.
20:34 We're here with you.
20:35 Certainly the world is going to give you their sympathy
20:39 in their prayers right now.
20:40 and we will certainly do the same.
Key quotes
2
Kyle Thompson
If you immediately went political with your reaction, you also need to check yourself.
Kyle Thompson
Kia Kaha, New Zealand, stay strong.
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