Gun 'buy back' minister charged with kidnapping, assault

by Chad D. Baus

The Akron Beacon-Journal recently reported that a local minister had been charged with felonious assault, kidnapping and abduction after allegedly of speeding off in his Lexus with a repo man on hood.

Falzini said that while he was standing in front of the car reporting the repossession to Akron police, Neal got inside and turned the key.

"I said, 'Hey what are you doing?' And he put it in reverse, he puts in drive, ran into me and knocked me over onto the hood of the car," Falzini said.

The car went down a side street, through a stop sign and onto East Wilbeth Road at speeds Falzini estimates between 40 and 60 mph. He said the pastor was smiling during parts of the drive as he weaved and made sharp moves in an apparent effort to toss the repo man off.

"He hit the windshield wipers to try to knock my hands off the hood," Falzini said. "He was laughing at me, telling me he was going to take me on the interstate."

The article piqued gun rights blogger David Codrea's curiosity, and what he learned about Neal will interest gun rights advocates everywhere. You see, what Codrea learned is that Mr. Neal has promoted gun control as a way to end violence.

From Codrea's article at Examiner.com:

He's a prominent local activist pushing citizen disarmament as the way to stop the violence.

"As community leaders we must promote safety. The possession of guns increases the risk of tragedy," Neal said.

Believing something needed to be done to get illegal guns off the streets, Neal approached the Akron Police Department and the Summit County's Sheriff's and Prosecutor's offices, with the gun buyback idea.

And it's not just "on the streets" where Neal wants to remove the guns. From the following year's event:

"It relieves the easy access of guns being available inside the home," Neal said.

"All things considered, I guess that's understandable," Codrea remarked, providing a link to a case number for a conviction Neal had last summer for domestic violence.

"Funny thing about some people who don't trust the rest of us with guns," Codrea concluded.

A "funny thing" indeed... In fact, several years ago, psychiatrist Sarah Thompson, M.D wrote an article which examined the anti-gun mentality, with a particular focus on the emotional bent of anti-gun people, and the defense mechanisms they use to protect themselves from feelings that they cannot consciously accept.

From Thompson's article, entitled "Raging Against Self Defense - A Psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality":

About a year ago I received an e-mail from a member of a local Jewish organization. The author, who chose to remain anonymous, insisted that people have no right to carry firearms because he didn't want to be murdered if one of his neighbors had a "bad day". (I don't know that this person is a "he", but I'm assuming so for the sake of simplicity.) I responded by asking him why he thought his neighbors wanted to murder him, and, of course, got no response. The truth is that he's statistically more likely to be murdered by a neighbor who doesn't legally carry a firearm and more likely to be shot accidentally by a law enforcement officer.

How does my correspondent "know" that his neighbors would murder him if they had guns? He doesn't. What he was really saying was that if he had a gun, he might murder his neighbors if he had a bad day, or if they took his parking space, or played their stereos too loud. This is an example of what mental health professionals call projection - unconsciously projecting one's own unacceptable feelings onto other people, so that one doesn't have to own them. In some cases, the intolerable feelings are projected not onto a person, but onto an inanimate object, such as a gun, so that the projector believes the gun itself will murder him.

After examining projection, and other defense mechanisms Thompson observes in anti-gun individuals, she focuses on the common element that she says runs through most anti-gun people:

In my experience, the common thread in anti-gun people is rage. Either anti-gun people harbor more rage than others, or they're less able to cope with it appropriately. Because they can't handle their own feelings of rage, they are forced to use defense mechanisms in an unhealthy manner. Because they wrongly perceive others as seeking to harm them, they advocate the disarmament of ordinary people who have no desire to harm anyone.

What else but rage could prompt a minister to allegedly try to run over a repo man trying to do his job, and go a high-speed drive with his victim on the hood? What else but rage could cause an editorial page reader to take the time to look up a letter-writer's number, pick up the phone and call for the purpose of expressing hopes that he and his family suffer an attack by an armed assailant?

Despite the anti-gun rights crowd's projections, those who obtain concealed handgun licenses have proven on the whole to be a highly safe, trustworthy members of society.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman.