Gridlock News

In a heroic and necessary action church members in a church in Knoxville Tennessee tackled a man that opened fire in the church with a shot gun.

A quiet Sunday morning turns violent in Knoxville. A gunman opened fire in a church sanctuary killing one person and wounding eight others.

"It's the one place you expect to be safe," eyewitness and  Chattanooga native Amy Broyles said.

But the sanctuary of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was everything but safe this morning.

Broyles and her family were among the nearly 2-hundred congregants in the church when a man walked in and opened fire.

"He was an older man, mid 60s. He didn't say anything, he was just very calmly shooting," Broyles described.

Broyles says she was with her 2-year-old daughter inside the church's "quiet room" when she heard a loud boom.

"Right outside the quiet room was a man standing with a shotgun to his shoulder. I dropped down against the door so he couldn't see us," Broyles said.

Broyles then heard several men tackle the gunman. Among them, her husband Jamie Parkey.

Chattanooga Native Describes Knoxville Church Shooting | WDEF News 12 | News, Weather and Sports for Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley

This is one of those incidents that we often view as heroic, but historically, this is an action that is just plane necessary.  When a crazed person starts killing people, someone needs to step up and stop them.  It goes against human group psychology to do this, but it is possible to rise above that and stop a tragedy from developing any further.  It doesn't take special training, it doesn't take advanced levels of bravery or adrenalin, a super latte from Starbucks, or Ephedrasil Hardcore energy pills. It takes a will to survive and a will to stop the killing of your friends, family and even strangers around you.

People of the World, we are in this thing together whether we like the situation or even each other or not.  We have to get better at taking care of each other like the people of Knoxville, TN did today or the people of Flight 93 did on 9/11.  Together we can harness the violence and check its impact.  There are more sane people than crazy people, we just have to work together.