Religious Leader: Rush Gunman

FORT WORTH -- The head of a Southern Baptist seminary told male students they should charge an attacker when confronted with a situation like last week's Virginia Tech campus shootings. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, made the comments at an April 18 chapel service, two days after Seung-Hui Cho fatally shot 32 people before killing himself. "All you had to do was have six or eight (students) rush him right at that time and 32 people wouldn't have died," Patterson said. "You don't let things like that happen, guys. We just don't do it." The Dallas Morning News first reported the story on its Web site Tuesday. Patterson was not immediately available to comment Tuesday, a spokeswoman told The Associated Press.

Seminary spokesman Jon Zellers said Patterson has been "trying to put his comments in context after some feedback" following the chapel service. Patterson put a statement on his Web site Monday emphasizing that he is not criticizing the actions of survivors. "My own sympathy has been not only for the families who lost members, but also for the university president and security force at Virginia Tech who are being maligned," he wrote. "As the old military axiom notes, 'You plan for battle; but as soon the first shot is fired, the plan is pretty much over.' Assigning blame to anyone in this situation is futile and hurtful." He also said in the statement that "I am still just old-fashioned enough to believe that men are responsible to protect women and children."

Some campus security experts disagreed with his stance. Sgt. Allan Baron of the department of security and police at Texas A&M University told the newspaper he would not recommend that someone without training charge an armed assailant. "The best advice you could probably give to somebody in those type of situations is to look for a way to escape and get help immediately," he said. Bob Taylor, chairman of the criminal justice department at the University of North Texas, said he regrets any public statements that could be interpreted to suggest Virginia Tech students didn't measure up. "It's so critically important to err on the positive side of people who make decisions in these situations," he said. Patterson, who helped lead the 1979 conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, became president of Southwestern in 2003. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the country, claiming 16.4 million members.

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Amen Dr. P.