Good Guy with a Gun #200: Nashville, TN

Firing a gun at church volunteers got Sean Aring a bit more than a few Hail Marys. | Original incident: May 18, 2024

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.

Just a show of force can be enough to send a bad guy running.

In this case, the bad guy is Sean Aring, 41. His record doesn’t strike me as a bad bad guy’s, but he’s clearly a bit of a miscreant. He has a record going back to at least 2000, mostly misdemeanors — in fact, among a few other things, he was charged with misdemeanor driving on a suspended license in 2000, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 (twice), 2013, and 2014.

Not only misdemeanors, though. Somewhere along the way, he got a felony drug conviction. I can’t find where — it’s not in his record at the Nashville / Davidson County Criminal Court Clerk’s website — but I know it has to be somewhere, as I’ll explain.

On a Saturday evening in May, Sean Aring was walking his dog past Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church.

There were volunteers out directing traffic for the evening Mass. Aring started yelling obscenities at them and then, while still in the roadway, pulled a gun from his holster and fired a shot in their general direction, but into the ground.

Imagine being those volunteers for a minute. Obscenity at the church is out of line — and then a gunshot? What the actual…?

One show of force deserves another: A prepared church volunteer drew his own gun and fired back, also into the ground. That sent Aring running.

He didn’t outrun the cell phone photo that was taken of him, though. He was identified — not hard, since he had been seen often enough in that area already — and arrested.

He was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, one of which was dismissed, one of which earned him three years; one count of reckless endangerment, which was dismissed; and one count of felon in possession of a firearm, which earned him five years. The two sentences were to run concurrently.

I’ve got to talk to my priest about this. If I get five Hail Marys for one sin and ten Hail Marys for another, I could just say ten and call it good, right?

Right?

Anyway, his felon in possession of a firearm charge leads us to the fact that his record as detailed above must be missing information about a felony in another jurisdiction — but even though I don’t have it, the prosecutors clearly did.

And it also leads us to the fact that felons don’t pay attention to the laws that prohibit them from keeping and bearing arms, or firing them into the pavement at presumably peaceful churchgoers.

Color me shocked.

Sources

Aring’s record is at the Criminal Court Clerk’s website.

WSMV 4 carried an initial story before Aring was identified, including the cell phone photo that probably helped identify him, as well as a follow-up once he was identified.