The following is an excerpt from Nancy Pearcey’s upcoming book, “The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes.”
The report of a mass shooting in a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, in 2018 was more than a news account of a crime. It was also a story about two young men.
The killer was 28-year-old Ian David Long, a college dropout, divorced former Marine who was unemployed and living with his mother.
He knew the Borderline Bar and Grill held a weekly college night when it would be crowded with young people. He entered the bar dressed in black, a hood pulled over his head. Tossing smoke grenades into the crowd to create confusion, he drew out a pistol with a laser sight and started shooting. A sergeant from the sheriff’s office rushed over to help, but the shooter was waiting for him. After killing the sergeant and 12 other people, Long shot himself.
In the crowd that night was another young man, 20-year-old Matt Wennerstrom, who emerged as the hero of the hour. Sporting a backward baseball cap and a scruffy beard, Matt looked like a typical college student. But what he did was not at all typical.
As soon as shots began booming through the bar, he and about seven other young men grabbed as many people as they could and pushed them under a pool table for cover. Then they piled their own bodies over them to protect them from the hail of gunfire.
One woman,
