Greg Locke used a real shooting to sell a fake Christian persecution story about himself

The bullets were real. The martyr narrative was knowingly false.

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In 2024, Christian hate-preacher Greg Locke, who runs Global Vision Bible Church in Tennessee, claimed that he was nearly the ultimate victim of Christian persecution after someone fired gunshots into his home. We now know that he was lying about an important element of the story—and that he knew he was lying at the time.

Greg Locke, presumably lying about something (screenshot via YouTube)

The saga began on September 4, 2024 when Locke posted this disturbing message on Facebook, saying his home had become a “full blown crime scene.” His family had returned home from an outing only to find that someone had “unloaded an entire magazine of bullets from an automatic weapon into our house, garage and my truck.” Thankfully, no one was injured.

That story was shared over 20,000 times.

It was easy for supporters to believe he would be the victim of an attack given that he has a long history of saying horrible things. Locke was, after all, someone who falsely claimed children with autism actually suffer from demon possession. He blamed the United Nations for the Israeli government’s genocide in Palestine and called for more murder in the Gaza Strip. He’s a book-burning, anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who thinks the moon landing was fake and that anonymous witches watch him live-streaming while they "sit in front of a cauldron and cast spells" on him. He thinks public schools are on a hiring spree for witches. He hates owls. He doesn’t know what comedy is.

More recently, he’s been accused of spiritual and financial mismanagement, and spent a part of this past week at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida delivering prayers to the MAGA faithful.

So of course someone would be out to get him, right?

Locke was eager to feed that narrative, too. Days after that incident, he preached a sermon re-telling the harrowing story of what happened.

He said in that monologue that if his attackers ever caught up to him, he wasn’t about to reverse course, because “they’re going to kill us for standing for righteousness.” He told a looooong story about how he was out with his family and they had a lot of premonitions telling them to delay their return to the house. When they finally returned and saw the shell casings outside on the ground and some in the house, Locke made it sound like his entire family could have been killed if they had just been inside the house at the wrong time.

He ended that sermon by calling on everyone to praise God because God “still protects his children.”

And then, to his assailants, he insisted: “We’re not going to slow down. We’re not going to back up. We’re not going to compromise. We’re not going to be cowards. We’re not going to just quit doing what we’re doing and hang around a bunch of woke sissies that don’t have a backbone.”

In short, if this was an attempt to scare him from preaching the Gospel as he saw fit, he wasn’t backing down.

When a journalist wrote about the incident—just describing what Locke said happened—someone on X/Twitter expressed shock that people were accepting it as true, calling it “unbelievable” that anyone was “buying his story.”

Locke responded that it was unbelievable this person was “taking so lightly what just transpired. That’s total trash for real!!”

In a sermon the following week, Locke claimed no gunshots were ever going to stop him from preaching what he wanted: “I’m going to run my race and Jesus is going to be the focus of my finish. This crowd can try to distract us, and discourage us, and shoot us, and belittle us, and hate us, but at the end of the day, I’m looking unto Jesus.”

There was also a Christian outlet that wrote about the incident, including a clip of Locke sharing audio of the gunshots caught by a security camera (“60 rounds in less than three seconds”):

Locke loved that article, posting it online and praising the outlet for “sharing this story in a truthful way.”

Locke’s family ended up moving to a new home after that. But he acted like he was still being persecuted in the new place, saying in a now-deleted video that someone had left a voodoo doll on his property: “They had wired up a homemade voodoo doll, complete with a upside down cross hanging on the bottom.” See?! They were still trying to get him! He added in that video:

We’re going to continue. We’re not going to give in. We’re not going to roll over. We’re not going to be intimidated. You’re not going to bully us and give us a little black eye and make us stop… This stuff will not slow our roll. We send this curse back to sender. We do not accept this voodoo nonsense.

And then, in December of 2024, a suspect in the case was arrested. It was a 20-year-old named Tyler Poole. No potential motive was offered at the time, so it wasn’t clear why this guy would be trying to go after Locke. Was he an atheist? Was he a hired gun working for Satan? What was it that Locke said that made Poole want to take his life?

We now know the answer is none of those things. In fact, Poole didn’t seem to know anything about Greg Locke, much less what his religious convictions are. The fact that the gunshots were fired at Locke’s home had nothing to do with anything Locke ever said.

Earlier this week, Poole pleaded guilty to “one count of aggravated assault and two counts of reckless endangerment” in anticipation of his upcoming trial. He was given a five-year jail sentence.

But according to Daniel Silliman of The Roys Report, there’s no connection between the incident and Locke’s preaching. That’s according to the prosecutor in the case.

“Absolutely nothing,” Wilson County Assistant District Attorney Tammy Meade told TRR. “A juvenile had an argument with another juvenile, like boys do. They got into it and someone got mad and got a gun.”

…

The state had extensive evidence he was feuding with Caden McGee, Locke’s 17-year-old stepson. Poole went to the house where McGee lived on Sept. 3, 2024, and wildly fired off dozens of rounds from a .40 caliber automatic handgun, reloading the weapon multiple times to keep shooting.

“He just unloaded on the property, the house and the vehicle,” Meade said.

…

… law enforcement officers found no evidence that Poole ever intended to stop Locke’s preaching. No evidence he cared about Locke’s sermons, tweets, or the controversial stands Locke took on Trump, the 2020 election, LGBTQ people, Jews, COVID-19 or other issues.

Locke didn’t comment on that interesting element of the case.

But The Roys Report doesn’t just stop there. Silliman spoke to Locke’s former head of security, Jon Guffey, who stopped working for Locke in part because of how he had exaggerated this story. (Guffey is still a Christian who aligns with much of Locke’s preaching.)

Guffey was the security guard who arrived on the scene that night when Locke called him in panic. Not long after he arrived, it seemed pretty clear to everyone—Locke and his wife included—that their teenage son was the enter of the story, not Locke himself.

The shooting “had nothing to do with Greg Locke or the church and it had everything to do with Greg’s wife’s son,” Guffey said. “Greg knows it was Caden, and it had to do with Caden, but he’s also like, ‘Hey, we can use this to our advantage.’”

It was Guffey’s wife who found evidence online suggesting a link between Caden and the shooter. Police used that information to look into Poole and they were eventually able to confirm the hunch. It wasn’t a theological battle. It was a “bad dope deal,” said Guffey, referring to what law enforcement officials concluded.

The Lockes knew this was probably the case as well. And the night of the shooting, they quickly decided they could play up this story to boost their own profiles.

“We were standing out in the driveway,” [Guffey] said. “The cops were taking pictures of the back of the truck. [Locke’s wife] Taisha comes back out of the house. She’s standing there for just a minute, and she says, ‘Now that I think about it, I think it was a hit on Greg.’”

According to Guffey, Taisha repeated the idea several times, saying, “I think it is. I think it is.” Then, according to Guffey she explicitly said, “We were going to let people believe it was an attack against pastor.”

…

“It’s a good story to tell,” Guffey said. “It was done to bolster his reputation.”

When you add that understanding to the full context of this story, it becomes very clear what Locke did. He never explicitly said the shooter was out to get him, but he repeatedly offered his congregation enough breadcrumbs that they would believe it. When other people suggested the link was there, he didn’t stop them. He fully encouraged the speculation.

And yet, even today, he’s done absolutely nothing to correct the record.

I reached out to Locke yesterday to ask him if he had anything to say about the story now that there’s proof he’s no longer—and never was—the main character in it.

He was as defiant as always. (I’ve formatted the comments below for clarity so it’s not one long paragraph.)

First, the Roy’s Report is the Jerry Springer of internet reporting.

It was my family and our home so it had everything to do with me. I’ve never claimed it was over my preaching. I said, and still say, when you’re making the devil angry, he fights you. My kids could have died so the WHY means absolutely nothing to me. It only means something to critics and liars looking for 15 minutes of fame. People use tragedy to fabricate a narrative that makes them seem credible. The Lord will reward them according to their words.

When I made the post the night it took place everyone was still in shock and had no idea what was happening. Anyone who has that many bullets riddle their home and personal vehicle will never get over it.

We’ve forgiven the young man and plan on visiting him in jail very soon. We wish him nothing but the best. All of us have made dumb decisions and those decisions can either destroy us or define us.

Big “fake news” vibes in that first sentence. The Roys Report backs up its reporting with interviews and documents. When people who spread lies accuse actual reporters of lying, it’s usually because the facts aren’t on their side.

Locke did, in fact, insinuate repeatedly that the shooting was connected to his preaching. You can see the videos above. So it’s deeply ironic to hear him say of his critics that “People use tragedy to fabricate a narrative that makes them seem credible.” (Self-awareness is not his strong suit.)

And while I can understand and sympathize with the shock of what happened that night, what Locke is saying here directly contradicts what his security guy said. (I asked Locke about that, and he said, “He made that up. She never said such a thing.”)

I do agree with his final lines about people making dumb decisions. But while I also hope the young man going to jail can eventually get his life back on track, Locke has always doubled down on saying one dumb thing after another.

Here. Let’s help set the record straight: Locke knew early on that the shooting wasn’t about him, yet he allowed and, in many ways, actively encouraged a false narrative to flourish. He portrayed himself as a potential martyr under divine protection—not unlike how Trump responded to an assassination attempt by someone who, the evidence has shown, didn’t actually give a damn about his beliefs—despite being fully aware that the gunshots had nothing to do with his faith.

It was always a calculated performance from a trained carnival barker.

It says a lot about Locke’s church that people fell for this, too. Conservative Christians love any narrative that casts them as victims rather than the bullies. They look for evidence of persecution everywhere they can while ignoring the multitudes of stories in which Christians are actively and gleefully ruining the lives of other people. Locke knew he could lie to his congregation because they’ve accepted all his other lies without much question.

When you’re under his circus tent church, facts don’t matter. It’s all about how the narrative makes you feel, and Locke has become popular largely because he makes people feel like they’re persecuted for their faith and they need to stick together before their enemies win.

Locke, as usual, capitalized on a lie. He knew was a lie. Yet he repeated it. He amplified it. I promise you he’s not about to tell his followers that he was mistaken because, in his conservative universe, there’s no such thing as admitting a mistake or lie.

That’s what his morality teaches him. That’s why he’s not credible and why no one should ever take his claims seriously. Not about religion, not about politics, and not about anything else. He ought to clean up his own life before telling everyone else how to live theirs.

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