Apparently, two LDS missionaries were shot and one of them killed in Virginia:

A Mormon missionary going door to door was fatally shot Monday night and a fellow missionary was wounded by an assailant who fled, police said.

The attacks happened just after 6 p.m. in the Deep Creek area of the city, police said, when a man approached the two, shot them and ran away.

One of the victims ran to a nearby nursing home seeking help, police said.

A number of possible explanations. The killer may have just really had it in for Mormons. He may have saw two well-dressed young men and figured that they had money on them (though the details don’t seem to match that hypothesis). Maybe he was just crazy.

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but in many ways the missionaries really are putting themselves at risk. Maybe not great-risk, but a lot of gun-happy states like Texas and Colorado give the benefit of the doubt to gun-totin’ property-owners even when there is no apparent threat of physical harm. Not to mention some of the neighborhoods they have to go through (Willard did his mission in South-Central LA).

The one that survived is apparently doing okay, which is good to hear.