Former Vice President Joe Biden’s blistering criticism in September of the new Texas law allows guns in church has come back to haunt him like the Ghost of Silly Comments Past in the wake of Sunday’s heroic actions by an armed parishioner that stopped a church shooting in White Settlement.
On the other hand, the Dallas Morning News editorial page appears to be scoring kudos for expressing gratitude that “a good man and a volunteer member of the church’s security team immediately shot back” when the gunman opened fire, killing two men at the West Freeway Church of Christ. Volunteer security chief and firearms instructor Jack Wilson fired one round—a head shot at about 50 feet at a moving target, which is no mean feat—to stop the killer. Within seconds, at least seven other visibly armed church members were closing in on the downed gunman.
There has been hardly a peep from the gun prohibition lobby other than tweets from Shannon Watts, founder of the anti-gun Moms Demand Action group, and former Democratic presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke.
Back on Sept. 2, Biden responded to Abbott’s signing of the legislation relaxing gun restrictions, calling it “irrational.”
“It is irrational,” Biden declared, “with all due respect to the governor of Texas, irrational what they’re doing. We’re talking about loosening access to have guns to be able to take them into places of worship, into schools, I mean it’s absolutely irrational.”
What now appears irrational is the disdain anti-gunners, including Biden, have repeatedly expressed toward the notion of legally-armed citizens defending themselves and others in churches or other gathering places.
The Washington Examiner is reporting that Biden’s critics are “slamming his comments” about the Texas law.
Not one Democrat remaining in the presidential race has uttered a word in praise of Wilson’s quick action that many authorities have said saved lives.
As noted by The Sun, Biden asserted that allowing church goers to carry guns would not prevent a mass shooting. Sunday’s events have shown that sentiment to be as wrong as the idea that declaring churches to be “gun-free zones” will prevent such an incident.
While Biden and his fellow Democrat contenders apparently refuse to recognize this, the Dallas Morning News hasn’t.
“Regardless of whether people like this fact,” the newspaper said, “it remains true that there have been at least two church shootings in Texas in recent years that ended because law-abiding citizens had the means and willingness to fight back. The second occurred two years ago in Sutherland Springs, and unfortunately resulted in the loss of many more lives. But as in this most recent shooting, in that incident the assailant did not survive after good men responded with force.”
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said Biden shouldn’t be alone on the hot seat. His fellow Democrat contenders seem to be ignoring the incident. And the gun prohibition lobby has been predictably quiet because, Gottlieb asserted, “the use of firearms by private citizens in defense of themselves and others—especially a large crowd of worshippers in a church—just doesn’t fit the extremist gun control narrative.”
“Biden’s trash talk in September symbolizes everything wrong with his party’s increasing hostility toward law-abiding gun owners and the Second Amendment,” he said. “This year, we’ve already heard proposals for mandatory buybacks, registration and licensing, gun bans and Beto O’Rourke’s outright threat of confiscation. If anyone has been irrational, it’s Biden and his fellow Democrats for their demagoguery and anti-rights hysteria.”
