As with every mass shooting, the mainstream media has been promoting the idea that Devin Patrick Kelly’s firearm was responsible for killing almost 30 people during a Sunday church service in Texas.
What they love to ignore, however, is the fact that the massacre ended early because an armed citizen decided to shoot back.
While the chances of finding yourself in a mass shooting are minuscule, that doesn’t mean you don’t have an inherent right to self-defense and why bringing a gun to Church in states where permitted is a good idea. The blood had not even been washed from the floor and scrubbed from the pews of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs before the Progressives put out the call for more gun-control laws and new attempts to educate the yokels about the ineffectiveness of prayer.
This report by NBC News is so wrong as to what Trump had to say after the Texas church shooting in his reference to gun related killings in Chicago.
New York laws are much stricter than Chicago. You need a license just to purchase a gun, which takes several months at a cost of several hundred dollars. You can only have one, and no long guns are permitted.
- All guns are “funneled into” Chicago, because Chicago has no gun shops, despite a federal court order to allow them.
- New York has had the strictest gun laws in the nation since the Sullivan Act was passed in 1911,
- Homicides in New York surpassed 2200 per year prior to Rudy Giuliani terms as mayor (1994-2001). Giuliani used the “broken window” doctrine, which postulates that lax enforcement of minor laws leads to more major crime, and vice versa.
- Giuliani and his successor, Michael Blumberg, also subscribed to the “stop and frisk” policy, where police would detain people for suspicious behavior, especially in high crime neighborhoods.
- By the end of his term as mayor, gun deaths had dropped below 300 per year, in a city four times the size of Chicago.
- Advances in crime prevention by Giuliani have been abandoned by Mayor DeBladio for political reasons. Chicago, on the other hand, has been under “progressive” leadership for many decades, and never subscribed to Giuliani’s methods. Instead, police are obligated to fill out a form for each stop, taking about 30 minutes each time. As a result, fewer stops, more crime.
Indiana gun shows allow face-to-face purchases between non-dealers without a background check. You must prove you are a resident of Indiana. Licensed dealers, who comprise most of the sellers at gun shows, always require completion of ATF form 4473 together with an NICS background check, per federal law.
What happened in Sutherland is a tragedy on many counts, An entire family was wiped out, and everybody in that town knew one of the victims. The ultimate blame lies solely with the shooter, but many other errors allowed him to perpetrate his awful deed. Any one of the following counts would have prevented him from buying a firearm in the United States.
- He was involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from which he escaped, for threatening a superior office with a firearm.
- He was convicted by the Air Force on two counts of domestic abuse, and sentenced to 12 months in prison (any sentence of 1 year or longer, regardless of time served).
- He received a dishonorable discharge from the Air Force.
Of what use is the “universal background check” demanded (misleadingly) by gun-control advocates, when convictions and facts are withheld from the NICS data base? The government (Air Force) failed badly, yet millions of law abiding gun owners are asked to give up their rights as though that would help.
The church in Sutherland was, by Texas law, a gun-free zone. While Texas is a gun-friendly state with regard to concealed carry, none of the parishioners in that church could be legally armed. Progressives would like to keep it that way, and a similar measure has been proposed several times in Illinois, most recently sponsored by alderman Burke of Chicago. Time after time, only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun, whether the good guy is a police officer or ordinary citizen, as in Sutherland. There, a passerby heard the screams and shooting, retrieved his own rifle and wounded the gunman as he targeted others outside the church, causing him to drop his weapon and flee.
Twenty-three places are denied to concealed carry in Illinois, including public transportation, which has seen many instances of robbery, assault, even machete attacks. There’s something about a gun-free zone that attracts criminals. Perhaps they fear an armed victim more than a jaded judge.
[Originally Published at Illinois Review]
Nancy J. Thorner is a writer, cellist, and Tea Party activist based in suburban Chicago.
