The Patriot Post® · The Truth About the Texas Attack

On Sunday, another deranged, hate-filled individual carried out a deadly attack — this time on a small church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The attack on the church left 26 people dead including an unborn child and at least 20 more injured. Had it not been for a law-abiding citizen with a gun — a former NRA instructor with his own AR-15, no less — there no doubt would have been more killed. Stephen Willeford armed himself and engaged the killer, shooting him twice and, along with fellow neighbor Johnnie Lagendorff, pursuing the perp when he fled.

Unfortunately, as with every mass shooting incident in our nation, the anti-gun crowd gets amped up about the need for tougher gun laws. So let’s look at the facts of the case.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden each tweeted their condolences but couldn’t leave it at that. They both used this heinous criminal act to renew a call for stricter gun control measures without even knowing any of the details about the murderer.

Many other prominent Democrats chimed in as well, each with their own nonsense on demanding stricter gun control while blaming everyone except the killer himself. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) crassly blamed his own colleagues in Congress for failing to do anything: “As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) added, “How many more people must die at churches or concerts or schools before we stop letting the @NRA control this country’s gun policies?”

Actually, senator, there’s this thing called the Constitution that controls our nation’s gun policies. And we’ll remind Democrats again that the perpetrator was stopped only when an NRA instructor with a gun stopped him.

Darn those facts that undermine The Narrative™.

Fortunately, President Donald Trump, most Republicans and local lawmakers realize that guns aren’t the problem. As we have stated so many times before, guns are tools that can be used for good when in the hands of law-abiding citizens. Evil people can also use guns to carry out their malicious intentions. But when evil people use anything other than a gun, such as a truck, a knife, or any other object, there’s hardly ever a leftist cry to ban such items.

Further, murdering someone is a crime.

Yet leftists have an agenda of statist control over everything — thus they cry out for stricter gun laws. In the case of Devin Kelley, the Texas perpetrator, there were already laws in place to prevent him from owning a firearm. But in this case, the laws and the system failed.

Kelley was an Air Force veteran court-martialed in 2012 for domestic violence against his then-wife and child. Kelley even intentionally fractured his infant stepson’s skull. He was sentenced to 12 months confinement and a reduction in rank, and he received a bad-conduct discharge. That discharge didn’t disqualify him from owning a firearm; his court-martial along with his domestic violence charge did.

Yet somehow Kelley purchased several firearms from a store in San Antonio. Whenever anyone purchases a firearm from a licensed gun dealer, the prospective customer completes a form including questions about prior convictions. Kelley fraudulently answered at least two questions. Once the form is filled out it is entered into the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which also includes the National Criminal Information Check (NCIC) database. If a person is flagged, no sale of a firearm can be legally made. Kelley should have been flagged and denied sale, but he was not.

How did this happen? Air Force officials reportedly failed to report Kelley’s domestic assault charge to the NCIC database, which under federal law it is required to do. In other words, human error enabled Kelley to purchase firearms.

Recall that a similar thing happened with the deranged racist who murdered nine people in Charleston two years ago. Human error in data entry left a hole in his background, too, with tragic results.

So there is already a system in place to prevent this kind of person from owning a firearm, but the bureaucratic process failed. The terrible fact is no such laws are going to prevent every evil guy bent on murder.

In any case, the fact remains that leftists’ call for more gun control is a losing argument and for the foreseeable future this will remain the case.

It’s estimated that there are more than 300 million guns owned by Americans. If guns were really the problem, there wouldn’t be many people remaining. Not that polling should ever dictate policy on constitutional rights, but the public has grown increasingly skeptical of gun control over the years, despite (or is it because of) Democrats’ increasingly shrill rhetoric.

The right to keep and bear arms is a natural right that most Americans cherish and don’t want to lose. Most leftists understand that an outright confiscation of firearms would spark a bloody resistance, so instead they seek to restrict in smaller increments the liberties of law-abiding citizens. But what part of “shall not be infringed” do they not understand?