Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is a man on a mission. He’s like everyone else in this country in so far as he doesn’t want to see another Sutherland Springs. He especially doesn’t want to see another one in Texas.
That’s why he’s trying to make sure Texans know that they can carry their guns in church.
Following the mass shooting at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said arming congregants could prevent similar tragedies in the future. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick thinks so, too, and wants Paxton to let more churches know that is an option.
Patrick requested Friday that Paxton issue an opinion clarifying whether congregants can bring guns to church and whether churches are exempt from state fees for creating volunteer security teams. Patrick said in the request that he hoped Paxton could inform more churches “what legal options they have to improve their security.”
Patrick made it clear in his letter to the attorney general that he feels state law allows congregants to bring guns to church unless a sign at the door says otherwise. He also wrote that a recently passed law exempts churches from fees other institutions must pay to form their own security forces.
The law in question just went into effect in September, just a matter of weeks before the tragedy in Sutherland Springs. It allows churches to have armed volunteer security teams without having to pay state fees to license the volunteers. Those fees can be fairly steep, thus creating a burden on smaller churches. The measure’s author, State Rep. Matt Rinaldi, noted last month that he believed that many churches were unaware of the new law.
While many look at Sutherland Springs as evidence that more gun control is needed, they ignore the fact that one armed congregant may have stopped the whole thing before it started.
Of course, gun control advocates scoff at the whole use of the word “may” and note that we know he killed plenty of people, and that’s true. It’s also irrelevant since an armed citizen outside the church engaged the killer and put an end to his rampage.
More armed congregants in more churches may well make churches poor target choices for future mass shooters. After all, these guys are motivated by big body counts. They want fame and notoriety. They relish the idea of everyone knowing their name. That’s part of why we don’t use their names here at Bearing Arms.
However, if they know they won’t get their infamy at a church because they’ll be killed far too quickly, they’ll move on somewhere else.
Harden enough targets by having armed citizens present and eventually we’ll see these dipsticks stop trying to get fame this way. If they want fame, it’ll become much easier to learn how to sing or play a sport than to try and shoot up a house of worship.
If you hit that point, you no longer have to worry. There’s a reason that gun control will never work, and this is it.
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Texas Lt. Governor Wants Texan Churches To Know They Can Have Guns