Joe Biden. (YouTube, CBS)
By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Former Vice President Joe Biden is being criticized for remarks made in September about the new Texas law allowing guns in church, which he called “irrational.”
In the wake of the church Dec. 29 shooting in White Settlement, in which the gunman was quickly taken down by an armed citizen, Biden’s comment is being panned by gun rights activists.
However, the Dallas Morning News editorial praising the actions by armed church goers was getting favorable review from gun owners for noting “a good man and a volunteer member of the church’s security team immediately shot back” when the gunman opened fire. That shooter fatally wounded 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.
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.”
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 says 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.”
