Two Heroes

The first- Jack Wilson, who pulled off an incredible shot against the shooter at the Texas Church Massacre That Wasn’t.

On Sunday, during what would otherwise likely be a quiet worship service at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, an armed gunman entered the church and after talking to a man for several minutes in the corner, pulled out a shotgun and opened fire.
The gunman, as was witnessed in recorded video of the entire incident, barely managed to get off more than a few rounds before an armed security guard standing 50 feet away from the shooter drew his pistol and fired a single shot, instantly killing the gunman with what appeared to be a perfectly placed head shot.

Go ahead – try to put a shot into a five inch circle at 50 feet. Simulate the stress of the situation first, though – do fifty jumping jacks and then grab your gun and squeeze off the shot in a second or less.

And as a practicing believer, I loved Wilson’s quote:

Wilson, who is running to be county commissioner in Hood County, shared on Facebook that while he is sad he lost  “two dear friends and brothers in CHRIST,” he thanks God for being able to protect the congregation because evil does exist in the world. 
“I just want to thank all who have sent their prayers and comments on the events of today. The events at West Freeway Church of Christ put me in a position that I would hope no one would have to be in, but evil exist and I had to take out an active shooter in church,” Wilson wrote.

Yep, I’ll be headed to the range. Or I would, if all my guns hadn’t fallen into Mille Lacs and they didn’t completely terrify me anyway.

The second? The Texas state legislator, Sen. Donna Campbell of New Braunfels, who led the push, after the Sutherland Springs church massacre, to remove the “gun free zone” language from Texas churches.

To be clear, churches would still be able to prohibit licensed citizens from carrying firearms on their premises so long as they provide oral or written notice.
Campbell’s bill codifies a previous opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton sought shortly after the shooting in Sutherland Springs. In the opinion, Paxton stated that “unless a church provides effective oral or written notice prohibiting the carrying of handguns on its property, a license holder may carry a handgun onto the premises of church property as the law allows.”

I predict a steep decline in copy-cat shootings in churches – in “shall issue” and “constitutional carry” states, anyway.

21 thoughts on “Two Heroes

  1. It is easy to make a shot like that – when God is guiding your hand. 🙂

    Seriously, Jack Wilson is a hero and sometimes heroes are made by circumstances, like a flash of courage or sound judgement in a stressful situation – but then there are people like Wilson who live as heroes – but no one really realizes it until something like this happens.

    We need more people like Jack Wilson and guys like that just do not happen. They have to be made. They have to be born, raised, trained and encouraged to live heroic lives.

  2. Amen to that, Greg. In order for a Good Guy with a Gun to stop a Bad Guy with a Gun, you need the right person with the right temperament and the right skills in the right place at the right time and that doesn’t happen by accident. File this one under “the Lord help them as helps themselves.” Kudos to the church’s governing body for seeing the risk and taking appropriate action to guard the flock.

    Mitch, I hope you’re logging these Good Guy with a Gun scenarios somewhere, to use the next time a troll starts ranting about it being a myth.

  3. Kudos indeed to Jack Wilson; the first time I saw the video I marveled at home coolly he drew, aimed and fired – and that he only fired once instead of multiple times.

    Now his courage will really be tested, however. I remember how quick the media was to dig up every embarrassing detail about Jeanne Assam’s life after she was involved in stopping the Colorado Springs church shooter years ago.

    On a personal note, I served as an usher for many years at our church, often positioned at the back of the sanctuary where I could easily watch and see if anyone needed assistance during ministry or (occasionally) extreme behavior. I didn’t carry, but I knew who in the congregation did and where they sat (viewing them as a resource, and not a threat). This was at least a decade before the term “active shooter” entered our lexicon. I had mentally rehearsed several “if/then” scenarios. You better believe that if someone had come in acting as the shooter did in this latest case that there would have been eyes on him – just as there were last Sunday.

  4. Anyone who argues that the gun laws in Texas work because only two parishioners were killed in this instance is blithely overlooking the fact that nobody should have been killed. It’s entirely possible to live in a state where the criminal in this case would not have had access to a gun, where no shooting would’ve occurred, where no one died. I can’t fathom meeting the relatives of the victims of this horrible attack and telling them they should be thankful, even proud, because their loved ones were the only ones to die. It’s extremely warped thinking. A church full of armed citizens couldn’t stop a guy from killing two people first. In my book, that’s not proof of success, that’s a failure.

  5. Not bad, Emery. Your outrage high is noted. And, oh, yeah, the attention you so badly crave should come soon with the nonsense you just posted.

  6. Emery, since profiling is considered evil by you progs, even the police don’t always return fire until a perpetrator either displays a gun and refuses to drop it or fires first. The same thing occurred here, but you obviously didn’t pay attention to that fact, because facts always confuse trolls like you. Man, how do you even dress yourself or does your mommy do it for you? Sheeesh!

  7. Anyone who argues that the gun laws in Texas work because only two parishioners were killed in this instance is blithely overlooking the fact that nobody should have been killed.

    Or the fact that none of the nearly 100 victims of the Bataclan massacre died, because you can’t get a gun in France.

    Oh, wait…

    It’s entirely possible to live in a state where the criminal in this case would not have had access to a gun,

    Guns are banned in France. And (until recently) Brazil, which has 5-8x the US murder rate. And in Norway, which had a higher per-capita mass-shooting rate than the US in the past decade.

    Everything gun grabbers believe is false. Every time.

  8. Emery keened “ It’s entirely possible to live in a state where the criminal in this case would not have had access to a gun,”

    Name that state Emery! Name that state!

    come on little guy, step up, prove your worth.

  9. Bad news, Emma. That Utopian State you’re thinking of was called “The Soviet Union” and it collapsed in 1991.

    You might try moving to Iceland, there aren’t many gun deaths there. Of course, it’s a remote island of White people with a population smaller than Minneapolis so there are trade-offs.

    Switzerland has few gun deaths. Of course, it’s a mountain fortress of White people with a population smaller than New Jersey where you don’t speak the language and will never be a full citizen.

    Ooh, Singapore, now you’re talking. Warm, no guns, plus caning for minor offenses. Downsides are language and giving up all your rights, but hey, trade-offs, amiright?

  10. Emery, agreed that man should not have been there with that shotgun. He’d been arrested for felonies in New Jersey, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and California, and for reasons that are unclear to me, the police and prosecutors failed to get him convicted for even the most basic, open and shut cases. One easy one; arrested with a shotgun in New Jersey despite being wanted on a felony arrant in Oklahoma. It’s pretty obvious the man needed to be in prison or in residential mental health care.

    But fools like you, Emery, somehow see the failure of government agencies as a recommendation for the rest of us to give up our rights and trust the government. I’d say you have s*** for brains, but I don’t want to insult excrement.

  11. I’ve got a deck of aces in the hole.

    Gun mass murders where guns are strictly controlled or unobtainable:

    • Bataclan
    • Mumbai
    • Charlie Hebdo
    • Utøya
    • Beslan
    • The Brussels Train
    • The Münich Shooting
    • Dunblane
    • Wellington NZ
    • A few other mass shootings in France

    Mass Murders that happened in “gun free zones”:

    • Over 90% of mass shootings in the US
    • Every School shooting, including Parkland, Santa Fe, Sandy Hook, Columbine, Virginia Tech
    • Fort Hood
    • Chattanooga
    • Washington Navy Yard
    • Every shooting in a federal building including post offices
    • Sutherland Springs

    Mass murders that didn’t need any guns at all

    • Kyoto Animation Studio
    • Oklahoma City
    • Happy Land Social Club
    • The Kent, Michigan school massacre
    • Rwanda
    • 9/11
  12. Should we tell Emery one of the two people that died was part of the church security team. He was shot while attempting to employ his own weapon (I read he was the 1st shot and actually had his gun out of the holster when hit). What’s unknown is how the shooter snuck a long gun into the church.

  13. Scott – long black trench coat and a shortened shotgun with a pistol grip. Emery would probably approve of stopping and searching anyone wearing a long black trench coat into a public place, but that’s not how things work (yet).

  14. Other mass killings that didn’t need any guns at all include a bunch of mass stabbings in China–I think among the Uyghur minority mostly–and some bombings by Chechens in Russia.

    Yeah, ya wanna kill a bunch of people, there are a lot of ways of doing it. That’s why we have a 2nd Amendment.

  15. If leftist degenerates get their way, an armed maniac will burst in upon Enemary and his pals in some greasy porn palace someday during a special screening of pedophile home movies, and spray the place down.

    Taking his time, the shooter will feel safe in the knowledge that the new background checks have rendered every sex offender in the place unable to obtain a firearm.

  16. Pingback: Induced Helplessness? | Shot in the Dark

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