The reason the Founders put the Second Amendment in the Constitution, the document Democrats and liberals selectively embrace or read things into when convenient, was seen last Sunday at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, near Forth Worth where, dare we say it again, good guys with guns stopped a bad guy with a gun.  

Note the plural is used here, for video footage shows at least seven guns were drawn with seconds of the killer opening fire on the parishioners inside, killing two. But only two, as a wider massacre was stopped by those who don’t believe in gun-free zones. Two of those who returned fires were armed security guards, you know, the people used to guard our money and our politicians, but whom our politicians won’t let protect our schoolchildren.

Both common sense and abject stupidity were on public display in the aftermath of the shooting:

The church’s senior minister, Britt Farmer, said at a news conference Sunday that the congregation lost “two great men today” but could have lost more if those at the church were unarmed.

“But it could’ve been a lot worse. I am thankful that our government has allowed us the opportunity to protect ourselves,” he said…

Law enforcement officials praised the members of the church’s security team for ending the attack within seconds. Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn told The Dallas Morning News that Sunday was “a horrific day in Tarrant County.”

“Today evil walked boldly among us,” he said. “But let me remind you, good people raised up and stopped it before it got worse.”

Less pleased was failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who wanted to go door-to-door and confiscate our AR-15s acquired to defend our families.  With professionally cleaned teeth and properly trimmed ear hair, O’Rourke opined:

“Clearly what we are doing in Texas, what we are doing in this country, when it comes to guns is not working,” the former Texas congressman said in a tweet Sunday.

Beto, if you had your way, there would have been no guns in  the West Freeway Church of Christ last Sunday, everyone inside would be dead, and you would still be lecturing us on gun control. What Texas has, worked. It isn’t perfect but as more and more armed citizens defend themselves in this constitutionally protected manner, such shootings will become less likely as prospective killers realize Americans aren’t tolerating gun-free zones anymore.

Imagine if every German Jew had met the Nazi SS knocking on the door with a loaded gun, if Stalin and Mao had been confronted with an armed citizenry. The killing fields of Cambodia and other massacres by tyrants would have been stopped if America’s Second Amendment was not the exception but the rule worldwide.

People like the parishioners of the West Freeway Church of Christ in flyover country are openly mocked by the coastal and progressive elites and were so mocked by President Obama in  the famous “bitter clingers” remark made during the 2008 campaign:

Barack Obama had not yet locked up the nomination for his party when he revealed his true feelings about gun owners to attendees of a private fund raiser in San Francisco last April:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

These people cling to their Bibles and thankfully, to their guns, not because they are fearful of others nor like them but because they are fearful of a government that doesn’t like them, and politicians who don’t like the Constitution much either. They fear open borders and empty jails and politicians who would let in and let loose armed predators while leaving We the People defenseless.

They cling to their Bibles and their guns and clinging to both last Sunday probably saved their lives. They value both their guns and religious liberty and despise those politicians who infringe on both. They hunt but they believe the Second Amendment was written because the British were coming, not because the deer were in season.

Stephen Willeford is another Texas churchgoer who certainly can remind gun-control zealots that guns in general and the AR-15 in particular, which has been misrepresented by gun control zealots as an "assault rifle," can be used by good guys to save lives as well as by bad guys to take them.  He is the hero of Sutherland Springs, Texas, who, hearing the sound of gunfire at a nearby church, grabbed the AR-15 he had taught others to use as an NRA instructor and chased down the mass murderer who had shot up the First Baptist Church before he could continue his murder spree elsewhere: 

The hero who last November stopped the gunman behind the deadly Texas church massacre said using an AR-15 enabled him to end the bloodshed.  In an emotional interview with CRTV's "Louder With Crowder" on Monday, Stephen Willeford described the gunfight and dramatic car chase that ensued to stop the shooter from slaughtering additional churchgoers. The former National Rifle Association instructor was home Sunday morning when his daughter told Willeford she had heard gunshots from the nearby Baptist church, prompting him to get his AR-15 rifle from his safe and load a magazine.  He ran to the church and confronted the alleged shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, who fired shots at Willeford.  While taking cover behind a pickup truck, Willeford fired several shots at the gunman, who sped away in his car. Willeford ran to a truck stopped at a stop sign and asked the driver to help him to stop Kelley, who had a history of domestic violence and had been kicked out of the military.  The two men pursued the gunman, whom [sic] officials say wore tactical gear and a bullet-proof vest, down a nearby highway until the vehicle eventually careened off the side of the road.  When police arrived, Kelley was found dead on the scene with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head as well as two other gunshot wounds -- one on his leg and one on his torso.  Officials believe the gunman took his own life."If I had run out of the house with a pistol and faced a bulletproof vest and kevlar and helmets, it might have been futile," Willeford said.  "I ran out with an AR-15 and that's what he was shooting the place up with."

Guns in churches seem like some sort of grotesque oxymoron but in the right hands a firearm can be the ultimate peacemaker. Many were thankful that day in 2007 that Jeanne Assam, a volunteer security guard at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, had easy access to a gun when Matthew Murray entered the east entrance of the church and began firing his rifle. Murray was carrying two handguns, an assault rifle, and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

Assam, who worked as a police officer in downtown Minneapolis during the 1990s and is licensed to carry a weapon, shot and killed Murray. Had she not done so, more than two would have been killed at the church that day. Two others had been killed by Murray at the Youth Mission School in nearby Arvada. New Life’s senior pastor Brady Boyd said Assam’s actions saved the lives of 50 to 100 people:

A former police officer, Assam, 42, was on security duty Sunday morning at New Life Church here. Hours earlier, a 24-year-old who had been rejected from a missionary school in a Denver suburb had shot and killed two staffers there. Now he was spraying New Life's parking lot with gunfire and pushing through the doors to the sanctuary.

Assam hid and inched toward the gunman, Matthew Murray, as dozens of terrified worshipers fled. She waited until he got close enough, revealed herself, aimed her pistol and fired. Murray dropped to the ground. He was carrying an assault rifle, two pistols and a backpack holding more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

"I just prayed to the Holy Spirit to guide me," Assam said at a packed news conference Monday. "I give the credit to God. This has got to be God, because of the firepower he had versus what I have."

As they say, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. Once again, guns save lives. It bis said that greater love hath  no man than one willing to lay down his life for his friend, but with the Second Amendment and a gun you don’t have to.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.