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Sorry, Texas, But Guns Don’t Save Lives
Following the shooting at a church in White Settlement, Texas yesterday, stories emerged about hero parishioners. These parishioners shot and killed the gunman — they had guns on hand because under the 2017 Texan Senate Bill 535, Texans can legally carry their handguns into places of worship.
Among tales of the heroic acts, conservative commentators thanked the Second Amendment for stopping the gunman. An op-ed in the Washington Examiner wrote, “it doesn’t hurt to let good people have guns.” One in Fox News said, “Concealed-permit gun holders save lives.”
Across the conservative media base, everyone seemed to agree on one so-called fact: in the White Settlement shooting yesterday, guns saved lives. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The shooter and his gun killed two innocent victims yesterday. The heroes and their guns killed one person, the shooter. In total, guns killed three people.
Conservatives who view the shooting as “guns saving lives” are choosing a convenient counterfactual. If the heroes hadn’t had guns, then many more people would have died. I don’t contest that.
But the other counterfactual that they refuse to even acknowledge is that if the shooter did not have a gun in the first-place, no one would have…
