You might not know him by name, but Jack Wilson is a hero.
Wilson is the man who perhaps saved hundreds of lives last month when he pulled out his gun and shot a sick man who stormed into West Freeway Church of Christ in Texas and began firing shots during a communion service.
His heroism is a clear example of how good people with guns can prevent bad people with guns from harming others. But in today’s divided political climate, such a nuanced reality is difficult to acknowledge.
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, was asked during a recent campaign event if she could see the value in allowing U.S. citizens who are licensed and have gone through a government-sanctioned background check to carry concealed weapons.
Without missing a beat, Warren replied with an unflinching, “No.”
The truth of the matter is Warren’s unapologetic answer completely dismisses the tremendous, life-saving action Wilson took. Wilson was a good man with a gun who stopped a bad man with a gun who clearly wasn’t motivated to follow a law that would have prevented him from obtaining a weapon.
There is certainly value in having a conversation about how to prevent gun crimes in the U.S., where such attacks are all too common, but to cavalierly dismiss the idea that laws such as the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act are flat-out useless is shortsighted and seemingly politically expedient.
With one shot, Wilson, as he put it in an interview with CBS News, “killed evil.”
“That’s how I’m approaching it,” he said. “That’s how I’m processing it.”
Isabel Arreola, who was attending church with her family and her 7-year-old daughter, said she’s grateful for Wilson, a trained firearm instructor and the head of the church’s volunteer security team.
“Thank God,” she said, “that our church was proactive and did all that and put that in place, ’cause it could have been worse.”
What Wilson did was courageous, and as long as evil exists, we need people like him who are willing and able to stop those who wish to bring harm to others.