RIO DE SANGRE, TEXAS — From the living room of his double-wide trailer, parked a couple hours west of the site of the most recent deadly mass shooting at a church in his state of Texas, self-described “lifelong Republican and Trump supporter” Frank Gaffendorf is fuming mad.
Mr. Gaffendorf tells us that he is fighting back tears of both rage and sorrow as he watches the news accounts of America’s most recent deadly shooting rampge, this time at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The mass shooting, carried out by a former member of the air force who received a bad conduct discharge, left more than twenty members of its congregation dead, and several more injured. Frank is apoplectic that the shooting took place because he said it’s “clearly an act of cowardly terrorism” but that he was under the impression President Donald Trump’s ban of travelers and immigrants from six Muslim majority countries would prevent a terror attack from ever happening on U.S. soil again.
“Just what the hell is the point of the Muslim ban if ain’t gonna stop all terrorism on our shores,” Frank asks no one in particular as he converses with us via Skype. “We was told that the Muslim Ban would stop terrorism, and it made sense. We all know that the only terrorizin’ bein’ done these days is by the Muslims. So when I found out that all those people were killed in an act of terror in that church down the road a bit, well, it really threw me for a loop.”
Frank says that this latest shooting, while hitting close to home, is not the first time he’s felt new reservations about the efficacy of Trump’s Muslim ban.
“Now that you’ve explained to me what efficacy is,” Gaffendorf told us, “Yeah, I question the efficacy of the ban. I mean, how can we say it’s going to be effective in reducing the amount of terror in our lives if we ain’t gonna stop terrorism with it? They just had that shooting in Vegas less than a month ago; and I know they ain’t found no motive for that shooting yet, but I’d call it an act of terror, with or without some bullshit political motivation, wouldn’t you?”
Despite recent events, however, Gaffendorf says the last thing America needs to do is think about gun regulations.
“Sure, the last two months have given us two of the largest mass shootings in our country’s history, but how the hell does a mass murder with a gun even remotely relate to guns,” Gaffendorf asked rhetorically. “What possible good could come of picking the low hanging fruit of universal background checks and strong, centralized federal gun trafficking laws that protect lawful gun owners and transactions by giving peace of mind to the public that we’re at least trying to strike a balance between freedom and responsibility?”
