Stephen Willeford, the man who helped take down a gunman at a Texas church shooting in 2017, said that Virginia’s gun control measures are about control—not safety.
“I think it’s more about control than it is about the safety of the citizens. I mean, that’s obviously an issue that has nothing to do with safety. They want to control,” Willeford told “Fox and Friends” ahead of the gun rights rally at Virginia’s capitol on Monday.
“Why would you want to close down [shooting] ranges? If you’re going to have people with guns, don’t you think that they should be trained to shoot properly and be safe? Why would you want to close down ranges?,” he said, referring to a proposed law in the Virginia legislature that would outlaw private indoor gun ranges that employ at least 50 people.
Willeford, a former National Rifle Association instructor who lives next door to the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, spoke at the gun rights rally, also known as “Lobby Day,” on Monday. The rally is organized annually by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a nonprofit grassroots organization whose goal is to advance the right to keep and bear arms.
“I think they all need to go away,” Willeford told The Epoch Times, referring to the gun control proposals. “You can’t have a police officer everywhere all the time.”
Earlier that day on Fox, Willeford recalled how he shot an armed man who opened fire inside a church he lives next door to on Nov. 5, 2017. The shooter killed 24 and wounded 20 others before Willeford grabbed his AR-15 after hearing gunshots and headed to the church.
“He came out, he had a tactical bulletproof helmet and class III body armor and if I had not had an AR-15, I would probably have not made it,” Willeford told Fox of the shooter. Willeford shot the man in his leg and chest, prompting him to flee the scene in his SUV. “All the police departments that were around my church, all of them are great people, they were coming just as fast as they could, but they say that they were five to seven minutes estimated behind me and my community didn’t have five to seven minutes to wait,” he added.
Willeford said it’s important to show up to the rally in Richmond, Virginia. “It’s important because the people of Virginia need to know that they can’t stand for these kinds of bans. Our Constitution stands against it. It shall not be infringed.”
“I think it’s more about control than it is about the safety of the citizens. I mean, that’s obviously an issue that has nothing to do with safety. They want to control,” he continued.
At least 22,000 Second Amendment advocates hailing from across the country assembled at Virginia’s State Capitol building to rally against a slew of gun control proposals that are in the process of passing through the Democrat-controlled state legislature on Monday. The rally concluded peacefully around noon.
Epoch Times reporters Bowen Xiao and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.