(For the full context of this post, please read here.)

At the end of my conversation with Shannon Watts, of gun-control group Moms Demand Action, Watts said something rather astonishing. The reason that the moms in Dallas were so intimidated by the counter-protest outside, she told me, was that Open Carry Texas is “like the Taliban” and could feasibly have planned to open fire. “You don’t honestly believe they were going to shoot you?” I asked.


“I have no idea why you would actually assume that,” Watts replied. “You never know with these mass shootings. I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know if these people have had background checks. Or if they have had any training.” Watts also suggested that Open Carry Texas was full of people who might rape the women involved in Moms Demand Action. I suggested that this was a “little extreme,” but she said that OCT’s website featured some choice comments and that she had inferred it from that.

I don’t know too much about OCT, I grant you. But I do know that one is probably unlikely to plan to shoot up and then rape a restaurant full of mothers after one has alerted the press to one’s presence and brought along one’s wives and children for good measure.