Following the horror of Sutherland Springs, it’s not surprising that so many people are looking to carry a firearm at church. However, having a gun is only part of the equation if we want to prevent further tragedies like the one in Texas. We also need laws that make it easier for people to act when lives are on the line, and that comes in the form of Stand Your Ground protections for armed citizens.

Now, the state of Alabama is considering extending those protections to churches.

An Alabama lawmaker wants protections for the use of deadly force to defend churches, and their parishioners.

The bill — which expands the state’s self-defense law — says a person is presumed justified in the use of physical force if they reasonably believe someone is about to seriously harm someone inside a church.

Republican Rep. Lynn Greer, the bill’s sponsor, on Wednesday cited deadly church shootings in Tennessee and South Carolina, as he urged the House Judiciary Committee to approve the bill this session.

Unsurprisingly, Moms Demand Action oppose the law. They love to reframe it as “shoot first” laws, but in doing so they reveal that they’re either ignorant or lying, and I think we all know which it is.

The fact is that Stand Your Ground laws do not make it legal to just gun down people for no good reason. It only allows someone to act when there is a legitimate threat, one a reasonable person would agree is an actual threat.

And I think they know this. They just don’t like the idea of people being able to act without trying to get away from the bad guy, an act that may not only open them up to attack but also slow down the decisionmaking process at a critical moment. They don’t want people being able to protect themselves.

They want armed citizens to be killed.

Then, of course, they’ll use that as proof that being armed won’t protect you and carrying a gun will only let a bad guy get your gun, all without recognizing their role in hamstringing the armed citizen in the first place.

OK, maybe it’s not fair to say they all want armed citizens to be killed, but you have to agree that it sure looks that way. They want to make it impossible for us to act if need be, then we all know how they’ll latch onto the tragedy of our deaths to prove their point, all without accepting the responsibility that the measures they’ve pushed for cause them.

The bill in Alabama needs to become law, especially in the wake of Sutherland Springs. People need to be able to act to protect both their lives and the lives of their fellow man. It’s the right and just thing to do if we want to be serious about preventing tragedies. Nothing else will stop it, nothing at all. It’s beyond time for people to start taking this seriously.

It’s only too bad that the gun grabbers can’t grasp that.