A shooting at a church in Texas and a stabbing at a rabbi's home during a Hanukkah celebration in New York over the weekend have renewed calls for increased security and the right to be armed in places of worship, NBC News reports.
In Texas, a gunman killed two people before a volunteer armed security team shot and killed him in the church near Fort Worth on Sunday. That led Texas politicians to praise a recent law that allowed guns to be carried in places of worship.
The issue of whether worshipers should be armed breaks along the usual fault lines in the wider debate on gun laws. Supporters of gun control legislation say the better solution is to reduce gun ownership, rather than to invite weapons of death into the pews. But in Texas, which has a strong gun culture, Republicans seized on the shooting Sunday as proof of their long-held belief that more trained gun owners can prevent casualties during mass attacks.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, praised the law that allows licensed handgun holders to carry weapons in houses of worship that don't explicitly ban them. The law, which was passed after 26 people were killed at a church in Sutherland Springs in 2017, took effect in September.
