Texas state Representative Tony Dale (R), a man with an A+ rating from the NRA who has fought for the proliferation of guns, says Texas should not accept Syrian refugees because they might buy guns.
“While the Paris attackers used suicide vests and grenades,” Dale wrote, “it is clear that firearms also killed a large number of innocent victims. Can you imagine a scenario were [sic] a refugees [sic] is admitted to the United States, is provided with federal cash payments and other assistance, obtains a drivers license and purchases a weapon and executes an attack?” He urged the lawmakers to “do whatever you can to stop the [Syrian refugee] program.”
I don't see the problem here.
Conservative folklore tells us that all you need to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. There are plenty of those in Texas, right?
If Dale is so concerned about gun-toting refugees, he should support universal background checks for all gun purchases. He may want to support that even if not a single refugee is ever relocated to Texas because people are killed every single day by guns.
The proliferation of guns in America is a very real threat that harms Americans every single day. Gun-toting refugee killers are a far-fetched theoretical threat. Gun-toting American killers are real and they're here right now.
Statistically speaking, there's a high probability that an American citizen living in Texas will "execute an attack" using a gun within several hours of me writing this. A Texas man was arrested yesterday morning for killing 6 people.
If you believe using "federal cash payments or other assistance" to buy guns is a real problem (it isn't), those same concerns should also be applied to poor white people, not just refugees.