The Second Amendment affords each and every one of us the right to keep and bear arms as a means to defend ourselves against tyranny, but also against criminals. The Founding Fathers weren’t exactly removed from the era of Indian attacks on frontier families, after all. They knew that guns were about more than just shooting enemy soldiers.

Some forget that. Others see it as a racial thing rather than recognizing that the founders were worried about any attacks, not just those perpetrated by people of a certain skin color.

Most, however, don’t even think about it. To them, it’s just a non-issue.

While testifying before Congress, Timothy Jenkins, a board member for Teaching for Change, made an extraordinary claim. He argued that no one had ever died because their Second Amendment rights had been deprived.

Unfortunately for Mr. Jenkins, Rep. Thomas Massie was present.

Here was Massie’s retort:

What you’re saying Mr. Jenkins is absolutely incorrect. I had a staffer, Nikki Goeser, who worked for me. She watched her husband be gunned down in front of her in a “gun-free” zone because her firearm, she followed the law, and left her firearm in the vehicle.

So do not tell me, and do not tell her that nobody has ever died because they were deprived of their right to keep and bear arms.

We’ve written about Nikki Goeser before, and her story is incredibly tragic. What it’s not, however, is unique. There’s the story of Luby’s Cafeteria in Texas. Suzanna Hupp testified that she had a gun in her car, but left it there because concealed carry wasn’t allowed in Texas at the time. As a result, she watched her own parents be gunned down by a maniac.

The fact is, we only know about these cases because the person deprived also happened to not be dead when the dust settled. It’s impossible to calculate how many hundreds of people have been killed because they weren’t allowed to have a gun on them at a certain time.

For Jenkins to make such an extraordinary assertion, he clearly hasn’t bothered to look beyond his own echo chamber for the experiences on this side of the aisle.

Honestly, to say no one has ever died from anything is a presumption one should be very careful of making anyway. All it takes is one example to discredit someone’s entire argument.

Then again, Jenkins is a gun grabber. By now, he’s probably quite used to having his arguments completely discredited.

That doesn’t change the fact that someone could possibly continue to labor under the delusion that no one deprived of their Second Amendment rights died as a result. The only possible way is to add to the delusion by pretending that even if they’d had their firearms, they still wouldn’t have been able to prevent the attack.

Frankly, that’s a leap that one shouldn’t encourage, but it does sound about right for this particular crowd.

I’m just glad Massie was handy with a specific case with which to hammer Jenkins over. Maybe that will shatter the bubble he’s been living in.