Stephen Willeford is a lot of things — a devout Christian, father, working-class native Texan, and a man whose life changed forever on November 5, 2017. He was alerted to the sound of gunshots coming from a church in his neighborhood. It was a chapel he knew well — one that’d stood for many years as a fixture of the community he was born and raised in. Upon realizing this sanctuary was under siege, he grabbed his rifle, a handful of ammo, a magazine, and ran barefoot down the street to put himself in harm’s way and intercept the massacre taking place. A once-quiet life would never be the same ever again for Stephen or his small Texas town.
As the mass media descended on the Sutherland Springs shooting with all their various agendas, Willeford found himself in the crossfire once again. This time, it was a barrage of one-sided, vilifying, and inaccurate narratives. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Rather than allowing the media circus to blacken his character, he emerged from the aftermath with a new mission — defending our rights. As a spokesman for Gun Owners of America, Stephen lectures about his experience to ensure the attempts to legislatively slaughter 2A don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.
CONCEALMENT: Where did you grow up?
Stephen Willeford: I’m originally from Sutherland Springs and am fourth generation on the same property. I’ve squeezed more tits by the time I was 8 than you will in your whole life. I grew up on a dairy.
[Laughs] When were you first introduced to guns?
SW: Probably about the age of 5. My father had an old Remington 513 Scoremaster. It was his first rifle. He taught me how to shoot it, to hunt for rabbits, and to defend our livestock from coyotes.
Can you give us a recap of how the situation at the First Baptist Church unfolded that day?
So I’d stayed home from church that day. I normally went to church about 35 miles down the road. I stayed home because I work as a maintenance plumber in a hospital and was going to start an on-call. One out of every eight weeks we’d do an on-call, where we’d carry a pager home with us. For the next seven days, we’d take calls early in the morning and get an average of 20 to 30 extra hours
