Very Old Barton: ‘Christian Nation’ Propagandist Channels Louis L’Amour’s Western Fiction
Barton’s third claim about guns was dubious to say the least. He told Beck that back in the 1850s, a male teacher somewhere in the west was saved from an assassination attempt thanks to his own elementary-school-aged students who were armed. Barton said the would-be killer walked into the schoolhouse with murderous intent, but when he took aim at the teacher “all the kids pull their guns out and point it at [the assassin] and say, ‘You kill the teacher, you die.’ He says, ‘Okay.’ The teacher lives. Real simple stuff.”
Did this story come from some long-forgotten diary of a Western pioneer? Not likely.
Chris Rodda, senior research director at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said Barton’s story bears a striking resemblance to a novel by Louis L’Amour. In Bendigo Shafter, a reformed gunfighter and gambler named Drake Morrell was working in Wyoming as a school teacher. But Morrell had enemies, one of whom went to Morrell’s school with the intent to kill him, but was stopped by his armed students.
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