Early Monday morning, July 7, 2025, a man armed with an AR-15-style rifle and a pistol, dressed in a mask and body-armor vest, walked into the parking lot of the U.S. Border Patrol Rio Grande Valley Sector Annex in McAllen, Texas, and opened fire on agents arriving for their shift. Border Patrol agents and McAllen police officers returned fire and killed him. Three law enforcement personnel were injured — a McAllen police officer struck by shrapnel to the leg and two Border Patrol employees — but all were transported in non-critical condition. No one died except the attacker.
That last sentence is the whole ballgame.
What Happened in McAllen
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin reported on X that law enforcement sources described the attack as a purposeful ambush targeting federal agents. The shooter — identified by McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez as 27-year-old Ryan Louis Mosqueda — fired his rifle at agents as they arrived in the parking lot, then moved to the front doors and continued firing before drawing a pistol. He never made it inside. Agents and local police returned fire, and Mosqueda was killed. The FBI is leading the investigation; no political motive has been established, with family members suggesting untreated mental health issues.
The important detail is not who he was or why he targeted that facility. The important detail is what stopped him: guns.
The Only Thing That Makes a Location “Safe” Is Armed Defense
I have argued this for years, and today’s events in McAllen demonstrate it in the starkest possible terms. The anti-gun crowd advances the theory of “sensitive places” — a polished euphemism for government-mandated gun-free zones. Their vision is to make virtually every public gathering space in America a disarmament zone.
My read of the Constitution and the historical record is clear: the only way a location can lawfully be designated a sensitive place — consistent with the Second Amendment — is if it is actually locked down with comprehensive security. Metal detectors. Armed guards. A genuine perimeter, like airports, the White House, the Capitol. That model works precisely because it substitutes the individual’s right to self-defense with a credible government guarantee of protection.
The anti-gunners’ alternative theories — vulnerable people are present, constitutional rights are being exercised nearby, groups of people are gathering — are constitutionally hollow. Every one of those justifications proves too much. Wherever you go, you are exercising constitutional rights: Fourth Amendment in your car, First Amendment at a church service, and on and on. If the exercise of any constitutional right strips you of your Second Amendment right, then you effectively have no Second Amendment right anywhere. That is utter nonsense, and the logic collapses the moment you apply it consistently.
The “Vulnerable People” Argument Collapses Under Its Own Weight
I find it genuinely offensive when the anti-gun lobby invokes vulnerable populations to justify stripping people of the ability to defend themselves. If a group is especially vulnerable — and in today’s political climate, federal immigration enforcement agents are among the most targeted government employees in America — the answer is not to disarm them and pass another law. The answer is to make sure they have guns.
We saw that principle proved in real time this morning. An individual with an AR-15 decided to ambush people he saw as enemies. He found armed resistance instead of defenseless victims. He is dead. The people he tried to kill are in non-critical condition and will go home to their families.
What if he had walked into a declared gun-free zone — a school, a hospital, a transit station — where every law-abiding person had been disarmed by statute? The outcome writes itself, and we have seen it written too many times.
How the Media Will Bury This Story
Here is where my frustration boils over: watch how this story gets handled over the next 48 hours. Because a good guy with a gun stopped a mass killing before it became one, this story will likely vanish from the national media cycle quickly — if it gets national pickup at all. It may live in Texas local news and nowhere else.
The formula runs in only one direction. When a psychopath succeeds in a gun-free zone and the body count is high, the story becomes a weeks-long national conversation about why Americans should not own the very weapons that, in a different setting, would have saved those lives. When guns are present and the attacker is neutralized before the massacre happens, the story does not fit the narrative and evaporates.
The Sensitive-Places Fight Continues
The constitutional fight over sensitive places is live in courts across the country right now, and the McAllen shooting is exactly the real-world evidence that should inform how courts and the public think about these cases. The anti-gun theory is that government can affix a label to a location and strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights at the door. My view is that the Constitution requires far more than a sign or a legislative declaration.
What keeps people safe is not a sign. It is not a statute. It is what we saw in McAllen: trained, armed individuals positioned to respond when an attacker came for them. Good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns. The Second Amendment is not a theory — it is a lived reality, and this morning in South Texas, it saved lives.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.