The folks over at Family Guy apparently got the message:

Paige Patterson’s weird mix of guns and God has stirred an interesting series of articles, and has now hit the AP Wire. We at Baptist Blogger think it is great that Patterson’s comments, however bizarre, have caused some critical thinking on this issue. Today, we have been contacted for an “official response” to Patterson’s comments. Below is what we provided to the media:

I certainly sympathize with Patterson’s pastoral concern to protect the lives of seminary students under his care, though I believe his comments were poorly timed and somewhat bizarre. Many of us remember the tragedy at Fort Worth’s Wedgewood Baptist Church in 1999, when Larry Gene Ashbrook entered the church sanctuary and murdered seven young people. If pastors are looking for a model of sympathy and leadership in a time of tragedy, I believe they would be well advised to follow the heroic example set by Wedgewood’s pastor, Rev. Al Meredith.

I’m much more impressed with schools and administrators who are reviewing and reevaluating their emergency response plans than I am with seminary presidents who fancy themselves generals and their would-be student martyrs as Green Berets.

I hope and pray that Patterson’s cavalier charge to the seminary community does not invite the next crazed gunman to prey upon that institution. But should another such tragedy occur in our own North Texas backyard, I pray with equal intensity that men of valor find the courage and sensibility to protect innocent lives, even at the most exacting cost imaginable.”

Yes, dear readers, it is better to listen to the counsel of a man who’s led a church through the tragedy of a murdering sanctuary rampage than to heed the charge of man whose credentials stop at the perimeter of an African wildlife preserve. Or as we say in Texas, some cowboys are all hat, and no cattle.