EDITORIAL:

If you’re keeping score at home, good guys with guns are still far behind

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Kelly Wilkinson / The Indianapolis Star via AP

FBI agents gather at the scene of a deadly shooting, Sunday, July 17, 2022, at the Greenwood Park Mall, in Greenwood, Ind.

Wed, Jul 20, 2022 (2 a.m.)

Congratulations! After 22 years of promoting the absurd idea that the solution to gun violence is more guns, Second Amendment advocates have finally scored a baker’s dozen!

Over the weekend, yet another young (22-year-old) male gunman with an assault rifle opened fire in a public place, killing three people at an Indiana mall. He was stopped by Elisjsha Dickens, an untrained, armed civilian with a pistol.

Second Amendment advocates are hailing the event as proof that good guys with guns are the solution to gun violence in the United States, with the National Rifle Association even going so far as to tweet that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

We believe in facts and data. As such, we cannot deny that in this instance, a good guy with a gun appears to have stopped a bad guy with a gun and saved lives in the process. In doing so, Dickens demonstrated incredible courage, bravery and fortitude in the face of an adversary with superior arms.

But with so much celebration among conservative gun advocates, you’d think the scoreboard was stacked in their favor. Instead, the data show that not only are “good guys with guns” largely ineffective in such situations, but they’re less likely to stop bad guys than unarmed civilians or the bad guys themselves.

According to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, civilian “good guys” with guns have subdued “bad guys” with guns in 13 separate incidents since 2000.

That means good guys with guns now only need to stop 97 more shooters before they will equal the number of times the bad guys have ended their attack by killing themselves. And they’ll only need to shoot 29 more bad guys to equal the number of times a good guy without a gun has subdued attackers by tackling them, hitting them or otherwise stopping them without using a gun.

That’s right, three times as many mass shooters have been stopped by unarmed civilians as have been stopped by armed “good guys with guns.” And bad guys with guns are almost nine times as likely to shoot themselves as they are to be shot by an armed civilian or good Samaritan.

And from a scoring perspective, we haven’t yet reckoned with whether points should be deducted from the “good guys with guns” team to account for the danger and confusion they cause.

In 2021, an armed civilian who shot and killed an attacker in Arvada, Colo., was himself shot and killed by the police who mistook him for the gunman.

In an Alabama mall shooting in 2018, a “good guy with a gun” created confusion among police, who were unsure if he was a good guy or a bad guy, and thus how many assailants were in the building. The result was that the police waited to enter the building until they had a better threat assessment and shot and killed the good Samaritan, increasing the death toll.

And right here in Las Vegas, an armed good Samaritan was shot in the chest and killed when he tried to confront a “bad guy” with a gun, failing to realize he was actually facing two bad guys with guns.

Meanwhile, mass shootings have become such a commonplace occurrence in the United States that despite the tragic death of three people in a shopping mall, gun rights advocates are chalking this one up as a victory for freedom.

Forget that according to the Gun Violence Archive, 40,000 people die from gun violence each year in the United States. Forget that even highly trained and armed police officers like those in Uvalde, Texas, failed to stop a gunman in an elementary school. Forget that even longstanding traditions like Fourth of July parades and sacred spaces like churches and elementary schools are no longer immune to mass shootings.

Forget that in the United States, while Republicans stumble over themselves trying to claim the mantle of fighting for the lives of unborn children, our already born children are more likely to die of gun violence than any other cause.

Forget that even in the absence of gun violence, more than 300 children are accidentally shot, and more than 100 children killed each year in the United States due to “good guys” improperly storing their loaded guns in their homes.

And forget that this is a uniquely American problem and that countries with stricter gun control regulations experience only a tiny fraction of the gun violence Americans live with every single day.

One good guy with a gun stopped one bad guy after he killed only three people and wounded three others. A heroic act to be sure. But also, an inconceivably rare miracle.

Miracles should be celebrated, and we are grateful for the courage and heroism of Mr. Dickens.

But hoping and praying for miracles to stop gun violence is as useful to the debate over sensible gun policy as hoping and praying that the decimated bodies of America’s dead children will be restored in the process.

Hopes and prayers are not enough. The only miracle we should be seeking right now is sensible and effective gun control legislation.

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