Every Mass Shooting Ends With a Good Guy Using or Wielding a Firearm

Back to school shoppers during a tax-free weekend find themselves running for their very lives. One bad guy determined to inflict maximum carnage.

No sign on the entrance doors halted him. Regulations about accessories or magazine capacities never even slowed him down him. Laws against homicide didn’t interfere one bit.

As with every instance of shootings in the recent past, immediately the political accusations began.

“Blame the NRA.”

”We need more laws.”

“Ban all weapons.”

“Repeal the Second Amendment.”

These knee-jerk reactions get us nowhere fast.

They simply serve to put those with opposing views on the defensive. It’s an often-repeated political dance that has done absolutely nothing to help the American public.

We must honestly answer some tough questions to be able to reduce, and possibly discourage, these types of violent attacks.

Can we eliminate mass shootings? No. Seriously. Look at heroin as an example. It is illegal federally and in all 50 states, yet it is still available for a price.

Even if there was no Second Amendment protection, and you banned all guns, they would still be available, just more difficult to get.

Australia has outright banned firearms, yet there are still mass shootings.

Public safety is not guaranteed by guns bans. Killers use many tools. Just ask the people of New Yok who witnessed airliners used as weapons of terror on 9/11. Or residents of Nice, France, who still remember the horror of 85 killed in a truck attack. Or the families of the Yunnan Province in China whose 33 neighbors were slain in a knife attack.

What causes mass shootings? Evil. This is not a religious answer or belief. You can use whatever term you want to describe it. Some people do good things. Some people do bad things. It’s that simple. You can blame people’s actions on their life experiences, but that is merely discussing causation. It will always hold true that “some men just want to watch the world burn.”

What could have possibly stopped the El Paso shooter? That’s a simple answer, and it applies to all shooters. A bullet. Not necessarily one from a gun carried by a policeman, but one that’s on the scene already, from a gun carried by a true "first responder" — one of the intended victims.

Can we protect ourselves and our communities? Yes, by leveling the playing field and arming ourselves with the same tool that bad guys use — a gun. Every mass shooting ends with a good guy using or wielding a firearm. We should enable more good guys the opportunity to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.

There are many instances of good guys ending mass shootings before they begin or immediately after, but they are not as celebrated as they should be. There are two main reasons why. Both sit squarely on the shoulders of our liberal-leaning media. Number one, as the old saying goes in reporting, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Someone ending a shooting before it begins doesn’t have the shock value. Secondly, most news reporters are anti-gun, so stories that prove the usefulness and necessity of firearms is not something they want to share.

The problem with this lack of headlines or lead stories is that potential bad guy shooters don’t get the possible dissuasion against committing their act of violence.

The freedoms our country celebrate guarantee that we will never be free from people attempting evil acts. However, that very same freedom affords us the opportunity to stop those men. We must enable and encourage more of those instances to occur. Having those occasions celebrated would help to discourage other instances of evil, and encourage others to train and arm themselves. A responsible and honest media would have no problem doing that… sadly, that means it probably won’t happen.

John Cylc is a conservative Christian and eight year U.S. Army veteran who primarily speaks out on the Second Amendment, gun rights issues, and contemporary topics. Born and raised in Philadelphia, he currently resides with his wife and youngest son in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in beautiful East Tennessee. He is the founder of ThirteenFox.com and a contributor to LifeZette. Follow John Cylc on Twitter @The2ndA. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.