Tactical Experts Destroy the NRA’s Heroic Gunslinger Fantasy | The Nation

Tactical Experts Destroy the NRA’s Heroic Gunslinger Fantasy | The Nation: Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association (NRA), has famously claimed that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”








Much of today’s opposition to stronger gun safety regulations rests on the gun lobby’s Hobbesian vision of self-sufficient, heavily-armed citizens standing up to vicious thugs. This Die Hard argument is constantly parroted by politicians and conservative pundits. But the statistical reality is that for every justifiable homicide in the United States—for every lethal shooting in defense of life or property—guns are used to commit 34 murders and 78 suicides, and are the cause of two accidental deaths, according to an analysis of FBI data by The Washington Post.



Those interviewed for this article agreed that the key distinction isn’t between “good guys” and “bad guys,” because intentions are less important than the rigorous—and continuous—training that it takes to effectively handle firearms in high-stress situations.



“The notion that you have a seal of approval just because you’re not a criminal—that you walk into a gun store and you’re ready for game-day—is ridiculous,” says Chipman.



David Chipman notes that even police officers are told that if they encounter a crime in progress while off-duty, “maybe the best thing to do at that time is not to take lethal action but instead try to be the best witness you can be.”



Not pulling a weapon is often the wisest course of action in active-shooter situations. While a number of conservatives declared that Oregon’s Umpqua Community College, the scene of a mass shooting last week, was a gun-free zone, the truth is that several concealed carry holders were present, and they wisely decided to leave their guns holstered. Veteran John Parker later explained to MSNBC, “We could have opened ourselves up to be potential targets ourselves, and not knowing where SWAT was… if we had our guns ready to shoot, they could think that we were bad guys.”



Blair co-authored a study for the FBI that looked at 185 mass shooting events over a 13-year period. It found that while around one-in-five were stopped by civilians before police arrived, in only one case was it done by a typical “good guy with a gun” (professionals—an off-duty cop and an armed security guard—used their guns to stop two others). In most cases Blair and his colleague studied, civilians ended a rampage by tackling the assailant.              None of this has prevented the gun manufacturers’ lobby from insisting that more guns make a society safer. And many Americans have come to believe it. According to the Pew Research Center, the share of gun owners who cite “protection” as “the main reason they own a gun” almost doubled between 1999 and 2013, from 26 percent to 48 percent.              But a large body of empirical evidence finds the opposite to be true. Last year, epidemiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted an extensive analysis of data from 16 previous peer-reviewed studies, and found that having access to a firearm makes a person almost twice as likely to become the victim of a homicide and three times more likely to commit suicide.



“Despite what we see on TV, the presence of a firearm is a greater risk, especially in the hands of an untrained person,” says David Chipman, the former ATF agent. “Someone can always say, ‘If your mother is being raped by 5 people, wouldn’t you want her to have a gun?’ Well, OK, if you put it that way, I’d say yes, but that’s not a likely scenario. The question is: If you see someone running out of a gas station with a gun in their hand, do you want an untrained person jumping out and opening fire. For me, the answer is clearly ‘no.’”