Sometimes the Best Defense Against a Guy With a Gun – Is Another Guy With a Gun

Reports on the shooting of Republican congressmen and others at a baseball practice yesterday before the annual Congressional baseball game say that the number of those killed and wounded would have probably been higher if two members of the Capitol Police had not been there as bodyguards for Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise (here and here).  In other words, what saved a lot of people at the practice from being shot was the presence of trained people with guns.

Obviously, some gun control supporters are not going to like the idea that the best defense against somebody with a gun is somebody else with a gun.  They think we ought to ban, or at least greatly restrict, the sale and possession of guns and that that will solve the problem.  And who knows, it might – if there weren’t tens of millions of guns already out there.

The point is: It is too late to ban or greatly restrict the possession of guns.  Even if we start now, there will be millions of guns out there for decades, and we have to deal with that fact.  Just making it illegal to own or possess a gun won’t help.  It’s already illegal to shoot people.  That doesn’t stop people from doing it.  Why is making it illegal to own or possess a gun going to stop people from having a gun?

Guns are out there.  We have to deal with that fact, and we have to figure out the best way to protect the most people given that guns are out there.  We may not like this fact.  We may wish it wasn’t so and that it would change.  But it is so, and it’s not going to change any time soon.  So we have to come up with solutions to the problem that accept the fact that there are guns out there and evil people are going to get hold of some of those guns.  Yesterday, in Alexandria, the best solution to an evil guy with a gun was other people, good people, with guns.