The Good Guy with a Gun Trope Disproved Yet Again

This past Thursday a gunman opened fire at an Oklahoma restaurant and was killed by bystanders.

The gun nuts are thrilled! Finally, after all these years of repeating the mantra "only good guys with guns can stop bad guys with guns," a shooting was finally stopped by an armed bystander.

Except it wasn't. The bystanders didn't stop anything:

The man, whom police identified as 28-year-old Alexander Tilghman, planted himself outside the door to Louie's Grill & Bar in Oklahoma City at about 6:30 p.m. local time. He began firing a handgun into the restaurant. Three people, including two juveniles, were wounded, according to police. A fourth person fell and broke his arm when the shooting started.

The gunman turned to flee and was confronted by two armed men outside, Carlos Nazario, 35, and Bryan Wittle, 39.

Police say the two men had arrived at the restaurant separately and saw the man open fire. They went and got handguns they each had stored in the trunks of their vehicles. The men then shot and killed the gunman, according to police, who gave no further details.

The "heroes" shot a guy who was running away. Yay for vengeance!

Because, by definition, only bad guys shoot first, armed bystanders cannot prevent shootings. As in this case, they can only retaliate once the shooting starts. The only reason the shooter was the sole fatality was that he was a terrible shot.

The only way to prevent shootings is to keep guns out of the hands of people who don't need them for work.

Arming teachers will not prevent school shootings. At best it will reduce the number of fatalities by putting down shooters while they're reloading. Which means they can fire 6 or 10 or 17 or 100 rounds before anyone can react, depending on the magazine capacity of the weapon.

So far this year we've had 23 school shootings (there was another one Friday in Indiana). That's one a week for the second year of the Trump administration. Trump is winning school shootings so hard!

Arming bystanders will not reduce the number of shootings, though it might reduce the number of victims. Making guns harder to obtain will directly reduce the number of shootings: the fewer guns there are, the fewer shootings there will be.

Would-be shooters will have to work harder to get guns and may just give up once they've cooled down. If they're more persistent, many of them will draw the attention of their families and the authorities, and they'll be stopped. Some percentage will still get hold of guns. But many shootings will never happen in the first place.

As a bonus, reducing the number of guns in circulation will reduce the number of suicides.

Arming teachers and bystanders just puts more guns in circulation, increasing the number of shootings, both intentional and accidental. People will inevitably lose or drop or have their guns stolen and bad guys will get hold of them. More guns also increase the number of suicides.

This is just a fact, based the experience of pretty much every other civilized country in the world.