Economist John Lott noted that this has been a grim month for U.S. law enforcement, and that it might have been even worse if armed citizens had not stepped up in support of law enforcement officers in danger.

In the past month, criminals have murdered six police officers in the line of duty. The number might have been eight if not for the actions of two concealed handgun permit holders.

At this rate, police deaths could be way up this year compared to previous years. By this time last year, only one officer had been murdered. While Republican presidential candidates such as Cruz, Rubio and Trump have spoken out forcefully about police shootings, Democrats have been silent.

You’ve probably heard on the news when at least one of these officers has been killed. But you almost certainly haven’t heard about concealed handgun permit holders stepping forward to protect officers.

— Last month, a drunken man attacked a deputy sheriff near Austin, Texas. As the deputy relates what happened, “I remember thinking ‘stay in the fight. Just keep fighting, keep fighting. Do whatever you can do, just stay alive you need to go home.’” The deputy ended up having his gun taken away from him. Fortunately, a concealed handgun permit holder pointed his gun at the attacker and ordered him to “freeze!” “I’m alive today because of [the permit holder],” said the deputy. “There are no words to explain it. He’s such an outstanding citizen.”

— On February 5, in Upper Darby, Pa., a police officer tried to break up a fight between two teenagers who had just gotten out of school. Two other students then jumped on the officer. A crowd of 40 to 50 other students had been watching the fight and “all [started to] move in toward the officer.” At that point, a permit holder told everyone to get away from the cop.

As the Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood described it: “He had the gun in his hand, but he didn’t point it at the kids, he just told them to back off. If this guy didn’t come out and come to the aid of the officer, this officer would have had significant problems.” Fortunately, the officer only suffered “significant hand injuries.”

The permit holder kept the mob at bay until other officers arrived. But that wasn’t the end of it. Even one of the responding officers suffered a “major injury to a leg.”

The permit holders’ actions prevented these incidents from becoming national news stories. When there’s no death, there seems to be no news story. And so, we don’t hear about all the cases where defensive gun use has saved lives.

Dr. Lott is correct.

We do not have a formal national mechanism to report defensive gun uses. We do know, however, that they happen somewhere between a conservative estimate of 500,000 and a very plausible estimate of 3.2 million defensive gun users a year, depending on the survey methodology used. In the vast majority of these instances—such as the two defensive gun uses of these officers noted above—the armed citizen did not need to fire a weapon to save a life.

Merely the presence of a gun tends to hold criminals at bay. This is a indisputable fact that gun control supporters must ignore at all costs… and they do.

It is typically only in those relatively rare instances that a citizen is forced to open fire that the story reaches even local news. We captured just a fraction of those incidents here at Bearing Arms. In our relatively short existence, we’ve documented more than 600 incidents of guns saving lives.

Despite being attacked and abandoned by President Obama, persecuted by the politically-corrupted Office of (Racial) Justice, and dragged through the mud by a mainstream media well-versed in Alinsky tactics, our Republic’s 800,000 law enforcement officers are not alone.

The “thin blue line” of law enforcement officers who separate the largely unaware and pacifistic general public from the voracious and predatory criminal class are quietly being backstopped by the vast majority of 100 million gun owners in the United States. More than 12 million of those gun owners are concealed carriers.

Neither oblivious, unaware citizens living life in “condition white,” nor paralyzed by the actions of criminals in a “it-can’t-be-happening-to-me” “condition black,” millions of American gun owners would rise to the occasion to assist an officer in danger if push came to shove.

It’s simply what good Americans do. It is what we have always done.

This millions-deep, nationwide “thick grey line” (for lack of a better phrase) uses their firearms to protect themselves,  their families, and their fellow citizens, including law enforcement officers in trouble.

This self-aware class of citizens understands that rank-and-file patrol officers want nothing more than to help the innocent and put criminals behind bars so that mothers and children and elderly are not easy prey. They are not fooled by the lies of the mainstream media and a left-wing political class who side use Alinsky tactics to attack the heart of civility itself, supporting the mythology that criminals are being unfairly treated by police.

Most gun owners know that the mainstream media lies for a living.

Most gun owners are aware of the fact that today’s law enforcement officers are trained and held to a much higher standard than officers in even the recent past.

These citizens are not as gullible as the media would have us believe. We will defend civil society, and the defenders of our society. It’s what we train to do. It is a burden we have taken upon ourselves after somber reflection and a reflective look at our own morality and our mortality.

Good people do allow evil to triumph.

It really is that simple.