AP Photo/Denis Poroy

Something is very broken in our nation. Let’s get that out of the way right now. There’s no justification for mass shootings, even if they’re rare. That’s especially true when they’re motivated by anti-semitism.

What transpired on Saturday in a small California community didn’t meet the standard definition of a mass shooting, but not out of any sense of decency on the part of the shooter. He wanted to kill as many people as he could. As such, I’ll be following standard protocol here and not divulging his name. I don’t want to add to his fame and thus potentially encourage the next killer.

We are now in the aftermath of the deadly attack. Right on cue, the anti-gunners are trying to figure out how to blame the attack on a lack of gun control, despite California’s strict regulations on firearms. No one knows where the killer got his gun, so they’re going to speculate and pontificate just the same.

However, what they’re not talking about is interesting.

You see, while we’re told that the “good guy with a gun” is a myth by the media and anti-gun organizations (but I repeat myself), part of the reason this attack only claimed one life is because of a good guy with a gun.

The rabbi wounded in Saturday’s deadly shooting at his Southern California synagogue praised an off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent who fired at the fleeing suspect.

“I had spoken to him in the past about coming to the synagogue armed because he’s trained, and I want trained security as much as possible,” Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein told CNN, speaking from a local hospital. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford to have an armed security officer at every service, so whenever we had extra help, we were grateful for it.”

The agent, named by the rabbi as Jonathan Morales, had recently discovered his Jewish heritage and traveled more than 100 miles (160 km) each way to visit the synagogue from his home in El Centro, a city on the border with Mexico, the rabbi said.

The sheriff of San Diego County, Bill Gore, told reporters on Saturday the officer fired as the gunman was fleeing, missing the suspect but hitting his car.

The other part of ending this attack came in the guise of combat veteran Oscar Stewart who charged the attacker. Stewart was unarmed but clearly hadn’t forgotten how to fight.

He charged the attacker, sending him running.

The man who fired a semi-automatic weapon inside the Chabad of Poway synagogue in San Diego on Saturday froze, dropped his gun and sprinted to his car when he saw Oscar Stewart come barreling toward him, yelling so loud the priest at a neighboring church could hear.

“Get down!” Stewart yelled, according to his wife and others who were at the scene. “You motherf[***]er! I’m going to kill you!”

Others who were there later told him it sounded like four or five people were shouting. He thinks maybe an angel was standing behind him and speaking through his voice. When the shooter ran, he immediately gave chase.

Stewart, 51, told The Daily Caller on Sunday he doesn’t remember any conscious thought from the moment he heard the gun shots until it was all over — he just acted on instinct to stop the shooter and prevent him from leaving so he couldn’t hurt more people somewhere else. The Iraq combat veteran said his military training kicked in.

“I knew I had to be within five feet of this guy so his rifle couldn’t get to me,” Stewart said. “So I ran immediately toward him, and I yelled as loud as I could. And he was scared. I scared the hell out of him.”

Both of these gentlemen brought the fight to the attacker. Unarmed or not, they fought the anti-Semite who thought the senseless slaughter of the innocent was a swell idea and in the process, kept the death toll low. It’s only a shame they couldn’t reduce it to zero, but they’re men, not miracle workers.

While we’ll continue to see anti-gunners try to use this event to advance their radical agenda, we need to remember some important facts, and that is that it won’t be laws that stop these attacks in its tracks. California has plenty of them.

No, it’ll be men and women who refuse to roll over and die who stop them, like it always has been.