AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

That simple sentence is one of the truest statements one can make when it comes to gun control. Bad people continue to get their hands on firearms regardless of the myriad laws meant to prevent them from doing so. The only thing that stops them, though, is someone who is not a criminal and is also armed.

Bad people don’t like it when good people shoot back.

However, over at PBS–you know, the Public Broadcasting Service that our tax money pays for–it seems that someone doesn’t believe that the idea of a good guy with a gun is a real thing.

Gun rights enthusiasts have embraced the idea of the “good guy” as a model to emulate – a character role that just needed real people to step in and play it. The NRA store even sells T-shirts with LaPierre’s slogan, and encourages buyers to “show everyone that you’re the ‘good guy’” by buying the T-shirt.

The problem with this archetype is that it’s just that: an archetype. A fictional fantasy.

Really? Show your work.

Here’s my rebuttal: Roughly 2.5 million people defend their lives with a firearm every year. That dwarfs the number of homicides and accidental deaths every year. Further, it illustrates over 2.5 million good guys with guns stopping bad things from happening.

Now, to be fair, not all of those were stopping bad people with guns. Some were stopping wild animals, but not that many. Most were being pointed at criminals who suddenly decided to relocate to another area with a quickness.

Yet anti-gunners want to advance the narrative that the “good guy with a gun” is a myth because they desperately need to undermine it. If people believe that they can stop an attack, they might be tempted to try. That means they’ll buy a gun, train with it, learn about it, and in the process of all that, come to value their right to keep and bear arms as a means of defending themselves from the tyranny of the thug.

They want to undermine it because those people defend the Second Amendment, but if you can convince them early that they can’t defend themselves, that the only way to stop bad people is with gun control, you may convince them to also back that gun control.

If Joe and Sally Sixpack figure out that gun control isn’t the answer, that they are responsible for their safety, the gun control movement is as good as dead.

The “good guy” with a gun isn’t just an idea. It’s a reality. The good guy with a gun is any man or woman who uses a gun to thwart an armed attacker’s plan.

Now, many times it’s the police–they’re good guys with guns, too, after all–but the police aren’t always around. If your life is in danger, you can only count on the police to get there in time to draw a chalk outline around a body.

It behooves you to be a good guy with a gun and stop the bad guy with a gun in that instance. That way, the chalk outline doesn’t resemble you. Whatever you do, don’t think it’s a myth. If it is, then we have around 2.5 million myths running around this country every year.