Right now, we’re hearing a lot of people who survived “gun violence.” Some survived mass shootings and others survived other acts of violence. Still others are the loved ones left behind by such crimes.

Gun control advocates want people to hear these heartfelt pleas because people tend to think with our emotions more often than our sense of reason. They want to weaponize that and use these emotional, fear-driven pleas to advance their agenda.

But not all who have been touched by such violence go the route of gun control.

The mother of a man who died from gun violence told Congress Wednesday that she doesn’t want more gun control laws because she wants to protect herself “from evil.”

“How about letting me defend myself from evil?” Lucretia Hughes, a conservative gun-rights activist, asked lawmakers at the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s hearing on gun violence. “You don’t think that I am capable and trustworthy to handle a firearm? You don’t think that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to people that look like me?”

“You, who are calling for more gun control, are the same ones that are calling to defund the police,” she added. “Who is supposed to protect us? We must prepare to be our own first responders, to protect ourselves and our loved ones.”

Hughes, of the DC Project — Women for Gun Rights, was one of several witnesses who spoke to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform about gun violence and gun rights in the United States.

Of course, Hughes doesn’t get the headlines that others who spoke to Congress go. Her experiences and feelings don’t actually matter all that much to the media, but only because she’s on the “wrong” side of the debate.

Rep. Lucy McBath lost her son and was held up on people’s shoulders as she campaigned for gun control, eventually turning that into a successful run for the House of Representatives.

Hughes doesn’t for some reason.

Funny, that.

Yet every word she’s reported as saying is completely and totally accurate. Especially about how those who called to defund the police also want to make it impossible for us to protect ourselves. They don’t want us to do it and they clearly don’t want the police to do it, so just who in the hell is going to protect our families?

The truth is that those two positions aren’t remotely compatible by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet, here we are.

The truth of the matter is that we need guns to support and defend ourselves. All law-abiding adults should have the right to keep and bear arms, and I’m not OK with the idea that we should restrict those rights because of a small handful of bad actors.

And really, that’s exactly what we’re talking about. After all, if the law-abiding gun owner were some kind of myth, we’d have a much, much higher homicide rate than we currently do, and I mean by orders of magnitude.

But we don’t and we don’t because we are not. The. Problem.

It’s well beyond time to start focusing on the root causes of these kinds of things. It’s time we start hardening targets so that mass shooters are forced to look elsewhere. It’s time we recognized that good guys with guns stop these kinds of things and recognize that sometimes, those good guys with guns need to be people who don’t have some kind of a badge.

Hughes wants to be able to defend herself. She’s absolutely right to want that. It’s the right of every person to be able to defend themselves and to have access to the best tools for such purposes.

It would just be nice if Congress would stop trying to get in the way of that.