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

OR a good guy with a taser

OR a good guy with pepper spray

OR a good guy with a motor vehicle

OR a good guy with strength, skill, and/or a silent approach

OR a good guy with persuasive skills

OR the bad guy actually being a morally complex individual who decides to back down from making his “bad guy” decision, perhaps after praying about it or confessing his desire to carry out the bad decision.

OR when the bad guy doesn’t have a gun in the first place, but a toy gun, or something that someone just thinks is a gun because it happens to be an object in the guy’s hand that has mass and density

OR the bad guy having bad aim

OR the bad guy running out of ammunition before the good guy with gun arrives

OR the gun not working, because it’s jammed, or the bullets are duds

OR a door with a strong enough lock

OR the bad guy taking his own life

OR a police officer (assuming the good guy we were talking about was not an officer), sometimes even when outgunned, especially considering the fact that police officers train at academies and continually seek professional development for these types of situations.

OR a combination of stable parenting, a supportive school environment, healthy and inclusive extra-curricular activities, positive mentors, adequate social services, better access to rehab and psychological treatment, empathetic business practices, background checks for gun licenses, prison reform, economic equality, less racism, less bullying, less cyberbullying, less glorification of violence in the entertainment industry, less attention given to mass murderers in the news media, an involved spiritual ministry, and a number of other preventative factors that buffer against the risk of people making harmful decisions with weapons.

OR the hand of God, which could or could not be using the mechanisms of any of the above

 

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

unless the bad guy doesn’t have a gun, but may or may not have committed a nonviolent crime

unless the good guy has a moment in which he makes a “bad guy” decision

unless the good guy is shot by another good guy who thinks he is a bad guy

unless the good guy is shot by police who think he is a bad guy working with the real bad guy

unless the bad guy kills the good guy before doing his previously planned bad deed because he noticed the good guy had a gun on him

unless the guy we thought was a bad guy with a gun was actually a good guy with a gun, and we shot the good guy because we thought that he was a bad guy

unless the good guy accidentally hits an unarmed innocent person while trying to stop the bad guy, thus becoming an accidental bad guy himself, or at the very least assisting the bad guy in his bad deed, while remaining at heart a truly good guy

unless the good guy doesn’t know he’s outnumbered and is shot by another bad guy with a gun who is behind him.

unless the good guy is a slow draw

unless the good guy has bad aim

unless the bad guy possibly might not have been planning to hurt anyone, but just scare people or draw attention to himself, and we are assuming we are apprehending what would have actually been an act of violence and not mere intimidation

unless the bad guy is a trained killer and the good guy has a gun he’s never fired at a person, although he did take an 8-hour gun safety course and pass a multiple choice exam before acquiring his permit (0k, admittedly, even in this case the good guy could still get lucky)

unless the good guy has his safety on like a good citizen, but the bad guy does not, and the good guy either forgets to turn off the safety or is not fast enough in turning it off before trying to fire

unless the bad guy wasn’t really a bad guy, but a mentally disturbed individual with little awareness of their own actions or the consequences thereof, and who may have slipped through a system that failed to treat him and/or confine him to a location where he could at the very least be given attempted treatment without harming others or himself

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
-Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association