The stage was set for another Parkland-style tragedy. In Illinois Wednesday, Dixon High School students gathered in the auditorium to rehearse for graduation. A former student, 19, approached the room and starting shooting. But he didn’t injure or kill a single one of the near 150 people there, who rushed out at the sound of gunshots.

Instead, an armed school resource officer confronted and shot him. He saved lives because he had a gun. The teen sustained non-life threatening injuries.

Just two months ago, another school resource officer stopped a school shooter in Maryland. Sadly, one student was killed and another wounded. But without the officer’s quick response, the shooter might have shot a lot more people.

You may have heard these stories. You may not have. They didn’t go viral as they would have if many students had died. They should go viral. Because it proves that the problem of gun violence is not about the gun, but about the person who holds it.

The Viral Type

What stories do go viral? The ones that support an anti-gun agenda. The ones where the bad guy with the gun wins and the good guys with guns lose.

Why? The media love tragedies. The anti-gun crowd loves having yet another excuse to blame guns themselves for mass shootings. They can turn the tragedies into emotional arguments for gun control.

Stories like the ones from Maryland and Illinois get in the way. They are a glaring reminder that the problem isn’t the gun itself, but who wields the gun. Any tool in the hands of an evil person can cause great harm. (See this article for a list of mass killings carried out sans-firearm.)

That’s why good people should have the freedom to arm themselves with the tools they need to stop evil from happening. That includes guns.

Lawfully Armed Citizens Stop Crime

A few days ago, another story kept appearing on my Facebook feed. It was about a mom in Brazil who stopped an armed robber and protected a crowd of parents and children at a school. How? By shooting him with her concealed weapon. She happened to be an off-duty police officer, but it isn’t just law enforcement officers who stop crime with guns.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention found in 2013 that guns are used for self-defense hundreds of thousands of times annually. Concealed carry permit holders are often credited with saving lives in little-read stories (many of them compiled here). Concealed carry permit holders are on the rise.

That’s no reason for concern. There’s no correlation between a rise in gun ownership and a rise in crime. Actually, there may be evidence that the more concealed carriers in a region, the less crime.

Guns Save Lives

Of course, there is no guarantee that if an evil person with a gun approaches a school, mall, church or parade, he won’t inflict injury and death. But this is guaranteed: The more armed, trained and prepared people there are to confront him, the less likely it is to turn into a Parkland repeat.

The sheriff’s deputy who stood outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the Parkland shooting is still under investigation. He argues he thought the shooting was coming from outside and was just following procedure. Regardless, his lack of action had consequences.

In the Parkland shooter’s hands, the gun was a terror. In the deputy’s hands, the gun could have been a life-saving instrument. Instead, it was nothing.

Other school resource officers, like the one in Illinois, have since shown what happens when you run toward the sound of gunfire, pull your gun, rely on your training and take down the person who wishes to kill. The gun saves lives.