What about the good guys?

Let’s talk about the gun that wasn’t there.

The gun that Justine Damond didn’t have. The gun that Michael Brown wasn’t carrying. Tamir Rice’s gun that wasn’t real.

For you and me, the gun that isn’t there might just be the most dangerous gun of all.

Because somebody, anybody really, might just think we’re about to use it. On them. And if they happen to be carrying a real gun, a loaded gun, then you and I, my friend, are about to become statistics -- maybe front page news for a couple of days, but with 40,0000 Americans getting blown away every year the nation’s news hole isn’t big enough for all of ‘em.

Oh yeah --- I can hear you already, that hoary old cliché all primes and set to go … OK, together now, “Guns don’t kill people…”

Fear kills people.

Fear killed Justine Damond. Fear killed Michael Brown. Fear killed Philando Castile.

Fear of a gun that wasn’t there.

But that could have been.

By his own testimony, on July 15, 2017, Mohamed Noor was a scared cop.

He shot first.

Justine Damond wasn’t carrying one of the nearly 400 million firearms in American civilian hands.

But there was no way the scared cop could know that, and if, as we’ve so often been told, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun…

Out of fear he fired.

And an unarmed white woman died. Let’s not pretend that didn’t make a difference. It’s easy enough for us white folk to slide the blame over to the victim when it’s a scary young black man gunned down in the shadows, but a pretty, blond Australian?

How could a trained, armed police officer be afraid of her?

He wasn’t. Not of her, but of her gun.

The gun he feared she had. The gun he feared she was about to fire at him. At his partner.

And in a nation where there are an estimated 120 guns for every 100 people, who is to say his fear was unreasonable?

He was afraid.

He was the good guy with a gun.

He fired first.

Let’s remember that fear isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Fear is what kept your many-times-great grandmother from becoming some sabertooth’s lunch.

In a country with more guns than people, there’s plenty to be afraid of and no certain means of knowing when that fear is justified.

No way to know if the gun is there or not.

Remove the gun from the situation, and fear goes away.

Are we seeing a pattern here? Most of the world seems to. It’s no coincidence that persons living in countries with the highest number of guns per capita also run the greatest risk of being shot. That only makes sense. When it’s easy for a person to get a gun that person knows it’s equally easy for anyone else to get one too. And if you have one and think he has one…

Remember, only one thing stops a bad guy with a gun.

Or an unarmed woman mistaken for a bad guy with a gun.

We all want to be safe, but please, somebody explain how those 40,000 deaths make any one of us safer. How when I’m pulled over for a traffic stop, walk up to the wrong address, make the wrong move on a shadowy street how the gun someone thinks I have protects me from someone’s frightened, honest mistake?

How do we stop a good guy with a gun?