NC gun culture expert: Why I’ve never liked the ‘good guy with a gun’ slogan

I am a sociologist who has been studying American gun culture for a decade now. One of the first significant gun events I attended for my research was the 2013 National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meetings and exhibits in Houston.

Looking back at pictures I took to document the spectacle, one stands out: a T-shirt for sale in the NRA meeting store that reads on the front in all caps, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is . . .” The now familiar slogan concludes on the back, “a good guy with a gun.”

Created by Ackerman McQueen — the advertising agency, along with NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, bears significant responsibility for the downfall of the NRA. The phrase debuted in the infamous NRA press conference following the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012. I did not like it then. I like it even less now.

When the NRA convention returned to Houston this year — again following a mass shooting in an elementary school — a reporter asked me if I thought we would see anything different. I said I hoped that speakers at the NRA Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum would not utter the phrase “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

I was disappointed, of course.

Although LaPierre did not, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz invoked the phrase. So did former President Donald Trump in his characteristically unique way. “As the age-old saying goes,” Trump recalled, “the only way to stop a bad guy with the gun is a good guy with the gun. Have you ever heard that?” Cue applause.

Despite my disdain for the slogan, it is essential to note that good guys with guns sometimes do stop bad guys with guns. The academic study of “defensive gun use” is fraught, so we do not know how often. But the annual number is at least in the tens of thousands and includes the case of a “good gal with a gun” in Charleston, West Virginia, who recently shot and killed a man who was firing a rifle into a party at an apartment complex.

Still, like many slogans, this one obscures more than it enlightens.

First, guns are not “the only thing” that stop bad guys. We saw this recently in the shooting at Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church that was stopped by the heroic action of Dr. John Cheng, a trained martial artist, who was armed with a willingness to act decisively. He is the latest in a line of unarmed defenders who acted to save lives in mass shooting events.

Second, the slogan may encourage legally armed civilians to become bad guys with guns. In some cases, individuals may act in the American tradition of white vigilantism, as with the murders of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Jordan Davis in Florida in 2012.

What if we define bad guys as those who acted imprudently? We could add individuals who were legally exonerated but nonetheless made poor decisions that led to deaths that could have been avoided. This list includes George Zimmerman, Curtis Reeves, and Kyle Rittenhouse.

In the end, we human beings are imperfect and can be susceptible to the magnetic pull of the “dark side.” We can go from wearing a white hat to wearing a black hat, sometimes in an instant. When armed, this can have lethal consequences. This may be the most compelling argument against the slogan. You’re only a good guy with a gun until you’re not.

This story was originally published June 16, 2022 at 4:30 AM.