Jeanne Assam is a hero. There is nothing I can laud upon this woman that makes what she did any greater of a feat. But I don't want to focus on her right now, I want to focus on this (from the Smallest Minority)

If what I heard on the radio this afternoon is correct, there were three armed security people at the church in Colorado Springs. Only one willingly engaged the shooter, calmly walking towards him, firing the entire time. Jeanne Assam fired approximately twelve rounds, and took down someone armed with rifle, shotgun, and pistol and who was reportedly wearing body armor.

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It's not enough just to have a gun, the defender must be willing and able to use it

The two other guards are going to suffer greatly for years to come. I do not envy their position. During a crisis, they folded their hand and froze. I cast not blame or derision for I cannot honestly say what I will do when my time comes, but forever they will recognize that when their time came, they failed. Luckily for everyone else, Ms. Assam did not.

However, these two put the lie to the concept that a gun in your hand makes you a killer. While reading Lt.Col.  Dave Grossman's excellent book, "On Combat" I learned that during WWII, only something around 20% of soldiers would fire upon the enemy, even if the enemy was actively engaging them.

The part of of our brain that prevents us from murdering our own species is wired that way, through divine intervention or evolution, to keep us from committing what amounts to collective suicide. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but that we're genetically "guided" to have an aversion to killing our own.

As these two guards show, just having a gun in your hand isn't all that is needed to overcome that aversion. Had the guards have had assault rifles as well, it still wouldn't have changed their ability to kill another human being. That ability either comes through training, a psychological disorder, a response to a fight or flight situation, or through the diffusion of responsibility (i.e. someone telling you it's ok and you assuming they have the authority to make that decision or a crew-served weapon where you're not individually responsible) not from a weapon in your hand, not matter how powerful.

Make no mistake about it, we are training our children to overcome their aversion to killing. Violent movies and video games do have an impact of how their minds think. However, that is not the point of this post. The point I am trying to make is that no matter what the anti-rights bigots want you to think, the number of guns has nothing to do with the murder rate. People who have the ability to kill do so because of their training - be it learned through military, police, or private training to the thug culture that desensitizes criminals to the results of their actions.

It's time the Brady Campaign and their ilk stopped blaming the tools and started blaming those who enable the criminals to do what they do and then holding the criminals responsible for their actions. But to do so would undermine their funding and require that they actually do something.