When our friends in the gun-grabbing community argue against civilian firearms ownership — and make no mistake, their goal is a gun-free society where only police and the military are armed — they ignore the fact that Americans defend themselves with guns 500,000 to 3 million time a year. That’s a lot of assaults, robberies, rapes and murders that are prevented.

But no defensive gun use comes without risk. A gun owner can do everything right and things can still go very, very badly.

In this tragic case, an armed robber with a long criminal history was out on ‘earned release supervision’ from a 15-year sentence when he decided to visit a convenience store and started “running around the parking lot with a gun.”

Jeremy Apperson, a truck driver, was standing beside his car pumping gas. He and his wife had dropped their daughters off at a birthday party and stopped for gas and a soda.

The armed robber, identified as Robert Leon Jackson, age 30, approached the car window and pointed the gun at Jeremy’s wife Samantha, at which point Jeremy pulled his concealed handgun and shot Jackson once. Jackson responded with a spray of bullets, hitting Jeremy who died at the scene.

Jackson then went inside the convenience store to attempt a hold-up. He shot and killed a female cashier before another employee fired several shots at him. A third victim was wounded and drove himself to the hospital. Jackson fled without getting any cash and was later captured with at least one non-fatal gunshot wound.

This incident occurred in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The mayor, James Young, had this to say:

“I understand the system but many times the system is just failing us. But, most of our crimes, many are committed by the same people. I don’t know, I don’t know what answers there are. This gentleman just chose Philadelphia to be his killing field. “I even have to wonder where he got the gun from. You can get the gun from anywhere. The gun didn’t drive to Philadelphia, the gun didn’t walk out of the car into that building. It’s still about making sound choices.”

It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy who’s armed and intent on evil. Sadly, while many miscreants make tracks at the first sign of an armed response, that isn’t always the case. And it’s never without significant risk.

In this case, good guys with guns did indeed stop the threat, but at a terrible price.