There are a lot of people who think everyone who carries a firearm is just looking for someone to shoot. They just can’t grasp the fact that we want the gun to keep us safe, not so we can hurt other people. They have it so stuck in their heads that we want to hurt people that they can’t accept anything that runs contrary to their made up mind.

Of course, I’d love for them to explain this Kentucky homeowner then.

A Grayson County man is behind bars after allegedly breaking into a residence in Edmonson County. The Edmonson County Sheriff’s Office says 20-year-old Robert Hunt was held at gunpoint by the homeowner until deputies arrived to the house on E.G. Nash Road. The homeowner was a Concealed/Carry Deadly Weapons permit holder according to a sheriff’s deputy that says in situations like that, it’s important to alert police to ensure everyone’s safety.

Note that the homeowner didn’t shoot Hunt, even though he would have likely have been justified in doing so. Why didn’t he?

Well, without talking to the homeowner, I can only speculate, but my guess is that as soon as he was confronted by someone with a firearm, the suspect surrendered and the threat was eliminated.

That’s all any of us want. The average armed citizen isn’t a wannabe Rambo looking for the chance to shoot someone. It’s just not what people are thinking.

Yes, they may be preparing for that eventuality, but mostly because it’s dumb to assume the criminal will surrender when faced with a gun.

The thing is, most of the millions of self-defense uses of a firearm don’t involve the gun even being discharged. They’re just cases of people pulling a gun in self-defense and the bad guy either surrendering or running away. No one gets shot.

What we have here is a hard example of just how that works.

Of course, the deputy’s comment about needing to let dispatch know you’ve got a gun on the suspect is important as well. Law enforcement rolls up not knowing what’s going on in any broad sense of the term. If they step into the home and see someone pointing a gun at someone else, they’re going to interpret it as someone about to get hurt. The ramifications of not doing that are too steep to do otherwise.

So yeah, please let the operator know you’re pointing a gun at the suspect. This will give the police the necessary information when they arrive at the scene.

But cases like this can’t be overstated. This is what happens most of the time, and it’s why so many of us carry. We want to stop the threat, and this homeowner did just that. He ended the threat to his safety by capturing the suspect.

In the process, he is providing a living, breathing example of what most armed citizens truly are. We’re not people who have watched too many action movies, but people who have watched the news.