According to CNN’s Chris Cillizza, the armed deputy who watched and did nothing while Nikolas Cruz mowed down 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High refutes NRA chieftain Wayne LaPierre’s argument that a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.

“Here's definitive proof that a good guy with a gun doesn't always stop a bad guy with a gun,” runs the headline over a story about that resource officer.

Wrote Cillizza:

Not every troubled kid who has an interest in guns is going to turn into a school shooter. And figuring out which ones will go from violent thoughts to violent actions is, largely, a guessing game.

By the same token, not every good guy with a gun is going to stop a bad guy with a gun. Why did Peterson run OUT of the school when the shooting started? And why did he remain there even as the shooter was inside actively murdering people? Was it cowardice? Did he freeze? Was he waiting for backup? Was he told not to enter the building? Something else?

We have a tendency to search for quick diagnoses — and easy solutions — when faced with these horrors because doing so makes us believe that these things can be prevented permanently. If we just take our shoes off when we go through security at airports, there will never be another 9/11. You get the idea.

The truth is far more nuanced — and difficult.

There are no simple solutions. There are no foolproof answers. Mass shootings are not entirely preventable.

Here's definitive proof that a good guy with a gun doesn't always stop a bad guy with a gun

by Chris Cillizza, CNN, February 23, 2018

Yes, the “truth” is far more nuanced.

LaPierre didn't say “a good guy with a gun always stops a bad guy with a gun.” He said, by Cillizza’s own account, “to stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun.” It’s an obvious truth in the context in which LaPierre meant it: stopping a rampaging, homicidal maniac who is armed with an AR-15. And LaPierre could have said “a good guy with a gun can always stops a bad guy with a gun.”

That deputy’s hiding doesn’t prove anything except that he was, as they are calling him, the “Coward of Broward County.”

Like many ideologues, leftist Cillizza commits the straw man fallacy, or knocking down a claim that LaPierre never made.

The deputy’s cowardice does prove one thing, however: The good guy with a gun has to have the stones to use it.