Despite what you may hear from the mainstream media, guns are an overall good to our society.

While guns are truly a favored tool in the purposeful taking of a life, they are used quite often in the preservation of them. As the Daily Caller noted in 2016, guns were responsible for saving potentially hundreds of lives, and that was just from analyzing when they were just the cases that have been officially reported.

There’s no accounting for the number of times a gun wielder simply deterred an attacker by letting him know he was armed, and went on his or her merry way, never reporting the incident to the police. This is just fine for many police officers. Guns make for a great crime deterrent, and so long as they’re legally used and owned, officers have an easier time on their hands handling the various problems their fellow citizens may encounter.

They may even appreciate it being used on a suspect they themselves are dealing with, as was the case in Cicero, Illinois, where one gun-wielding citizen saved the life of an officer by shooting his attacker.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Officer Luis Duarte was in dire straights after he was shot several times by a gun-wielding criminal who was being chased by police:

The shootout began around 5:05 p.m. when Cicero police tried to stop a car in the 3900 block of South Cicero Avenue, Chlada said. The driver sped off but the officers boxed in his car on the southbound Cicero exit of the Stevenson. The driver got out and fired several rounds at two officers, then ran north on Cicero and fired at another officer chasing him, Chlada said.

A man with a concealed carry license driving south on Cicero left his car and fired at the suspect, Chlada said. The suspect was hit and was listed in serious condition, police said. It was not clear if the suspect was shot by the conceal carry holder or police.

While it’s not yet clear if the concealed carrier or police shot him, the police and city officials are praising the good guy with the gun nonetheless:

“We were lucky enough to have a citizen on the street there who is a conceal carry holder, and he engaged in gunfire with the suspect,” Cicero Police Supt. Jerry Chlada Jr.

“I want to applaud the citizen, a civilian, who risked his life to help in apprehending this armed suspect,” Cicero Town President Larry Dominick said.

While hysterics are continuously raised by the left regarding the misuse of guns, very rarely will you ever see this kind of thing reported by mainstream sources. Instead of pushing education and stories about how useful guns can be in the right hands, the MSM tends to resort to fearmongering and pushes to limit or ban guns wherever they can find them.

This won’t help. In fact, it would make the problem much worse as FBI statistics have pointed out, 98 percent of mass shootings have occurred in gun-free zones.

The question to ask yourself is how many lives could have been saved if we had embraced our gun culture with education and training, instead of running from it?