The Second Amendment is in the U.S. Constitution as a bulwark against tyranny. The right to keep and bear arms is primarily about protection of the Constitution and the Liberty it enshrines. It is only secondarily about personal protection and hunting. Too many Second Amendment advocates fail to drive this point home.

Given that foundation, however, and while the Left is busy exploiting the deaths of innocents to ramp up efforts to destroy Liberty through various proposals to ban guns from the law-abiding, it is also important to note that firearms save lives.

In July alone, there were numerous examples of law-abiding Americans using firearms to prevent crimes and save lives. We’ll give just the briefest of details of a handful of those stories:

A South Carolina man shot a drunken attacker. A disabled Florida senior was wounded by four armed men who broke into his home, but he used an AR-15 to kill two of them while sending the two others fleeing. A San Diego man killed an assailant who was stabbing his father. A North Carolina woman killed an ax-wielding attacker. A Tennessee Uber driver shot a man who had fired on his vehicle, defending himself and his passenger. A Louisiana man shot an attacker attempting a carjacking. Others in Kentucky, New Hampshire, Arizona, and elsewhere merely brandished their guns or held would-be burglars at gunpoint and awaited police.

Again, these are just a few examples of what in reality are millions of stories. In 2013, even Barack Obama’s Centers for Disease Control affirmed studies showing that perhaps millions of lives are saved every year by the lawful defensive use of firearms. Bill Clinton’s CDC conducted its own studies in 1996 and 1998, determining that there are “likely over 1 million defensive gun uses of guns” annually. More than 20 years later, concealed carry is more widely practiced. In fact, mere possession of firearms is a deterrent for countless crimes — whether criminals are stopped in the attempt by citizens brandishing a firearm, or whether people with a mind to commit a crime decide otherwise because a gun might be used against them.

In the end, this is all a reminder that “gun control” isn’t about guns. It’s about control.