The romantic notion of saving everyone because you’re armed is ludicrous.

Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association (NRA), has famously claimed that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”

Much of today’s opposition to stronger gun safety regulations rests on the gun lobby’s Hobbesian vision of self-sufficient, heavily armed citizens standing up to vicious thugs. This Die Hard argument is constantly parroted by politicians and conservatives pundits. But the statistical reality is that for every justifiable homicide in the United States – for every lethal shooting in defense of life or property – guns are used to commit 34 murders and 78 suicides, and are the cause of two accidental deaths, according to an analysis of FBI data by The Washington Post.

LaPierre, a career lobbyist, has no clue what it’s like to use a firearm in anger. But The Nation spoke to several people who do and who believe that the NRA’s heroic gunslinger mythology is a dangerous fantasy that bears little resemblance to reality. Stephen Benson knows what it’s like when bullets start flying. The former Navy SEAL saw extensive combat during his three tours in Vietnam. “In chaotic situations, the first thing you know is that the shit has hit the fan and you don’t know where the fan is,” says Benson. “And unless it’s constantly drilled into you, it’s very hard to maintain discipline in those situations. You’re immediately hit with a massive thump of adrenaline. You can hear the blood moving in your system. You can even experience a kind of time-warp. And the problem with that kind of state is that conscious thought shuts down because you’ve been taken over by your nervous system, and your nervous system is saying, ‘holy shit, things just got really bad.’”

Retired Army Sgt. Rafael Noboa y Rivera, who led a combat team in Iraq, says most soldiers only function effectively after they’ve been exposed to fire a number a times. “I think there’s this fantasy world of gunplay in the movies, but it doesn’t really happen that way,” he says. “I think most untrained people are either going to freeze up, or just whip out their gun and start firing in that circumstance.”

Weekend tactical training courses for civilians are growing in popularity. But these courses offer only a shadow of what’s required, says David Chipman, a former agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Chipman, who spent several years on the agency’s SWAT team, says, “Training for a potentially deadly encounter meant, at a minimum, qualifying four times a year throughout my 25-year career. And this wasn’t just shooting paper – it meant doing extensive tactical exercises. And when I was on the SWAT team we had to undergo monthly tactical training.”

“The notion that you have a seal of approval just because you’re not a criminal – that you walk into a gun store and you’re ready for game-day – is ridiculous,” Chipman says.

JOSHUA HOLLAND is a contributor to The Nation and a writing fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.