[There was a video here]

In an attempt to prove that good guys with guns could have altered the dynamics of last week's deadly Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, a Texas-based pro-gun group reenacted the shooting a dozen times with armed citizens and mostly discovered that armed citizens suck at stopping terrorists.

Dallas CBS affiliate KTVT reported on the backfiring plan by some guys from The Truth About Guns, who put out the call last weekend for "40 warm bodies" to prove "the champions of civilian disarmament" wrong:

Volunteers took turns on a set designed to look like the offices of the French satirical weekly magazine. But unlike the terrorist attack that killed 12 people, volunteers played the role of armed civilian.

"He started shooting – and I started shooting," said volunteer Linda Cruz.

Time and time again, the armed civilian "dies" – shot by a round that marks him or her with paint.

In only two cases volunteers were able to take out one of two gunmen in the process...

Twelve volunteers participated in the exercise. Only one survived after running away. No one was able to take out both shooters.

The Dallas Morning News interviewed one of the volunteer armed citizens, who expressed pleasure with his performance, despite the terrorists' success in aerating his brain stem:

Parks Matthews, 37, of Wylie was the first person placed in the scenario. He fired at the gunmen but was shot in the finger, forearm and back of the head.

"Problem was, I ran out of ammunition, and they kept coming. I wasn't smart enough to get out of the way and take cover," said Matthews, who has undergone firearm training. "But I did better than I thought."

As you can see in KTVT's funnysad video above, the poor gun guys (and gals) fared about as badly as you might have expected. Having owned guns all my life and thought myself into these kinds of situations, I pretty much came to the same conclusions last year. As did some other folks, time and again.

But the geniuses behind "The Truth About Guns" seemed reluctant to accept, well, the truth about their guns' limited utility in saving innocent lives. "[G]iven the circumstances," one of them wrote after the failed Paris experiment, "more than just one good guy with a gun would likely have been needed to save lives." Verily, the only thing safer and more conducive to the public welfare than one lightly trained, well-intentioned stranger spraying walls with a Smith 5906 is two strangers doing it at the same time.