The naysayers scoff at the prospect of an armed citizen being able to stop a deranged gunman, but an examination of active shootings lends credence to the assertion that a good gun with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.
Jacob Paulsen, at concealedcarry.com, did a fairly comprehensive analysis of shooting incidents since 2000. The report drew primarily from the FBI’s data on such events, but it also added a few dozen “unreported” shootings that meet the Bureau’s own stipulations of being an “active shooting,” but that weren’t included in the government agency’s findings.
It’s a complex evaluation, to be sure, but one thing that stands out is that armed citizens, when present, were able to either stop the shooting or at least reduce the loss of life.
In the 283 shooting incidents that were examined, armed citizens (this can include security guards or police officers) were on the scene before or soon after the attack started at 33 such events. Of those, the armed citizen stopped the shooter 75.8 percent of the time and was key in reducing loss of life in an additional 18.2 percent of the cases.
That means that when a good guy with a gun was present, that individual ruined the bad guy’s plans 94 percent of the time.
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