{"id":103312,"date":"2026-06-29T04:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=103312"},"modified":"2026-06-28T11:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T15:52:07","slug":"a-good-guy-with-a-gun-is-responsible-for-stopping-a-lot-of-crime-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/06\/29\/a-good-guy-with-a-gun-is-responsible-for-stopping-a-lot-of-crime-in-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"A “good guy with a gun” is responsible for stopping a lot of crime in the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve paid any attention, you’ll have been told that private gun owners are rarely if ever able to stop a crime, and even that you’re somehow in more danger if you carry a gun than if you go unarmed. The FBI certainly contributed to that message with their annual Active Shooting Reports, which seemed to indicate that civilians with guns were only responsible for stopping gun attacks 3.7% of the time. This understates the frequency by a very large margin<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a public place, not involving gang violence or some other crime such as robbery. Such an incident could be something as minor as one person being shot at and missed up to a mass public shooting.<\/p>\n

While the FBI includes cases where civilians stop active shooters, the news media frequently relies on the limited number of these cases to argue that such interventions are rare. Headlines illustrate this framing: “Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander” (Associated Press); “Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting” (Washington Post); and “After Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence” (New York Times). The FBI’s reports acknowledge that armed civilians stopped active shooting attacks in seven of the eleven years they reviewed.<\/p>\n

When John Stossel asked the FBI about our claim that they had omitted many cases, the Bureau responded: “[Our data is] not intended to explore all active shooting incidents but rather to provide a baseline understanding …”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Between 2014 and 2024, citizens stopped 178 out of 339 potential or actual mass shootings where we could identify that guns were allowed in the area. So 52.5% of attacks were stopped by people legally carrying concealed handguns.<\/p>\n

The numbers indicate that if we didn’t have gun-free zones, we would have more people stopping these attacks.<\/p>\n

Finally, even these numbers underestimate the usefulness of legally carried concealed handguns in stopping mass public shootings because many of these active shooting incidents involve only one person being targeted. For example, suppose one person is targeted and only one person may be present. In that case, there is relatively little opportunity for people to stop attacks compared to a mass public shooting where many potential victims are present.<\/p>\n

The general public seems to agree. A July 2022 survey by the Trafalgar Group showed that a plurality of American general election voters believe that armed citizens are the most effective element in protecting you and your family in the case of a mass shooting. First on the list was “armed citizens” at 42%, followed by “local police” (25%) and “federal agents” (10%). [“None of the above” was the answer chosen by 23% of respondents.] A survey by YouGov in May \u2013 before the Uvalde, Texas, attack \u2013 found that by a margin of 51% to 37% American adults supported letting schoolteachers and administrations carry concealed handguns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve paid any attention, you’ll have been told that private gun owners are rarely if ever able to stop a crime, and even that you’re somehow in more danger if you carry a gun than if you go unarmed. The FBI certainly contributed to that message with their annual Active Shooting Reports, which seemed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,53,13,663],"tags":[343,282,49,290],"class_list":["post-103312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","category-weapons","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-fbi","tag-guns","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qSk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103315,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103312\/revisions\/103315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}