A stunning new report from Dr. John Lott at the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) says there have been “massive errors” in the FBI’s reports on attempted mass murderers. The FBI seems to have a strong bias against counting attacks that were stopped by armed citizens. Dr. Lott identified 360 “active shooter incidents” between 2014-2021, though he admits he probably missed several more. In that data he found 124 times where an ordinary armed private citizen stopped the attacks. Over that same time period, the FBI identified only 252 active shooter incidents, and they could only find 11 examples that were stopped by armed citizens.
In some cases, the FBI classified armed parishioners in church as security guards rather than as armed citizens. In my mind, a security guard is a paid position and these armed men and women were not paid to attend services.
Those differences are important. Lott found that “some 34%” of the active shooter incidents were stopped by armed citizens, not the 4% cited by the FBl.” This matters a lot because we’re arguing about FBI reports that are often republished as truth in the mainstream media.
Lott admits that he excluded another 24 cases that were not counted because the armed civilians stopped armed attacks before the murderer fired his gun.
The media and gun control advocates seem concerned with the worst possible outcomes when civilians defend themselves. Yes, there is always a possibility of a bystander getting hurt, but we have yet to see an armed citizen shoot an innocent bystander. In contrast, we know that the police have accidentally shot and killed the armed defender at least once. That’s not something that happens very often because the police usually arrive long after the shooting is over.
A Fox News report recalled the incident earlier this year at the Greenwood Mall in Indiana, where legally-armed 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken successfully stopped a would-be mass shooter just seconds after the killer opened fire in the mall food court area. At a distance estimated to be 40 yards, Dicken began firing ten rounds of which eight hit the shooter, fatally wounding him. He was hailed as a hero by Greenwood Police Chief James Ison.
What we really want to know is how effective armed defenders are when we exclude “gun free zones” where honest citizens are disarmed by law. When they are allowed to go armed, ordinary citizens stopped mass murder 51 percent of the time.
That explains why murderers choose gun free zones. It also explains why anti-gun politicans want more gun free-zones, and the politicized FBI won’t report honest data.
~_~_
I cribbed this from another news outlet when I was reporting the news last night. I lost the original source, so please drop me a note if you recognize the ariticle. RM
Sources-
