It just didn’t sound right.
When the FBI released their report of active shooter incidents in the US for 2021, they basically said that civilian gun ownership and concealed carry don’t stop crime.
They identified 252 active shooter incidents between 2014 and 2021 and claimed that only 11 of them were stopped by citizens.
That’s just 4.4%.
It made me angry, disappointed, and confused.
I KNOW I’d heard and read about more than 11 incidents…but I didn’t have them all in front of me.
But John Lott, a former Yale University economist educated at UCLA and current head of the Crime Prevention Research Center had all the figures in front of him…
…and he found some big problems…
The TRUTH About Armed Citizens Stopping Active Shooters That The FBI Missed…
In John’s report, he noticed there were a lot of discrepancies such as…
Categorizing Jack Wilson as a “security guard”, and not as a civilian concealed carrier when he stopped the crazed shooter who opened fire with a shotgun at his church in White Settlement, TX.- The FBI also didn’t count 25 incidents where armed citizens stopped the threat BEFORE the shooter racked up the body count to qualify as a mass shooter.
- And, there were another 83 other incidents that were completely missed by the report.
Categorizing Jack Wilson as a “security guard”, and not as a So, what are the real numbers?
- Between 2014 and 2021, there were 360 active shooter incidents and 34.4% were stopped by an armed citizen.
- That percentage rose to almost 50% by 2021.
But the numbers are even more dramatic when you just look at active shooter incidents in locations where carry is legal.
For all 8 years, citizens stopped 51% of the attacks!
That number is rising as well, with 58% of attacks in 2021 being stopped by an armed citizen.
What The Real Truth About Concealed Carry And Active Shooters Means To You And Your Training…
The real truth is encouraging!
It tells me that we’re making a difference.
That “carrying” matters.
And that training matters.
Not training to “poke holes in paper.”
But training to stop lethal threats with a gun.
Because the truth is that armed citizens are stopping active shooters…
…and this makes it all the more crucial to train for active shooter scenarios.
The #1 Reason Your Local Gun Range Absolutely SUCKS At “Active Shooter Response” Training (And What To Use Instead)…
There’s no way around it…
To effectively engage an active shooter you need to TRAIN SPECIFICALLY for engaging an active shooter.
Unfortunately, 99.9% of all gun ranges fail miserably at even allowing you the realistic conditions for any type of attack – and especially for the extreme situation of an active shooter scenario.
I mean, think about it…
Your attacker could be on the top of a building… shooting out of a window… a vehicle… in the middle of a crowd with people running and screaming all over…
He could be within 10 feet of you… or 100 feet away… at an angle from you… above or below you…
You could be holding your kid’s or grandkid’s hand… shielding your family from the barrage of bullets as you look for cover.
Can you imagine your local gun range letting you run through live-fire scenarios that mimic any ONE of these challenges?
The fact is, the absolutely best (and most realistic) training you can do is right in your own home, using “dry-fire” drills that you can set up yourself.
You can set up different size targets – even using things like different sized “sticky notes” as targets – to give you a sense of aiming and firing at a shooter both near and far.
If you want a shortcut, one of the tools I personally use for this type of training is the self-standing “pop-up” dry-fire target that has a variety of different types (and sizes) of targets to engage.
One of the things I like most about this target is that I can engage a full-size attacker on one side of the target… then quickly shift my position to engage farther targets on another side of the target.
This helps me not only with my “active shooter” scenario training… but also for other training, such as “multiple attacker” scenarios… and the other sides of this 3-D target helps you run “mental cognition drills”… and even increase accuracy using unique training aids like the Sechi target.
One day, you might be called on to be the “good guy with a gun” – and the question is… will you be trained and ready to be the hero of the day?
Yes in Syracuse New York in 2022 I CCW stop an active shooter and it only ran a new cycle one time where I live 60 miles south of Syracuse to the district attorney, so the man was a hero and save multiple lives
It’s a damned shame we can’t trust our FBI anymore, if ever. AT ALL !!!
But I KNOW I can trust that pistol I carry.
Thanks so much for facts on citizen active shooter engagements.