Civilians with Guns Intervening in Active Shooter Incidents -- the 2016 and 2017 Data

Data from the FBI's Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2016 and 2017 report; legal civilian gun carriers tried to intervene in 6 out of 50 incidents, and apparently succeeded in 3 or 4 of them.

By Eugene Volokh
Reason.com
May 14. 2018



Backers of laws that let pretty much all law-abiding people carry concealed guns in public places often argue that these laws will sometimes enable people to stop mass shootings. Opponents sometimes ask: If that's so, what examples can one give of civilians armed with guns stopping such shootings? Sometimes, I hear people asking if even one such example can be found, or saying that they haven't heard of even one such example. This prompted me to post in late 2015 about 10 such incidents that I had found in roughly the preceding 20 years.

Thanks to a recent FBI report, we have more data on 2016-17. The FBI found 50 shootings throughout the U.S. that it labeled "active shooter incidents"—"one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area." Of those, four involved situations where the FBI believes that "citizens possessing valid firearms permits successfully stopped the shooter." (Four others involved "unarmed citizens [who] confronted or persuaded the shooter to end the shooting.")