A crime study from John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and Carlisle E. Moody, professor of economics, emeritus with the College of William and Mary, indicates that armed citizens are better at stopping mass killers than the police.
This data runs counter to mainstream-news narratives.
Indeed, when concealed carry comes up in public debate, gun-control groups and the media members who repeat their talking points claim that we can’t trust everyday Americans with this constitutionally protected right. They say, if citizens can carry concealed guns, we’ll have “Wild West shootouts” on the streets. They also argue that armed citizens—people they presume are untrained—will shoot indiscriminately at a mass killer and thereby kill or wound innocents in the crossfire.
As these statistically rare crimes have occurred, however, these fears have not been realized. Indeed, though each time a constitutional-carry law is considered gun-control advocates have made these claims, none of the now 29 constitutional-carry states have put licensing regimes back in place. They have not done so because these things have not occurred.
Some key takeaways from this research paper include:
- Armed citizens reduce the number of victims wounded in active shooter incidents by 2.7-5.2 while the police have no significant effect.
- Armed citizens reduce the number of casualties by 5.6-8.8 while police response results in a small increase that is significantly different from zero at the .10 level in three out of four models.
- The number of victims killed, wounded, or the total number of casualties is significantly reduced if armed citizens stop the attack compared to the situation where the police stop the attack.
- With respect to unfortunate mishaps, Table 2 shows that armed citizens have shot the wrong person once while police officers have shot the wrong person four times, including friendly fire.
Lott and Moody hypothesize that armed citizens stop active murderers with fewer casualties than police because they have a tactical advantage. Uniformed police officers typically get a scene after a murderer has started shooting people. The responding officers can then be targeted because they stand out. In contrast, anyone could be an armed civilian. They blend in and are more likely to already be at the scene.
Many such murderers are even known to have avoided places where police officers are present—they look for soft targets.
“The 2012 Batman movie theater shooter scouted seven theaters within 20 minutes of his apartment that were showing the new Batman movie that night—and chose the only one that banned guns,” notes this paper. “In 2015, Charleston Church shooter … told a friend he initially planned to target a school but “couldn’t get into the school because of the security,’ so he ‘just settled for the church.’ Similarly, the Nashville Covenant School shooter had originally considered the Green Hills Mall as her primary target but rejected it because it had ‘too much security.’”
Many such murderers have committed suicide as soon as police arrived on the scene and police officers have stopped many others. Lott and Moody continually point out what a difficult job first responders have and that they often to do very brave things for the rest of us. The data, however, also shows that armed citizens can be a part of the solution to quickly stopping such sociopaths and terrorists. Many in the media simply won’t report this part of the story.
In sum, this research study determined that the “number of victims killed, wounded, or the total number of casualties is significantly reduced if armed citizens stop the attack compared to the situation where the police stop the attack.”
