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https://www.nraila.org/articles/20251013/fbi-persists-in-underreporting-armed-citizen-defensive-gun-use
FBI Persists in Underreporting Armed Citizen Defensive Gun Use
Three years ago, Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), writing for RealClearInvestigations, described
how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was vastly undercounting,
“by an order of more than three the number of instances in which armed
citizens” had thwarted attacks in public places. Out of 252 “active shooter incidents”
the FBI identified in 2014 to 2021, it stated that only 11 were stopped
by an armed citizen; in contrast, an analysis by the CPRC using the
same definition identified 281 active shooter incidents in the same
period, with 41 being stopped by an armed citizen.
Broken down into percentages, the FBI’s data indicated 4.4% of active
shooters were impeded by armed citizens, while the CPRC found it to be
the much more compelling 14.6%. (The CPRC also found many cases where
civilians intervened before the suspects fired their weapons, but which
weren’t included in the count because they did not fit the FBI “active
shooter incident” criteria.)
At the time that article appeared, the discrepancy was attributed to
misclassified shootings (e.g., in which the role of armed civilians was
inaccurately credited to security professionals) and overlooked
incidents (in which the part armed citizens played was unnoticed or
ignored).
The FBI was asked to correct this pattern of distortion and omission
but refused to do so. Lott’s new follow-up article with RCI, published
this month, states that the agency not only persists with the incorrect
reporting, but the problem has become even worse.
His latest article, Unaccountable: The FBI’s Strange Refusal to Fix Key Crime Stat
(Oct. 2, 2025), points out that between 2022 to 2024, the FBI has
reported just three new incidents of armed civilians stopping active
shooters and none in the last two years. The CPRC, meanwhile, has
documented 78 such cases over the same period.
According to Lott, an FBI report compiled for the Biden
administration for 2023 and 2024 “contains worse errors. It asserts that
armed civilians stopped none of the 72 active shooting cases it
identified.” This is especially disturbing because the CPRC found there
were actually 121 active shooter cases, of which 45 were ended due to an
armed citizen, including “eight cases that likely would have resulted
in mass public shootings with four or more people murdered.”
These data discrepancies, as Lott acknowledges, may be due to many
factors – local police departments don’t track active shooting incidents
separately as a class, and the FBI relies on outside researchers using
media crime reports as the basis for its statistics, when these
underlying crime reports may themselves be incomplete or inaccurate. The
CPRC, however, tested its own findings by providing its entire list of
cases to a researcher at the university compiling the FBI’s data, who
objected to just two of the incidents the CPRC included and the FBI
missed. Thereafter, the university “declined to respond to repeated
requests for comment.” (Further up the food chain, the FBI reportedly
“declined to comment” as well.)
The reason why the FBI’s skewed figures (and consistent
underrepresentation of the role of lawfully armed civilians) are so
important is that the agency’s statistics are relied on as authoritative
by the mainstream news media, researchers, in court cases and
legislative debates on gun laws and policy.
A Washington Post article
on a 2022 active shooter incident at a shopping mall that ended due to
the intervention of an armed civilian described the incident as
“unique,” adding that in “recent studies of more than 430 ‘active
shooter incidents’ dating back to 2000, the FBI found that civilians
killed gunmen in just 10 cases.”
Gun control advocates use the FBI statistics to bolster claims that
good guys with guns don’t stop mass shootings and that carrying by
private individuals is more likely to harm public safety than not. A
2017 “fact” sheet
by the Center for American Progress, for instance, claims “there is
very little evidence suggesting that civilians can effectively serve
this role,” backing that up with a statement that “an FBI study of 160
active-shooting incidents from 2000 to 2013 found that only one was
stopped by an individual with a valid firearms permit.” Brady United claims
that “[t]here is no widely endorsed research that expanding public
carry – especially concealed carry – has any public safety benefits.
Firearms are rarely used successfully in self-defense…When a firearm is
present, a situation that could have been diffused may instead end in
injury or death.”
Contrary to such assertions, Lott’s CPRC has separately documented, in a study published this year,
that lawfully armed civilians stopped active shooter attacks “more
frequently and faced a lower risk of being killed or injured than
police.” Armed civilians have the advantage of being able to intervene
immediately anywhere where carrying concealed is allowed and outnumber
on-duty police officers by a wide margin. There were approximately
671,000 full-time sworn law enforcement officers in 2020 (and there’s some indication the numbers have dropped
since then). “If only a third are on duty at any given time, that
leaves about 223,667 officers to protect a population of 340
million—less than 0.1% of the population.” In contrast, the study points
out that in 2024, “21.5 million Americans—about 8.2% of adults—held
concealed handgun permits (Lott et al., 2024). In addition, 29 states
allowed Constitutional Carry, which requires no permit at all. Surveys
show that 7.2% of likely voters carry all the time, and another 8.4%
carry some of the time.”
The study examined 180 active shooting cases in which a concealed
handgun permit holder stopped an active shooting attack. There was only
one case each (0.56%) of a concealed handgun permit holder accidentally
shooting a bystander or having their handgun taken away, and no
instances where the permit holder “got in the way of police.” Police
officers shot and killed the wrong person in four cases (two in which
another officer was accidentally shot, and two involving innocent
bystanders), meaning the rate at which police accidentally shoot
bystanders was over twice the rate at which armed civilians cause such
harm (1.14% versus 0.56%). Most significantly, the CPRC found that armed
civilians with concealed handgun permits appeared to be more effective,
overall, at stopping an active shooting event than law enforcement.
Such civilians “stopped 51.5% of the active shootings in non-gun-free
zones, [while] police stopped 44.6% of the cases.”
All of this takes on sharper relevance against the backdrop of H.R. 38,
the “Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2025.” The
bipartisan bill, a top priority for the NRA, would establish a federal
statutory framework to facilitate the carry or possession of concealed
firearms interstate, freeing law-abiding carriers from dealing with the
intricacies of the current confusing and ever-changing patchwork of
reciprocity and recognition provisions.
The evidence consistently supports the argument that lawfully armed
civilians enhance rather than endanger public safety, as recently
recognized by the chief law officers of almost half of all states. A letter
to the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives and signed by
the Attorneys General of 24 states urged that body to pass H.R. 38
because “[c]oncealed carry is a constitutional right, and it can have
substantial public safety benefits by allowing people the means to
respond to emergent threats to themselves or others when police are not
immediately available to intervene.”
In the meantime, given the importance of the FBI as an ostensible
source of trustworthy government information, the agency should revisit
its statistics and update its data on armed citizens. All of the cases
missed by the FBI (along with links to the underlying sources) are
helpfully available at a link included in the RCI article.