Study: Concealed Carriers Do A Better Job Of Stopping Active Shooters Than Police
You’d never know it from watching television, but civilians stop more active shooters than police and do so with fewer mistakes, according to new research from the Crime Prevention Research Center, where I serve as president. In non-gun-free zones, where civilians are legally able to carry guns, concealed carry permit holders stopped 51.5 percent of active shootings, compared to 44.6 percent stopped by police, CPRC found in a deep dive into active shooter scenarios between 2014 and 2023.
Not only do permit holders succeed in stopping active shooters at a higher rate, but law enforcement officers face significantly greater risks when intervening. Our research found police were nearly six times more likely to be killed and 17 percent more likely to be wounded than armed civilians.
Those numbers paint a fuller picture than the FBI’s crime statistics, which fail to include many of the defensive gun uses my organization has cataloged. But the problem with the FBI’s crime statistics isn’t just the errors in their reported data — they also fail to address useful questions, like how concealed handgun permit holders compare to law enforcement. Kash Patel and Dan Bongino face a major challenge in reforming how the data is collected and reported at the FBI.
From 2014 to 2023, CPRC researchers found that armed civilians stopped 180 of 515 active shooting cases. Of the attacks in places where people were allowed to carry, we found that permit holders stopped 158 of the 307 instances. The FBI defines an “active shooting” as an event where an individual actively attempts to kill people in a public place — excluding shootings tied to robberies or gang violence. An “active shooting” could be as simple as a single shot fired at a lone human target, even if the shooter misses, to a mass shooting.
The Crime Prevention Research Center’s findings tell a very different story than the narrative you’ll see on television. (Read more from “Study: Concealed Carriers Do A Better Job Of Stopping Active Shooters Than Police” HERE)
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