Study: FBI Undercounts How Often Armed Citizens Stop Shooters

New research from the Crime Prevention Research Center says armed citizens stop active shooters far more often than FBI statistics suggest, with the gap coming down to which incidents get counted and how civilian intervention gets classified.

Snapshot

CPRC President Dr. John Lott's analysis, published October 23 in National Review, found armed citizens stopped 36.6% of 615 identified active-shooter attacks from 2014 through 2025, compared to the FBI's figure of 3.9% across 408 incidents. The gap grows even wider in locations where legal carry was possible, where CPRC found a 52.9% intervention rate.

Key points

• Numbers diverge sharply: CPRC counted 225 civilian interventions versus the FBI's 16, and tracked 35 additional cases where citizens stopped an attacker before shots were fired.
• Misclassification matters: CPRC says the FBI mislabeled armed civilians as "security personnel" in cases like Jack Wilson's 2019 church shooting response in White Settlement, Texas, and a 2025 incident at CrossPointe Community Church in Michigan.
• Gun-free zones skew the data: Restricting the analysis to places where carry is legal pushed the stopped-attack rate to 56.3% in the most recent five years, according to CPRC.
• Greenwood Mall as case study: CPRC highlights Elisjsha Dicken's 2022 intervention at Greenwood Park Mall, where he engaged a shooter from about 40 yards within 15 seconds, as evidence such responses aren't the rare exception federal reporting implies.

Quick take

Lott and the CPRC argue the FBI's own data collection admits it's a baseline, not a full accounting, and that uncorrected omissions have real consequences for how the public understands defensive gun use. For anyone carrying daily, the takeaway isn't a guarantee of outcomes — it's a reminder that where you're legally allowed to carry appears to directly shape whether an armed response is even possible.

Read the full story: ammoland.com