We analyzed 13 different gun control policies, including waiting periods, registration, background checks, bans on so-called assault weapons, the death penalty, and harsher penalties for crimes committed with firearms. Only one policy reduced both the number and severity of mass public shootings: allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves by carrying permitted concealed handguns. Subsequent research has continued to confirm this finding.
Even more research shows that shooters are able to kill fewer people when an armed civilian is present. Police are extremely important in stopping crime, and research shows they are the single most important factor. But their uniforms make them operate at a real tactical disadvantage in stopping these shootings. Attackers can wait for uniformed officers to leave, pick another target, or if they do attack there, shoot the officers first — after all, the officer is the one person they know who can stop them. As a result, police were killed at 11 times the rate of intervening civilians and accidentally killed civilian bystanders or fellow officers five times more often than civilians accidentally shot bystanders.
From 2014 to 2024, using the FBI’s active-shooter definition (cases where a gun is fired in public, not part of some other type of crime), armed civilians stopped 199 of 562 incidents, preventing 35.4 percent of the attacks — and this figure rises to 52.5 percent in locations where carry was allowed. By contrast, police stopped 167 incidents (29.7 percent). Overall, armed civilians have proven remarkably safe and effective. In the 199 civilian interventions, bystanders were accidentally shot only once (0.5 percent of cases), with zero instances of interfering with police. Civilians were killed in just 2 cases (1.0 percent) and wounded in 49 (24.6 percent), and in 58 incidents (32 percent) they prevented potential mass shootings.
Uniformed police, despite superior training, faced greater risks and error rates in the 167 incidents they stopped. They accidentally shot bystanders or fellow officers five times (3.0 percent) — over five times the civilian rate — and suffered 19 officers killed (11.4 percent, 11 times the civilian rate) and 51 wounded (30.5 percent). In no active-shooter incident did either group have their firearm taken by the attacker. While neither civilians nor police stop every attack, the data demonstrates the presence of armed civilians improves outcomes.
Unfortunately, both the Australia attack and the recent Brown University attack occurred in gun-free zones, where victims could not defend themselves. In fact, 92 percent of mass public shootings take place in locations that ban guns. Gun control laws create defenseless victims, yet when attacks happen, policymakers respond not by repealing the regulations that contributed to the problem, but by imposing even more regulations.
— John R. Lott, Jr. in There’s No Evidence Australia’s Strict Gun Control Laws Are Effective
“Police are extremely important in stopping crime, and research shows they are the single most important factor.”
I think police sometimes get praise that is undeserved. Don’t get me wrong, I think police do not have an easy job especially with the dangers that go with the job and when they act in a manner that does serve to protect and jump right on a crime and catch the bad guy or actually deter crime from happening they deserve the praise for doing it – and their actions like this are very important factors in the crime picture. But I see this trend that’s been going on for a while that showers praise on police for acting after the fact, or getting praise or pats on the back for things they did not do. For example, the police in the Brown university incident, they didn’t figure out squat and had it not been for a homeless guy that lived in the basement of one of the university buildings the police would still be twiddling their thumbs and not found the killer yet – but the police chief and mayor showed up at a ball game and the crowd cheered them for doing such a fine job, his officers for being so brave and cracking the case and the police were patting themselves on the back for cracking the case – when in reality it was the homeless guy that basically gave them the killer on the metaphorical ‘silver platter’. So did the police deserve that praise and back patting after acting like ‘keystone cops’ being led by the three stooges not knowing their butts from a hole in the ground?
[On a side note… just how secure are the buildings on Brown University campus if a homeless guy can come and go at will and live in the basement of one of your buildings and use the restrooms and showers and roam around on campus?]