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A study from the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that civilians actually stop more active shooters than police.
According to the CPRC, concealed carry permit holders stopped 51.5 percent of active shootings, compared to 44.6 percent stopped by police. CPRC looked at active shooter scenarios in non-gun free zones between 2014 and 2023.
Police were also found to be almost six times more likely to be killed and 17 percent more likely to be wounded than armed civilians.
Part of the motivation for the study came from watching cop shows on television. John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, said cop shows tend to show when things go wrong a lot of the time when a concealed carry permit holder tries to stop a crime with their firearm.
"Either they accidentally shoot a bystander or they themselves are killed or they get in the way of police," Lott said. "So, we wanted to get a measure on how frequently those types of problems occur."
The FBI does have data on active shooting cases where a gun is fired off in public. These cases range from someone being shot at and missed all the way up to a mass shooting, but the FBI’s crime statistics do not differentiate between concealed handgun permit holders and law enforcement.
From 2014 to 2023, CPRC researchers found that armed civilians stopped 180 of 515 active shooting cases and committed fewer mistakes than law enforcement. For instances that happened where people were allowed to carry, permit holders were found to have stopped 158 of the 307 cases.
"If you compare that to the police, it's about 44 percent, so they actually are stopping these attacks at a higher rate and part of the main reason that's going on there is the police have a very difficult job," Lott explained.
So, the study from Crime Prevention Research Center tells a different one than the common narrative usually told on TV. It also proves that police have a very difficult job.
When in uniform, it's easier for an attacker to seek out the police officer.
"If you're an attacker and you see a police officer in uniform at a place, you have tactical advantages," said Lott. "You can wait for the officer to leave before you engage in the attack, you can move on to another target yourself, or if you decide you're going to attack there, the first person you're going to try and take out is going to be a police officer."
In the 156 cases stopped by law enforcement, an officer accidentally shot the wrong person in four cases. Fellow officers and civilians were each shot and killed twice, more than double the rate of civilians accidentally shooting a bystander (1.1 percent). Further research shows that 27 officers were shot and killed while trying to stop an active shooter, a much higher rate than the rate for permit holders.
"They in fact are killed at a much higher rate than civilians with permitted concealed handguns," Lott said of police officers.
Another one hundred offices were wounded, a 28.6 percent rate, compared to 24.4 percent for permit holders.
And yet, many on the left want to disarm citizens and institute more gun control measures, going completely against the second amendment.
"Under the Biden administration, they had all sorts of gun control rules that are being undone and rescinded by the Trump administration," Lott said.
The study also found that of the 180 total instances where an armed civilian stopped an active shooting, there was just one case where a permit holder accidentally shot a bystander (0.56 percent) and in no cases did the armed civilian interfere with police.