FBI Report: Armed Citizens DO Stop Active Shooters

Armed citizens save their own lives by the hundreds of thousands each year. They also stop mass shooters. Here’s proof.

A newly-released FBI report on “active shooter incidents” in 2021 revealed four of those killers were stopped by armed private citizens, and the Second Amendment Foundation says this is strong evidence the right to keep and bear arms is as important today as it was when the Constitution was ratified more than 200 years ago.

There were 61 active shooter incidents last year, the FBI report said. All but one of the killers were males, and ranged in age from 12 to 67 years. SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb lauded the FBI report for acknowledging the role played by legally-armed citizens in stopping some of these events.

“It is important to acknowledge these citizen first responders, and the countless lives their heroic actions saved,” Gottlieb said. “Truly, these were good guys with guns.”

“There is one revelation in the report for 2021 that underscores the importance of right-to-carry laws,” Gottlieb noted. “According to the FBI, active shooter data shows an upward trend in such incidents. People have a right to defend themselves and their loved ones if they are caught in the middle of such mayhem. Unquestionably, in each of the four cases cited by the FBI report, lives were saved.”

According to the FBI, in addition to the four perpetrators killed by armed citizens, 30 of these violent thugs were apprehended by law enforcement, and 14 were killed by police officers. One was killed in a vehicle accident during a law enforcement pursuit, 11 others committed suicide, and one remains at large, the report notes. In 2020, the FBI report noted, citizen first responders killed two criminals in the act.

Gottlieb has co-authored several books dealing with armed self-defense by private citizens, the most recent being “Good Guys With Guns,” published by Merril Press.

“Each year,” he said, “there are tens of thousands of cases in which private citizens use firearms in self-defense. The four incidents in which the criminals were killed represent a small but significant part of this larger story. The bottom line is that our Second Amendment rights are just as relevant today as they have ever been.”