Looking at the statistics, it’s reconfirmation that being around Police -Any Law Enforcement- is very dangerous for those who have decided to defend themselves as they’re likely to shoot anyone who’s armed, simply ‘because’. Being aware of that should be taken in consideration and plans made on how to deal with it.
UPDATED: A Deep Dive into Cases Where Civilians Stopped Active Shooters. Did they accidentally shoot bystanders, get in the way of police, get their gun taken away, or create other problems? How does it compare to police who stopped these attacks?
We have previously put out our study on the FBI’s active shooting reports. If you watch entertainment television police shows, you would think something always seems to go wrong when guns are used defensively (including shooting bystanders to getting in the way of police to failing to protect the permit holder to continually having the gun stolen and use in a crime to it being used in an accidental shooting).
During the ten years from 2014 to 2023, there were 180 active shooting cases (as defined by the FBI) where a concealed handgun permit holder stopped an active shooting attack.
We decided to do a deep dive to see how many cases there were out of those 180 cases where a concealed handgun permit holder accidentally shot a bystander (one case, 0.56%), got in the way of police (zero cases, 0.0%), had the handgun taken away (one case, 0.56%), and got themselves killed (two cases, 1.1%). What was more common were cases where the permit holder was injured in saving the lives of others (44 cases, 24%). Fifty-eight of those cases were instances where a mass public shooting was likely prevented. An Excel file with the data for civilians and police is available here.
While civilians with concealed handgun permits stopped 51.5% of the active shootings in non-gun-free zones, police stopped 44.6% of the cases (124 arrested or killed by police, 32 committed suicide when police arrived = 156/350 = 44.57%).
Interestingly, police officers were much more likely to lose their lives or be wounded in stopping these attacks than armed civilians. Twenty-seven officers were killed in 19 attacks (7.7% and 5.4%, respectively). That is 5.94 times the rate that permit holders were killed. One hundred officers were wounded in 48 attacks (28.6% and 13.7%, respectively). That rate is 17% higher than for civilians.
In four cases, the police shot and killed the wrong person — twice they accidentally shot fellow police officers (Prince George’s County Police Department District 3 Station on March 13, 2016 and Borderline Bar and Grill on November 7, 2018) and twice they accidentally shot civilians (Galleria Mall in Hoover, Alabama on Nov. 23, 2018 and Highlands Ranch, Colorado on May 7, 2019).
The bottom line is that the rate of police shooting the wrong person is very low, though it is slightly more than twice the rate that civilians shoot a bystander (1.14% versus 0.56%). The police accidentally shot other police officers at very slight higher than the rate that civilians shot bystanders.
| A Deep Dive into Cases Where Civilians Stopped Active Shooters 2014 to 2023 | ||
| Number of the 180 cases that had this result | Percent of cases | |
| Accidentally shot a bystander | 1 | 0.56% |
| Got in the way of police | 0 | 0.00% |
| had the gun taken away from them | 1 | 0.56% |
| Civilian stopping the attack is shot and wounded | 44 | 24.44% |
| Civilian stopping the attack is shot and killed | 2 | 1.11% |
| A Deep Dive in Cases Where Police Stopped Active Shooters 2014 to 2023 | ||
| Number of the 350 cases that had this result | Percent of cases | |
| Accidentally shot another police officer or wrong civilian | 4 | 1.14% |
| Got in way of Police | N/A | N/A |
| had the gun taken from them | 0 | 0% |
| police are shot and wounded | 100 | 28.57% |
| Police are shot and killed | 27 | 7.71% |