Q: What about the good guy with a gun theory?
Reducing mass shootings and other gun violence means understanding the data and the history of the 2nd amendment and guns in America.
Q. What about the good guy with a gun theory?
A. I'd like to believe this is a viable solution to target gun violence but I know better. Not only does the data not support this as a reliable or best practice, but at times armed civilians are killed when they choose to enter the fray. Don’t take the idea off the table, just appreciate what the data teaches us.
Source: Texas State University | ALERRT
Texas State University researchers tracked 520 attacks from 2000 to 2022 involving primarily guns but also knives and vehicles. Its research found civilians stopped 78 attacks with many involving security guards and off-duty police. Civilians used physical force to overwhelm the shooter in two out of three incidents. Compare that to the 26 incidents involving armed civilians who engaged, a tally involving 5% of the incidents throughout the 23-year review. Many of these involved armed security.
Understandably then, law enforcement often is hesitant to encourage civilians to take matters into their own hands unless the circumstances are just right. Few have the skills of a law enforcement officer to manage every round they discharge under stress and it's difficult for civilians to appreciate all the things that could go very wrong and the actions that law enforcement takes to make sure they do not.
I support anything that will save lives–and on occasion armed civilians might–but more often than not more guns at a scene are not the panacea sometimes preached. At times it leaves grieving family members wondering what might have been different. In 2014, for example, a man who successfully fled a store after a shooter entered was killed when he returned to try to confront the shooter, unaware that the shooter’s partner was also in the store. In 2021, a Colorado man was killed by responding police shortly after he shot and killed a man who had killed a police officer and tried to shoot others.
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Shooting under stress can be incredibly difficult, even for the most highly trained law enforcement officers on the street today. Every time I pulled my gun as an agent for the FBI I had to use my training to keep my breathing measured, my heart rate down, and my focus from narrowing. It's not realistic to think that some person who has shot a few hundred rounds at a paper target once a year will be able to swiftly access a weapon, make sure it is loaded, know how to clear a jammed shell, shoot and safely take out of shooter, at the same time safeguarding all the others around the shooter.
This isn’t about the legal questions around firearms legislation or Second Amendment rights. It’s about what we’ve seen happen. So, the good guy with a gun, I just cannot put all my eggs in that basket.
