Does anyone keep track of shootings stopped by CC carriers?

[telomerase]

Obviously the FBI won't, but is there anyone private that even tries? TIA.

Also obviously, when they ARE stopped then they're "not news" for the big media, so it's going to be hard to look just by Googling. When they're not stopped, of course, then they become the ONLY news... no one keeps track of murders caused by the Drug War.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/17/us/metro-atlanta-shootings-wednesday/index.html

 

[Kleanbore]

How can one observe events that do not occur?

 

[1942bull]

I am near certain that no such database exists. Two years ago I gave a talk about armed self defense for Seniors of the retirement community I live in. I had two months to prepare so I set out to get every fact I could find. I looked for a comprehensive national database that might have data about 1) cases when a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun, and 2) cases when a armed citizen made a psychological stop by simple presenting a gun. I spend days searching the Internet, FBI site, Crime Prevention sites, news media, and gun advocacy websites like NRA, SAF, GOA. What. I noticed was that the vast majority of such cases are reported by local TV media to local audiences. They do not even go statewide. There were lot’s of local reports, but there was no aggregated data from those reports to be found. It is a shame that there is none. I think if there were it would contribute mightily to support for 2A and concealed carry.

 

[Mikhail Weiss]

Doesn't Tom Givens do that with students who have been through his classes? Granted, it's not every case, but it does represent some. As I recall, of the very few students who failed to stop their own murders, both were unarmed at the time.

 

[Jeff White]

There isn't even a good database of police shootings. I don't think the information is every going to be available, not only does no one collect it, there is no requirement to report it.

 

[old lady new shooter]

I am near certain that no such database exists. Two years ago I gave a talk about armed self defense for Seniors of the retirement community I live in. I had two months to prepare so I set out to get every fact I could find. I looked for a comprehensive national database that might have data about 1) cases when a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun, and 2) cases when a armed citizen made a psychological stop by simple presenting a gun. I spend days searching the Internet, FBI site, Crime Prevention sites, news media, and gun advocacy websites like NRA, SAF, GOA. What. I noticed was that the vast majority of such cases are reported by local TV media to local audiences. They do not even go statewide. There were lot’s of local reports, but there was no aggregated data from those reports to be found. It is a shame that there is none. I think if there were it would contribute mightily to support for 2A and concealed carry.

John Lott doesn't have that on his website?

 

[Double Naught Spy]

What do you mean by shootings stopped? That is a rather vague parameter.

 

[1942bull]

John Lott doesn't have that on his website?

He does list such reports While it may be the best listing there is it is not comprehensive. His efforts are impeded by the fact that most shooting incidents are only reported locally.

 

[telomerase]

What do you mean by shootings stopped?

As Kleanbore noted, a lot of "events" just don't occur when someone armed shuts them down. I'm talking about events where shooting actually started and a CC carrier shoots back. That idiot in GA seems to have just wandered around shooting up three places with no response, and fortunately his own family tracked him down for police.

 

[Jeff White]

That idiot in GA seems to have just wandered around shooting up three places with no response, and fortunately his own family tracked him down for police.

A CCW permit is not a peace officers commission. Private citizens have no duty to act and we don't want to cross the line into a society where we expect someone to take action because he happened to be armed and present at an event. I don't suppose we will know if any armed citizen was present and it's really immaterial if there was an armed citizen near the event.

 

[telomerase]

it's really immaterial if there was an armed citizen near the event.

If CC never prevents any crimes, why bother with it? Obviously there won't "always" be a CC among the people attacked, but sometimes there is and they actually do some good. I was just wondering if anyone tried to keep stats on it... obviously there is a LOT of money going into publicizing the rare mass shootings.

 

[Jeff White]

If CC never prevents any crimes, why bother with it?

Concealed carry permits a person to defend himself. That’s why we bother with it. Any public safety benefit is secondary. We play right into the antis argument that concealed carry promotes vigilantism when we start saying it’s purpose is to make society safer.

We don’t need to encourage the crowd that thinks a CCW permit is a peace officers commission and they have Carte Blanche permission to wander the streets “fighting crime and/or evil” as we used to say at the start of a shift....

 

[armoredman]

NRA Armed Citizen column in the magazines would probably be the closest you could find for a database, several articles a month listed there.

 

[telomerase]

promotes vigilantism when we start saying it’s purpose is to make society safer.

If someone in the group being shot at, which in the recent case was the whole staff of a massage parlor, were to shoot back it would make society safer.

 

[Hangingrock]

We reside in a rural county. There is a weekly paper. Included in the newspaper is the County Sherriff's weekly report of criminal activity also there is a Police Department report for the major population center in the county. Shooting incidents are extremely rear in occurrence.

 

[old lady new shooter]

If someone in the group being shot at, which in the recent case was the whole staff of a massage parlor, were to shoot back it would make society safer.

Absolutely. That would also absolutely be self-defense.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

As Kleanbore noted, a lot of "events" just don't occur when someone armed shuts them down. I'm talking about events where shooting actually started and a CC carrier shoots back. That idiot in GA seems to have just wandered around shooting up three places with no response, and fortunately his own family tracked him down for police.

Not an answer to my question, so I will assume you mean active shooters, spree shooters and mass shooters and that you mean actually stopping the shooter in the process of shooting (Mark Wilson, Vic Stacy)and not engaging him after the shooting is over (e.g., Sutherland Springs church). You aren't talking about stopping a convenience store robber type of deal. You aren't talking about those that blatantly failed in their attempts such as Dan McKown (sp?), Byron Wilson (Houston shooting), or Richard White (White Settlement church security guard) because they never got off a shot, McKown because he opted to yell at the shooter instead and Byron Wilson and Richard White were just too slow. You aren't talking about Nick Meli types who pointed their gun, but never fired a shot. The Sutherland Springs church incident also would not really fit because concealed carry had nothing to do with the incident as Stephen Willeford used an AR15 to he got from his safe at home. I assume you aren't talking about incidents where the good guy involved is actually a LEO (e.g. Trolley Springs), though maybe not on duty. Dan Mckown and Byron Wilson were both crippled. Mark Wilson and Richard White were both killed

Interestingly, a lot of the people who do engage active shooters turn out to be off duty cops or people with non-typical firearms training. Nick Meli was an armed security guard. Mark Wilson was a firearms instructor and had previously owned a gun range. Stephen Willleford was a NRA firearms instructor. Jack Wilson who stopped the church shooting in White Settlement was a former reserve deputy (so would have had his LEO creds), head of the church's security team, and long time owner of a firearms training academy.

Vic Stacy seems to be the real outlier in that he had no formal training (not even military), was just a good old boy that like guns, but managed to shoot a gunman who had killed two people and who had a cop pinned down with fire. However, Vic Stacy's situation, like that of Stephen Willeford, isn't a CC situation either. Stacy was in his trailer residence when he heard shooting and exited with a pistol in hand, bypassing a rifle he had at his door for security. I don't even know if Stacy had a CHL, but he didn't need one to have a gun in his residence.

Active shooters, when stopped by normal citizens, often are stopped by citizens using improvised weapons (Giffords shooting in AZ, Loughner beaten over head with folding chairs as he reloaded) or even disarmed by unarmed citizens (Silvia Seegrist disarmed by a lucky guy who thought she was pranking and that it wasn't funny). The Hialeah, FL mass shooter was killed by a citizen using his car to crush the shooter as he pedaled away on his bike https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...ns-10-14-03-20-years-later.44786/#post-543457

So out of all that, all I get is Mark Wilson who reportedly had a CHL who actually shot at the gunman, but like Vic Stacy, he responded from his apartment (residence) over the square in Tyler and so having a CHL was not an issue to him being armed.

Mass Ayoob did this article on 10 cases where armed citizens stopped 'active shooters' and it is a bit bizarre...
https://www.personaldefenseworld.co...an-armed-citizen-took-down-an-active-shooter/

Cases 1 and 2, aren't in the US and so not really relevant to the concealed carry issue or mass shootings here in the US.
Case 3, wasn't even an active shooter. Apparently, Ayoob considers a guy with blade weapons to be a shooter. I don't know why.
Case 4, Pearl Mississippi, I don't think in CCW was involved and not shots were fired to stop the shooter, plus the principal had to get a gun from his car, so he wasn't even carrying, so not relevant to the OP query.
Case 5, Clackamas Mall, Nick Meli incident again, no shots fired at the gunman with a jammed gun, so not relevant to OP query https://www.foxnews.com/us/police-i...ay-gun-jammed-possibly-preventing-more-deaths
Case 6, Jeane Assam, may sort of apply. She was an ex cop working as church security, don't know if she retained LEO creds or had CCW creds, but did shoot and stop gunman
Case 7, church shooting stopped by off duty police officer, so LEO creds, not CCW creds, not your normal Joe Blow citizen
Case 8, Trolley Square, Kenneth Hammond, off duty police officer, again.
Case 9, GOOD example, a doctor stopped an active shooter at a hospital.
Case 10, from 1915, armed citizen stops shooter, GOOD EXAMPLE

So what are we left with? Well, as recently as 2015, Ayoob could not even come up with too many examples without looking outside the US and using incidents where the bad guy didn't even have a gun. Maybe somebody can come up with some better examples, but there are very few examples of non-LEO good guys actually shooting at bad guys who are actively shooting where the good guys were concealed carriers (meaning they were carrying outside of their home when the incident occurred. Mark Wilson, Vic Stacy, and Stephen Willeford all responded from their homes. Many of the responders were not your normal mom and pop CCW types either. They were off duty LEOs, retired LEOs, security guards, and firearms instructors. Two of them, Jeane Assam and Jack Wilson both engaged shooters when acting in the capacity of being security for their churches. Volunteer or paid, they were in place to deal with specific issues.

Where am I going with this rambling? Despite the millions of CCWs out there in America, a bunch of these are stopped by people who are LEOs, retired LEOs, off duty LEOs, firearms instructors, security guards, and/or responding from your home to an event you know to be happening nearby (however, see Another Addendum below)

Addendum - I forgot to mention Joseph Wilcox. He was a CCW person inside Walmart when Jerad and Amanda Miller decided to start their revolution in Las Vegas by killing cops, then going into Wal-mart where Jerad fired a shot and announced the revolution. Wilcox responded to confront Jerad Miller, drawing his gun and passing by Amanda Miller that he didn't realize was involved and she shot and killed him. Wilcox, for whatever reason, never fired a shot. This is another failed CCW attempt to stop an active shooter. Point? Stopping active shooters is dangerous.

Another addendum - here is an article with several instances of shooters stopped by "citizens with guns' although several cases are by cops and several cases are where no shots are fired. It does include instances that I failed to find previously that are relevant. Some of the instances are by people who are responding from home or businesses where no CCW may have been needed to have a gun. Contrary to the article, not all incidents were mass shootings and might not have every become mass shootings, but they were active shootings/shots fired situations.

http://memepoliceman.com/list-of-mass-shootings-stopped-by-armed-civilians/

 

[JohnKSa]

One more bit of interesting information.

CCW holders far outnumber LEOs in the U.S. By more than 20 to 1. If it were just a matter of pure numbers, we should see far more concealed carry holders stopping shootings than off duty cops. But that's not what we see.

Some time ago, the numbers pretty much drove me to the conclusion that armed citizens who aren't trained to deal with armed and violent criminals are unlikely to get involved in a situation that they aren't forced into.

Sure, we hear a lot of people talking about what they would do if they were placed in that situation, and I believe every one of them believes what they are saying. But the numbers say that when the rubber meets the road, all that talk amounts to very little for some reason.

The Wal-Mart shooting in El Paso was a prime example. The statistics say that there were almost certainly (99% confidence) about 2 dozen, and maybe as many as 40-50 permit holders in that store. And yet the guy kept shooting until he was done and then left the scene without ever being accosted by an armed citizen.

Either all the permit holders in the store choose not to engage, or most or all of them weren't actually carrying, or both. Pretty much the same difference either way.

 

[bdickens]

Concealed carry permits a person to defend himself. That’s why we bother with it. Any public safety benefit is secondary. We play right into the antis argument that concealed carry promotes vigilantism when we start saying it’s purpose is to make society safer.

We don’t need to encourage the crowd that thinks a CCW permit is a peace officers commission and they have Carte Blanche permission to wander the streets “fighting crime and/or evil” as we used to say at the start of a shift....

Bingo.

I carry to protect myself.

Other people? That's their responsibility.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with carrying to protect yourself, and maybe your loved ones. However, contrary to Jeff White's comment, I know of no laws that stipulate that CCW permits permit a person to only defend him/herself. Self defense laws in all 50 states allow defense of others. I certainly feel no obligation to protect others simply because I carry a gun. What I may or may not do at the time will depend on the situation, however.

I do find the change in attitude to be interesting. Ten or twenty years ago, it wasn't uncommon to find thread on how CCW is causing crime rates to drop (drivel thanks to John Lott and the like) and people lamenting in Sally Struthers-esque style had here only been a single person with a gun present at this shooting or that shooting, that the gunman could have been stopped. We were going to make the world safer by carrying guns...

 

[Kleanbore]

I know of no laws that stipulate that CCW permits permit a person to only defend him/herself.

There are none, and Jeff knows that.

Self defense laws in all 50 states allow defense of others.

Under certain conditions, yes--and the defender is entirely on his own afterward.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Under certain conditions, yes--and the defender is entirely on his own afterward.

But of course, self defense laws for defending oneself are under certain conditions in each state as well. I did not mean to imply that all state laws are uniformly written.

 

[Kleanbore]

I did not mean to imply that all state laws are uniformly written.

Of course not.

My point was that a citizen may use force to defend a third party to the extent that either

1. the use of force for self defense by the third party would be lawful, or
2. the defender has a basis for reasonably believing that to be true.

Which of those applies depends upon the jurisdiction.

The defender would want to know a lot about the parties involved and abut what had transpired between them in the past.

The other risk is that the third party may choose to testify against the defender.

 

[old lady new shooter]

Not an answer to my question, so I will assume you mean active shooters, spree shooters and mass shooters and that you mean actually stopping the shooter in the process of shooting (Mark Wilson, Vic Stacy)and not engaging him after the shooting is over (e.g., Sutherland Springs church). You aren't talking about stopping a convenience store robber type of deal. You aren't talking about those that blatantly failed in their attempts such as Dan McKown (sp?), Byron Wilson (Houston shooting), or Richard White (White Settlement church security guard) because they never got off a shot, McKown because he opted to yell at the shooter instead and Byron Wilson and Richard White were just too slow. You aren't talking about Nick Meli types who pointed their gun, but never fired a shot. The Sutherland Springs church incident also would not really fit because concealed carry had nothing to do with the incident as Stephen Willeford used an AR15 to he got from his safe at home. I assume you aren't talking about incidents where the good guy involved is actually a LEO (e.g. Trolley Springs), though maybe not on duty. Dan Mckown and Byron Wilson were both crippled. Mark Wilson and Richard White were both killed

Interestingly, a lot of the people who do engage active shooters turn out to be off duty cops or people with non-typical firearms training. Nick Meli was an armed security guard. Mark Wilson was a firearms instructor and had previously owned a gun range. Stephen Willleford was a NRA firearms instructor. Jack Wilson who stopped the church shooting in White Settlement was a former reserve deputy (so would have had his LEO creds), head of the church's security team, and long time owner of a firearms training academy.

Vic Stacy seems to be the real outlier in that he had no formal training (not even military), was just a good old boy that like guns, but managed to shoot a gunman who had killed two people and who had a cop pinned down with fire. However, Vic Stacy's situation, like that of Stephen Willeford, isn't a CC situation either. Stacy was in his trailer residence when he heard shooting and exited with a pistol in hand, bypassing a rifle he had at his door for security. I don't even know if Stacy had a CHL, but he didn't need one to have a gun in his residence.

Active shooters, when stopped by normal citizens, often are stopped by citizens using improvised weapons (Giffords shooting in AZ, Loughner beaten over head with folding chairs as he reloaded) or even disarmed by unarmed citizens (Silvia Seegrist disarmed by a lucky guy who thought she was pranking and that it wasn't funny). The Hialeah, FL mass shooter was killed by a citizen using his car to crush the shooter as he pedaled away on his bike https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...ns-10-14-03-20-years-later.44786/#post-543457

So out of all that, all I get is Mark Wilson who reportedly had a CHL who actually shot at the gunman, but like Vic Stacy, he responded from his apartment (residence) over the square in Tyler and so having a CHL was not an issue to him being armed.

Mass Ayoob did this article on 10 cases where armed citizens stopped 'active shooters' and it is a bit bizarre...
https://www.personaldefenseworld.co...an-armed-citizen-took-down-an-active-shooter/

Cases 1 and 2, aren't in the US and so not really relevant to the concealed carry issue or mass shootings here in the US.
Case 3, wasn't even an active shooter. Apparently, Ayoob considers a guy with blade weapons to be a shooter. I don't know why.
Case 4, Pearl Mississippi, I don't think in CCW was involved and not shots were fired to stop the shooter, plus the principal had to get a gun from his car, so he wasn't even carrying, so not relevant to the OP query.
Case 5, Clackamas Mall, Nick Meli incident again, no shots fired at the gunman with a jammed gun, so not relevant to OP query https://www.foxnews.com/us/police-i...ay-gun-jammed-possibly-preventing-more-deaths
Case 6, Jeane Assam, may sort of apply. She was an ex cop working as church security, don't know if she retained LEO creds or had CCW creds, but did shoot and stop gunman
Case 7, church shooting stopped by off duty police officer, so LEO creds, not CCW creds, not your normal Joe Blow citizen
Case 8, Trolley Square, Kenneth Hammond, off duty police officer, again.
Case 9, GOOD example, a doctor stopped an active shooter at a hospital.
Case 10, from 1915, armed citizen stops shooter, GOOD EXAMPLE

So what are we left with? Well, as recently as 2015, Ayoob could not even come up with too many examples without looking outside the US and using incidents where the bad guy didn't even have a gun. Maybe somebody can come up with some better examples, but there are very few examples of non-LEO good guys actually shooting at bad guys who are actively shooting where the good guys were concealed carriers (meaning they were carrying outside of their home when the incident occurred. Mark Wilson, Vic Stacy, and Stephen Willeford all responded from their homes. Many of the responders were not your normal mom and pop CCW types either. They were off duty LEOs, retired LEOs, security guards, and firearms instructors. Two of them, Jeane Assam and Jack Wilson both engaged shooters when acting in the capacity of being security for their churches. Volunteer or paid, they were in place to deal with specific issues.

Where am I going with this rambling? Despite the millions of CCWs out there in America, a bunch of these are stopped by people who are LEOs, retired LEOs, off duty LEOs, firearms instructors, security guards, and/or responding from your home to an event you know to be happening nearby (however, see Another Addendum below)

Addendum - I forgot to mention Joseph Wilcox. He was a CCW person inside Walmart when Jerad and Amanda Miller decided to start their revolution in Las Vegas by killing cops, then going into Wal-mart where Jerad fired a shot and announced the revolution. Wilcox responded to confront Jerad Miller, drawing his gun and passing by Amanda Miller that he didn't realize was involved and she shot and killed him. Wilcox, for whatever reason, never fired a shot. This is another failed CCW attempt to stop an active shooter. Point? Stopping active shooters is dangerous.

Another addendum - here is an article with several instances of shooters stopped by "citizens with guns' although several cases are by cops and several cases are where no shots are fired. It does include instances that I failed to find previously that are relevant. Some of the instances are by people who are responding from home or businesses where no CCW may have been needed to have a gun. Contrary to the article, not all incidents were mass shootings and might not have every become mass shootings, but they were active shootings/shots fired situations.

http://memepoliceman.com/list-of-mass-shootings-stopped-by-armed-civilians/

How about Pastor David George?
https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2021/1/1/shooting-straight-with-pastor-david-george
and video a few days after the incident (appears to have been cut, full statement attached as pdf): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tumwat...and-emt-david-george-recalls-stopping-gunman/
Even the Washington Post gave him a positive writeup: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ooting-spree-was-practicing-what-he-preached/

 

[JohnKSa]

There is no question that there are cases where it happens. I read one article that gave 24 supposed examples over the past 3 decades of which a handful actually fit the full criteria: a mass shooting happening or almost certain to happen, a non-LEO/military person who chose to engage the shooter with their concealed handgun and stopped the shooting.

It's not that it doesn't happen at all, it's a couple of things:

1. It's more rare than the raw statistics say it should be.

2. A lot of the "examples" provided really don't fit the bill.

Out of the 24 examples in the article I read, there were a number where the shooting was obviously already over and the shooter was shot leaving the scene or after killing a victim or victims he had obvious motive to target (e.g. one was a family feud where two brothers were killed, one was a situation where a man shot a bouncer he had argued with earlier in the night and was leaving the scene when shot).

A couple were situations where the shooter was stopped and restrained physically with no firearms used, but a person with a gun then held the person at gunpoint afterwards. A number were situations involving long guns or guns that were available for reasons having little to do with what we think of when we talk about a persons who are concealed carriers--for example, persons who worked at the scene of the crime, for example (in one case, the owner of the property retrieved a shotgun to stop the shooter who was leaving the scene).

A significant number were cops/ex-cops/military/ex-military (cops/ex-cops usually don't need permits to carry and have training that the typical CCW citizen does not), not just your average concealed carry citizen. A few were situations where there was no mass shooting nor any strong evidence to indicate there was going to be one.

There were a few where the defender was specifically targeted (e.g. fired on directly or even actually shot) and basically acted in pure self-defense which isn't quite the same thing as choosing to act to stop a mass shooting. It is true, however that in this situation, that is a mass shooting that is stopped by virtue of citizens being able to conceal carry, so maybe those should be counted even if they aren't really the scenario we picture when we talk about someone stopping a mass shooting. I

n one case, the defender "thought" the shooter had seen him point his gun at him and speculated that the shooter broke off at that point for that reason.

In other words, it's not that hard to find examples of good guys with guns shooting criminals in the act or immediately after the act of committing a violent crime but if one is looking for concealed carriers (using the definition that immediately springs to mind when that clause is used) choosing to act to stop mass shootings, it just doesn't happen very often. Maybe half a dozen times in the past thirty years.

The point is that at one time, I would argue that concealed carry permit laws were important because they increased the chances of stopping mass shootings. Now, I won't really argue that point. Obviously it can happen, and does happen rarely, but the stats suggest that even when it's clear there are a number concealed carriers on the scene of a mass shooting, that's not any guarantee that they will take action unless directly targeted.