“Good guy with a gun” gets mocked as a talking point more than it gets examined as a claim. A new analysis from the Crime Prevention Research Center argues the mockery rests on bad math.
The claim
The FBI’s own active shooter data, covering 2014 through 2021, counted 252 incidents and credited armed citizens with stopping 11 of them, a rate of roughly 4%. That’s the number that ends up in most media coverage whenever this debate comes up. CPRC president John Lott says the real number is far higher. His organization identified 360 active shooter incidents in the same window, not 252, and found that armed citizens stopped 124 of them, a rate of roughly 34%, nearly ten times the FBI’s figure.
Where the gap comes from
Lott’s report points to two separate problems with the FBI’s count. First, misclassification: CPRC says the FBI’s own detailed write-ups describe cases where a permit holder confronted a shooter and caused them to flee, but the incident wasn’t logged as “stopped by an armed citizen” because police made the eventual arrest. In at least two other cases, the report says the FBI mistakenly classified armed civilians as security personnel.
Second, and bigger: undercounted incidents. CPRC’s broader definition of “active shooter” captured over 100 more incidents than the FBI’s dataset includes, some involving armed citizens who drew a weapon and caused an attacker to flee without ever firing a shot. Those cases don’t show up in official reporting as an “active shooter stopped,” even though the outcome, an attack that didn’t happen, is the same.
The other side
CPRC’s numbers aren’t universally accepted. Critics, including researchers who track gun-policy advocacy groups, have argued CPRC functions more as an advocacy organization than a neutral research body, and that its founder’s earlier work, particularly his “more guns, less crime” thesis from the 1990s, has drawn sustained academic criticism over methodology. That history is worth knowing before you cite CPRC’s numbers as settled fact.
That said, the specific mechanism Lott describes, that FBI classification rules can exclude a case where a citizen visibly deterred an attacker without firing, is a narrower and more defensible claim than his older, more contested research. Whether you find the 34% figure convincing or not, the underlying point that official statistics likely miss some real interventions is hard to dismiss outright.
Why this matters beyond the number itself
This fight over counting methodology isn’t just academic. It’s central to the policy argument over concealed carry and where the general public can lawfully carry a firearm. If deterrence by an armed bystander happens meaningfully more often than official statistics suggest, that’s a real data point in the argument for expanding where lawful carry is permitted. If it happens as rarely as the FBI’s raw numbers suggest, that argument gets a lot weaker. Both sides know this, which is exactly why the counting methodology is contested in the first place.
What it means for Texas gun owners
Texas already leans hard into the “armed citizens are a real deterrent” position, constitutional carry only makes sense if you believe that. Whatever the true percentage turns out to be, the tactical lesson doesn’t change: if you carry, you’re one of the people this statistic is actually about. Being counted as a deterrent, whether by the FBI or by CPRC, means being ready to act decisively and legally in a moment that gives you no warning. That readiness comes from training, not from carrying a holstered gun and hoping you never need it.
Train hard. Train smart. Train safe.
AI assisted research and editing. Human verified and finalized.
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