A decade-long review by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) said armed citizens have stopped active shootings at least 10 times more often than reflected in commonly cited federal tallies, arguing that defensive actions by private individuals are significantly undercounted in official and media summaries.
In an update released Monday and shared with Washington Secrets, the center reported that good Samaritans halted 36% to 62% of active-shooter incidents from 2014 through 2024, compared with 3.7% in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s published reports.
The CPRC attributed the gap to definitional limits and classification choices in federal data.
The group said the FBI’s approach excludes situations where an armed citizen displays a firearm but does not fire, even when the display stops an attack.
The center also said certain cases were categorized as being stopped by “professionals” when the individuals were unpaid or volunteer security, which the CPRC counted as armed citizens.
“The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a public place, not involving gang violence or some other crime such as robbery. Such an incident could be something as minor as one person being shot at and missed up to a mass public shooting. While the FBI includes cases where civilians stop active shooters, the news media frequently relies on the limited number of these cases to argue that such interventions are rare,” said the report.
“Evidence compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that the sources the media relied on undercounted the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks by an order of more than ten, saving untold numbers of lives.
Massive errors in FBI’s Active Shooting Reports from 2014-2024 regarding cases where civilians stop attacks: Instead of 3.7%, the correct number is at least 36%. Excluding gun-free zones, it averaged over 52.5%. In 2024, it was 62.5%#CPRC #Crimepreventionresearchcenter… pic.twitter.com/I79ptoGrgQ
— Crime Prevention Research Center (@CrimeResearch1) September 30, 2025
Of course, law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare.
What is rare is national news coverage of those incidents,” added Lott’s report, shared Monday with Washington Secrets.
John R. Lott Jr., the center’s president, said the new findings expand on a 2022 analysis and were compiled from incidents that met federal criteria for active-shooter events over the ten-year period.
According to the CPRC, there were at least 561 active-shooter cases between 2014 and 2024. In those, the center said, armed citizens stopped 202 incidents.
By comparison, the FBI listed 374 active-shooter incidents in the period and reported that 14, or 3.7%, were stopped by an armed citizen.
The CPRC said its audit identified 42 active-shooter incidents the FBI overlooked and 145 others it said were missed.
The organization wrote that its intent was to present a fuller accounting of defensive interventions by civilians rather than to criticize federal officials, and it urged a wider discussion of how such encounters are categorized.
The report also addressed concerns frequently raised about permitting more civilians to carry firearms.
“News outlets often raise concerns that allowing concealed handgun carry will result in innocent bystanders being shot or in police accidentally shooting permit holders,” said the report.
For example, it added, “All the experts interviewed by the Washington Post and New York Times argue that stopping these attacks should be left to the police.”
Lott’s update cited a PoliceOne survey indicating that 86% of law enforcement officers disagreed with the premise that more legally armed citizens are inherently dangerous in these situations.
The report said that while police are responsible for responding to active-shooter incidents, response times can leave gaps that civilians sometimes fill when violence begins.
To that point, the report quoted firearms trainer and author Massad Ayoob: “When a life-threatening crisis strikes and seconds count, the real first responders are the citizens present.”
The CPRC’s findings arrive amid continuing debate over how to measure and present data on active-shooter incidents.
The center and federal law enforcement use similar base definitions for an “active shooter,” but the CPRC argued that differing inclusion rules can change outcomes, especially when a would-be attacker is deterred without shots being fired or when volunteers rather than sworn officers intervene.
The report said it reviewed cases across the country and included events in public places that met the FBI’s criteria and were not tied to other crimes such as robberies or gang-related violence.
The CPRC said its upper-range estimate of 62% reflects incidents in which an armed citizen was present in venues where civilian carry was allowed, while the lower bound reflects overall incidents nationwide.
The organization argued that both figures suggest private defensive actions play a larger role in ending attacks than previously reported.
The findings are expected to factor into policy discussions over concealed carry, venue security, and training for both civilians and law enforcement.
The report stated that its analysis is intended to inform those debates by documenting instances in which civilians acted and by clarifying why some cases may not appear in official summaries.
According to the CPRC, better harmonization of definitions and classifications would allow for more consistent tracking of how active-shooter incidents end and who stops them.
As the discussion continues, the CPRC’s update presents a contrasting view to federal summaries on the frequency of civilian defensive interventions and calls attention to how methodological choices can shape public understanding of active-shooter responses over the past decade.
