Why Won't the FBI Correct Its Flawed
Data on Who Stops Active Shooters?
By SNW. Oct 8, 2025
Source Data
The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual kills or attempts to kill people in a public place, excluding shootings that are related to other criminal activity, such as robbery or fighting over drug turf. They include instances from one person being shot at and missed all the way up to a mass public shooting.
In 2022, the FBI reported that only 11 of the 252 active shooter incidents it identified for the period 2014-2021, or 4.4%, were stopped by an armed citizen. However, an analysis by my organization identified a total of 281 active shooter incidents during that same period and found that 41 of them – or 14.6% – were stopped by an armed citizen.
Academic articles dating back to 2015 have flagged similar problems, and even the researchers who collected data for the FBI admitted that "our data are imperfect."
The FBI report compiled for the Biden administration for 2023 and 2024 contains worse errors. It asserts that armed civilians stopped none of the 72 active shooting cases it identified. The CPRC, by contrast, identified 121 active shooter cases – 45 of which were ultimately halted by armed civilians. Those incidents included eight cases that likely would have resulted in mass public shootings with four or more people murdered. …
Various factors explain this stark discrepancy in the data. Police departments do not keep separate records of active shooter incidents, which is at the heart of the problem. Crime researchers, including my organization, have to rely on media reports, which can be inaccurate, to identify and classify the incidents.
What's more, the FBI does not compile its own list of cases but hires researchers at Texas State University who use Google searches to find news stories about these incidents. As a result, the potential for incomplete search results and difficult judgment calls by researchers means the FBI numbers are prone to error.
Between 2014 and 2024, FBI reports determined that armed citizens stopped 14 of 374 active shooter incidents its researchers identified – or 3.7% – with zero defensive gun use cases occurring in the two most recent years. Using the FBI's definitions, CPRC identified 561 active shooter incidents, with armed citizens stopping 202 of them – or 36%. In addition, CPRC found 31 other cases where civilians intervened before suspects fired their weapons – incidents CPRC excluded because they did not fit the FBI criteria, though they likely prevented shootings as well.
Most significantly, during that decade, the FBI overlooked 42 incidents where civilians likely prevented mass public shootings.
M. Hunter Martaindale, a research assistant professor at Texas State University, was shown CPRC's entire list of cases. He objected to just two of the incidents the CPRC identified that the FBI had missed – without commenting on any others. Even then, the two cases differed from the included ones only in that they lacked defensive gun uses. Texas State University declined to respond to repeated requests for comment.
— John R. Lott, Jr. in Unaccountable: The FBI's Strange Refusal To Fix Key Crime Stat
