Fact Check: More Armed Citizens Equals Less Mass Shootings

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Certain media personalities and sources claim that if more citizens were armed we would have less mass shootings. We decided to check and see if armed citizens have stopped mass shootings. While some mass shootings have been stopped the number is very low. First the numbers: According to FBI crime analysis, of 101 active shooter events 33% were stopped by citizens before law enforcement arrived. Of these 17 times, 14 times the attacker was subdued by citizens and 3 times the attacker was shot by armed civilians. According to these numbers citizens with guns have ended a mass shooting 3% of the time. For the sake of fact checking we will use the FBI statistics, but several sources have documented up to 10 times where a mass shooting was ended by an armed citizen. The bottom line is that armed citizens have prevented more casualties in mass shootings, but the number is statistically very low and the majority of the time unarmed citizens subdue the shooter. Therefore we rate the claim that more armed citizen’s equals less mass shootings as MOSTLY FALSE.