\n<\/p>\n
Americans are constantly debating policing and gun control. But to discuss these issues, we have to depend on government crime data. Unfortunately, politics has infected the data handling of agencies such as the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n
Last year, the CDC became the center of controversy when it removed its estimates of defensive gun<\/a> uses<\/a> from its website at the request of gun control organizations. For nearly a decade, the\u00a0CDC cited a 2013\u00a0National Academies of Sciences<\/a>\u00a0report showing that\u00a0the annual number of\u00a0people using guns to stop crime<\/a>\u00a0ranged from about 64,000 to 3 million. The CDC\u00a0website listed the upper figure at\u00a02.5 million.<\/p>\n Mark Bryant, who runs the\u00a0Gun Violence Archive,\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0to CDC officials after a meeting last year that the 2.5 million number \u201chas been used so often to stop [gun control] legislation.\u201d The CDC\u2019s estimates were subsequently taken down and now lists no numbers.<\/p>\n The FBI is also susceptible to political pressure. <\/p>\n Up until January 2021, I worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as the senior adviser for research and statistics, and part of my job was to evaluate\u00a0the FBI\u2019s active-shooting reports.<\/a>\u00a0I showed the bureau that many cases were\u00a0missing and that others had been misidentified<\/a>. Yet, the FBI continues to report that armed citizens stopped only 14 of the 302 active-shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2022. <\/p>\n The correct rate is almost eight times higher. And if we limit the discussion to places where permit holders were allowed to carry, the rate is 11 times higher.<\/p>\n The\u00a0FBI defines active-shooter incidents<\/a>\u00a0as those in which an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include shootings that are deemed related to other criminal activity, such as robbery or fighting over drug turf. Active shootings may involve just one shot being fired at just one target, even if the target isn\u2019t hit.\u00a0<\/p>\n To compile its list, the FBI hired academics at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. Police departments don\u2019t collect data, so the researchers had to find news stories about these incidents<\/a>.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t surprising that people will miss cases or occasionally misidentify them when using news stories, but the FBI was unwilling to fix its errors when I pointed them out. My organization, the Crime Prevention Research Center, has found many more missed cases and is keeping an\u00a0updated list<\/a>. Back in 2015, I published\u00a0 a list of missed cases <\/a>in a criminology publication.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the news media unquestioningly reports the FBI numbers. After 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken used his legally carried concealed handgun to stop what would have been a mass public shooting, a headline on an Associated Press report<\/a> noted: \u201cRare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander.\u201d A Washington Post headline<\/a> proclaimed: \u201cRampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n The Crime Prevention Research Center\u00a0numbers tell a different story<\/a>: Out of 440 active-shooter incidents from 2014 to 2022,\u00a0an\u00a0armed citizen stopped 157<\/a>. We also found that the FBI had misidentified five cases, usually because the person who stopped the attack was incorrectly identified as a security guard.<\/p>\n We found these cases on a budget of just a few thousand dollars. Though we found that armed citizens had stopped eight times as many cases <\/a>as the FBI claims, I make no assertion that we unearthed all of these stories. It is quite possible that the news media themselves never cover many such incidents.<\/p>\n While the FBI claims that just 4.6% of active shootings were stopped by law-abiding citizens carrying guns, the percentage that I found was 35.7%. I am more confident that we have identified a higher share of recent cases, and our figure for 2022 was even higher\u201441.3%.<\/p>\n The FBI doesn\u2019t differentiate between law-abiding citizens stopping attacks where guns are banned and where they are allowed, but you can\u2019t expect law-abiding citizens to stop attacks where it is illegal to carry guns. <\/p>\n In places where law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry firearms, the percentage of active shootings that were stopped is 51%. For 2022, that\u00a0figure\u00a0is a remarkable 63.5%.<\/p>\n In order to follow the FBI\u2019s definition, we excluded 27 cases because a law-abiding person with a gun stopped the attacker before he was able to get off a shot.<\/p>\n In an email I received in 2015, a bureau official\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe FBI did not come across this incident during its research in 2015, but it does meet the FBI\u2019s active-shooter definition.\u201d The official noted they will miss active-shooter cases because the reports \u201care limited in scope.\u201d Yet, the FBI database never added the incident.<\/p>\n When The Washington Post\u2019s Glenn Kessler\u00a0reached out<\/a>\u00a0to the FBI for comments on our earlier work up through 2021, they emailed: \u201cWe have no additional information to provide other than what is provided within the active-shooter reports on our website.\u201d<\/p>\n However, a researcher at Texas State University did respond to two of the cases we had identified in our earlier work. He argued that one case involving a shooting at a dentist office was excluded because it involved a domestic dispute and another at a strip club because it was a \u201cretaliation murder.\u201d <\/p>\n We list\u00a014 examples<\/a>\u00a0where the FBI list includes shooting resulting from domestic disputes and\u00a0three others<\/a>\u00a0where a shooting started after someone was denied entry to a lounge or bar.\u00a0So, why the double standard? Domestic disputes and \u201cretaliation murders\u201d are only included when they don\u2019t involve permit holders stopping the attacks.<\/p>\n The FBI data on active shootings is missing so many defensive gun uses<\/a> that it\u2019s hard to believe it isn\u2019t intentional. Errors can happen, but the failure to fix past reports shows a troubling disregard for the truth.<\/p>\n The reality is that armed, law-abiding citizens are unsung guardian angels.<\/p>\n This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email\u00a0letters@DailySignal.com<\/a>\u00a0and we\u2019ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular \u201cWe Hear You\u201d feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and\/or state.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n