The FBI’s active-shooter database routinely misses cases where an armed civilian stops an active-shooter attack, according to a new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center.
The center said more than a third of attacks from 2014 to 2025 were stopped by “good guys with guns,” or nearly 10 times the rate the FBI’s data would suggest.
Looking only at incidents outside of “gun-free zones,” where laws and ordinances preclude civilians from carrying weapons, the rate tops 50%, the center calculated.
In some cases, the FBI’s data didn’t include the shootings. Less frequently, the FBI misclassified the shootings.
The result, said John R. Lott, the center’s president, is headlines that declare civilians stopping active shooters to be “rare,” when he said the data indicates it’s almost routine.
The FBI’s database lists 408 active shooter incidents from 2014 to 2025, and says 16 of them were stopped by armed civilians.
CPRC’s count found 615 total incidents and said armed citizens stopped 225 of them.
The center also identified 35 other cases where an armed civilian likely headed off a gun attack because the potential shooter never fired a shot.
“Law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare. What is rare is national news coverage of those incidents,” the center concluded.
The country got a first-hand look at one situation last month, when a 24-year-old man began shooting at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Twin Falls, Idaho. He slew three and wounded seven others before taking his own life.
Authorities said an armed civilian, Jordan Salinas, joined an off-duty state trooper and a former state trooper in confronting the attacker and helped prevent more casualties.
That incident drew extensive coverage, likely because of the multiple deaths. But Mr. Lott’s data suggests far more incidents that didn’t draw national headlines.
In December, a man opened fire toward customers at a bar in Conyers, Georgia, but two armed patrons shot back, forcing the gunman to flee before anyone was killed. Police credited the two patrons with saving lives.
And last August, a gunman in Glenwood, Iowa, killed two people, set his own house on fire and shot into nearby homes before being shot by Harrison Friar, one of those whose homes were struck. The gunman then retreated. Authorities said he had hundreds more unspent rounds he’d intended to spray into the neighborhood.
The FBI defines active shooters as cases where one or more people either kill or attempt to kill others in a public place. Gang violence, robberies, domestic situations and incidents where the suspect goes after a particular individual at a workplace aren’t generally included.
One case that Mr. Lott says the FBI misclassified was a June 22, 2025, shooting at CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan. The FBI database says security personnel stopped the attack, but Mr. Lott said they were actually parishioners who volunteer, and the church pays for the standard concealed carry training.
The FBI didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
Previously, the bureau said it tries to spot all incidents that should be included, but acknowledged limitations. It said it makes “every effort” to include cases that meet its definitions.
But Mr. Lott said he’s been raising cases for years and the FBI still doesn’t add them.
“Is it possible that you can miss cases? Yeah, of course. But when somebody points out that you’ve missed the cases and you don’t fix it, that is concerning to me,” he told The Washington Times.
Mr. Lott worked at the Justice Department in the first Trump administration in 2020 and said he raised missing cases directly with the FBI. The cases still weren’t added.
“This is the frustrating thing to me, and that is, these reports are used by the media, they’re used in legislative debates, they’re used in court cases, they’re used in academic research. And they don’t fix these things,” he said.
Mr. Lott said he understands there are judgment calls involved in which cases to include, but it seems the data seems to miss cases where civilians used guns to stop attacks more often than other shootings.
The issue of civilians with guns raises big questions about who should be counted on to stop an attack, particularly in a reality where guns are already so prevalent.
Those who favor stricter rules on access and carrying firearms say it’s the job of police to respond, while Second Amendment advocates say police usually arrive well after the attack.
One worry of gun control advocates is the armed civilian harming bystanders in an exchange of fire.
Mr. Lott’s database, though, has yet to find an instance of a civilian accidentally shooting a bystander. And in only one instance in the data did police shoot the “hero citizen.” That was in Colorado in 2021.
Among Mr. Lott’s more striking findings is the difference in attacks that are stopped by civilians in areas where they are allowed to carry concealed weapons, as opposed to “gun-free zones,” where civilians are restricted.
When his data looks only at areas where civilians are allowed to carry firearms, he calculates that they stopped 52.9% of attacks during the study period.
In 2025 specifically, his study identified 36 incidents in places where civilians were allowed to legally carry guns, and in 21 of them an armed civilian stopped the attack — a 58.3% rate.
Mr. Lott said some mass shooters know this.
Their manifestos show that they picked areas where guns would be restricted, figuring they could get a higher kill total.
“They’ve figured out the more people they kill, the more media coverage,” Mr. Lott said. “These guys may be crazy in some sense, but they’re not stupid. They explicitly say they want to go to a place where guns are banned because they know it’ll be easier for them to kill more people and get more coverage.”
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