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An argument that many supporters of the 2nd amendment use is that the best way to stop a criminal with a gun is for a "good guy with a gun" to take action. If that's the stance they hold, how do they justify the absence of good guys with guns in the majority of mass shooting cases?
Duwe et al. (2002) found no relationship between state “right to carry” laws and mass shootings from 1977 through 1999. Meaning right to carry laws either didn’t matter to begin with or else an increase in bad guys with guns was balanced out by an increase in good guys.
More recently Crime Prevention Research Center found that the FBI significantly underreports gun violence stopped by gun owners by using dubious exclusion criteria like not counting instances where the criminal is doing crimes other than just murder, or where somebody is able to stop a suspect by scaring the bad guy with a gun rather than actually shooting them.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108876702237341
https://crimeresearch.org/2022/10/massive-errors-in-fbis-active-shooting-reports-regarding-cases-where-civilians-stop-attacks-instead-of-4-4-the-correct-number-is-at-least-34-4-in-2021-it-is-at-least-49-1-excluding-gun-free-zon/
So you don't consider cops to be good guys with guns?
A criminal doesn't have to be carrying a gun in order to be stopped by a gun. They just need to have deadly intent.
I have a concealed carry permit but I'm not shooting anyone unless I personally feel threatened.
A) I don't want to deal with the potential lawsuits.
B) Why don't you take responsibility for YOUR personal safety and carry a gun rather than be dependent on someone else to help you? If I see someone attacking you, I'll call 911 and wait for the police to arrive. My gun is for my protection.
I don't really have any strong opinions on the 2nd amendment, for or against. I don't own a gun but I see the merit of concealed carrying, I'm just lucky that I live in a place where I don't feel it's necessary. My question is more about why, if civilians with guns should be seen as a reliable deterrent for violent crime, most reportings of mass shootings don't credit them with having stopped the attack, or at least even identify them as having tried to stop them. In the overwhelming majority of attacks, the would-be "good guy with a gun" simply doesn't exist
Mass shootings don't make up the majority of violent crime in this country. If someone shoots someone before they they kill or injure 3 0r 4 others it's not a mass shooting. It was prevented.
“Self-defense can be an important crime deterrent,” concluded a study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mandated via executive order by President Barack Obama in 2013. The findings also question the effectiveness of gun-control measures.
The study’s findings include:
*Gun-use is the safest of studied “self-protective strategies,”
*Suicide accounts for most firearm deaths,
*Felons who use guns very seldom obtain their guns by stealing them, and
*There is no evidence that gun restrictions reduce gun violence.
So it sounds like the "good guy with a gun" argument applies for individuals protecting themselves from violent crime? I guess I assumed the argument was made specifically for saving lives during mass shootings or terror attacks, but now that I think about it I don't know that I've seen anyone specify that
They justify it because good guys aren't generally involved in mass shootings. Most people don't carry a gun right? So when someone whips one out and starts shooting people then you run.
I've personally seen videos of the roof Koreans holding off rioters in the LA riots and the recent BLM riots. I've seen videos of three guys either shooting or scaring off robbers with guns, and I've seen one video where this guy pulled a gun on someone trying to hold up a cashier at knife point, and I don't even go searching for these videos.
They're pretty abundant tbh, just not in the situation you brought up. Think about it, mass shootings at schools right? Well, who brings a gun to school or church or a mosque or something like that apart from bad guys.
If you still for some god-forsaken reason believe the "good guy with a gun" fallacy, LOOK NO FURTHER THAN UVALDE, TEXAS.
The "good guys" at Uvalde were the police. About as good as they get, right? Even better, the good guy police were heavily armed and had ballistic body armor. To top it all off, 376 officers responded.
So we've got 376 "good guys" with guns vs. 1 bad guy with a gun. The 376 good guys sat outside, for over an hour, while the slaughter of innocents kept pace. Only 1 cop was brave enough to try to enter because his wife was a teacher at the school. His fellow officers refused to let him in.
So why were the good guys w/ guns unable to stop the bad guy even when there were nearly 400 good guys with big guns? Because it doesn't make any sense. It literally sounds like something a child would come up with, think about it.
In other words, you want to remove the police...? The OP was talking about regular citizens. If you don't believe the police have ever helped anybody (which is blatantly false; the Uvalde police aren't representative of the national police force), then...
...you would just carry your own gun, right? Or are you the good guy with a knife?
The uvalde police isnt a good metric to determine the faculties of all cops. Pretty much every single person on both side of the aisle talked about how dogshit and useless they were. It will be the shame that they will be stuck with forever.
Now onto actual police... they do their jobs. Lot of crappy ones sure, but just like all jobs you have crap workers in the bunch. Dont hear that 99.9% of all police interactions went well for all that's involved.
Theres only like 30 unarmed shootings every year, which if you consider the statistics is extremely good. If all you hear are the bad stories you think all cops are bastards.
Reason why you dont hear a good story unless its miraculous is that you dont hear when someone does a decent passable job.
Society holds itself together because the majority of us do a passable job at our work. Nothing to write about. Doesnt make headlines.
The biggest single reason you don't hear about them is that these stories are almost always just local news. It would be the exceptional case where they go national.
Someone starts shooting. Good guy/gal with gun takes them out. No mass shooting. End of story. National news is not interested in such things as a general rule.
You have to read certain "gun magazines - or websites" to find such information.
I wrote a much longer response that goes into some examples and the issues involved with pulling a gun and using it for anything other than your personal self defense. Let's just say that the legal bar is high. People with Concealed carry permits tend to be very aware of the legalities and their limitations in a situation.
There are actually a fair number of "good guy/gal with gun" stories that when a situation goes critical pulls their gun and shoots the perpetrator.
An example from some years ago was in a church in I believe Colorado (or a nearby state) where someone walked into a church during services and pulled a gun and started shooting. Some lady stood up pulling her gun from her purse and dropped him with 2 solid shots (died before he got to the hospital so no trial). No one in the church had any idea that she carried. No one complained, and almost all thanked her. No charges were ever considered by the police or DA (all stated that it was a justified shooting) Unfortunately, there were several churchgoers who were shot by the guy. But, it did not turn into a mass shooting event because of a "good gal" with a gun.
Sometimes they injure innocent bystanders in the process - which has legal and moral implications (although I know of a case where the injured people did not press charges or sue because they understood that they were not the intended target - and the target was taken out in the process).
The biggest reason that they don't show up in most many mass shootings is because if a mass shooter is in an upper building room and shooting out the window - or created a situation where they are "protected" by innocents - there is no good target to shoot back at with any realistic chance of getting the target if all you have is a concealed carry pistol (you need a hunting or target rifle sighted in for the distance for that).
The schools and many universities are generally not legal to carry. So there are few, if any, good guys/gals with a gun available.
There is no use pulling out your gun unless you can get a good clean shot without a good chance of hitting others in most cases.
There are very real legal implications in many cases if you pull a gun and use it in a situation where you do not have a clean shot. The good guys/gals with guns are very likely to be aware of those legal implications - and are not going to pull a gun unless there is a real crises and they can actually make a difference. They want to keep their concealed carry permits and vote in the future.