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On Nov. 5, 2009, 12 soldiers and one civilian were killed, and more than two dozen others were wounded, when a gunman walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood and opened fire. Using not an assault rifle but a 357 magnum, with 40,000 trained soldiers on the base which is also the second biggest armory in America who took the guy out?

The military swat team on the base that was called in and wounded him 10 minutes after his shootings.

What I am really asking is there a printed story or proof of any armed bystander in the USA besides an off duty policeman ever stopping a multiple homicide?

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Just because this happened on a military base, doesn't mean the soldiers were armed. The soldiers are not allowed to carry their firearms just anywhere and anytime on base. Actually, the opposite is true; their weapons are closely monitored and stored away from the soldiers except when they need them. – Dunk Dec 19 '12 at 20:15
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@Dunk - you are more than right. The target was specifically chosen to be a location where soldiers WERE unarmed. – DVK Dec 19 '12 at 20:36
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@Sklivvz: that is a valid but distinct question. – GregS Dec 20 '12 at 0:17
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There is only one question: are armed bystanders beneficial or not? However the current question is slanted. – Sklivvz♦ Dec 20 '12 at 0:19
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It should be noted that military bases, like Fort Hood, are among the most tightly-controlled areas on the planet when it comes to guns. The possession by any soldier of both a weapon and its ammunition is tightly controlled, and on the overwhelming majority of military bases, only MPs are allowed to possess weapons in a "ready-to-fire" state anywhere other than on the firing range (and weapons entering and leaving that range, if any do at all, are checked and cleared). – KeithS Dec 20 '12 at 21:53
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4 Answers

up vote 17 down vote

A Slate article covers this very subject. As might be expected for such a highly-charged controversial subject, the results are contradictory and inconclusive.

An investigation by Mother Jones concluded that no more than 1.6 percent of mass shootings were ended by armed civilians. On the other hand, gun advocates argue that it’s hard to know how many more shootings would have become mass murders had civilians not been on the scene to end them early.

and

Academic studies on the issue have not reached consensus. A 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William M. Landes of the University of Chicago, often cited by conservatives, found that “shall issue” laws allowing concealed handguns “reduce both the number of [multiple victim] shootings as well as their severity.” However, a review of studies on the topic found the evidence to be inconsistent and inconclusive. A recent Washington Post fact-check similarly found the current evidence to be too murky for representatives like Gohmert to cite as fact.

References backing those statements up can be found in the article.

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Innnnteresting. Two respected Skeptics.SE users with conflicting answers! One explanation: The source Mother Jones article explicitly excludes shootings with less than 4 victims (excl. shooter), whereas @DVK's source calculates the average number of victims in a civilian-stopped shooting is 2.2, so clearly uses a different set of inclusion criteria. – Oddthinking♦ Dec 20 '12 at 3:52
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The TLDR of mine is "don't know" so not too much conflict. But the Slate article is specifically about mass shootings so not perfectly on topic. – DJClayworth Dec 20 '12 at 4:15
Frankly, drawing ANY conclusion about effectiveness of armed civilians at stopping mass shooting based on "how many of such incidents happened out of total mass shootings" is idiotic. Because most mass shooting happen in "gun free" zones where there is almost no likelyhood of an armed civilian being around, by design. Now... could that last fact be more than a coincidence? Naaaaaaah. – DVK Dec 20 '12 at 15:23
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The ONLY valid study would be "How many mass shootings happened where an armed civilian was present, and was able/vs/unable to stop the mass shooting"; or comparing the #s between stopped shootings limited to the areas of near-certain presence of an armed civilian at any given time. – DVK Dec 20 '12 at 15:26
up vote 13 down vote

...is there a printed story or proof of any armed bystander in the USA besides an off duty policeman ever stopping a multiple homicide?

The answer is "Yes".

  1. First, a smaller list. Look at this article, listing 4 cases, two of them in schools:

    http://www.naturalnews.com/038404_massacres_gun_owners_defense.html

  2. Now for a bigger list - this one contains 8 incidents, 6 by armed civilian and 2 by civilians helping police with their firearms.

    There was a recent controversy when someone posted a meme on facebook, "claiming the average number of people killed in mass shootings when stopped by police is 18.25, and the average number of people killed in a mass shooting when stopped by civilians is 2.2".

    That statistics was challenged, therefore the meme poster decided to do the job properly.

    http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/07/31/auditing-shooting-rampage-statistics/

    He explicitly detailed a more thorough research, listing all of the known facts.

    The tally?

    With 15 incidents stopped by police with a total of 217 dead that’s an average of about 14.29. With 17 incidents stopped by civilians and 45 dead that’s an average of 2.33.

    To make the statistics even cleaner, he separated civilian stops between armed and unarmed civilians

    ... within the civilian category 11 of the 17 shootings were stopped by unarmed civilians.
    If you compare the average of people killed in shootings stopped by armed civilians and unarmed civilians you get 1.8 and 2.6 but that’s not nearly as significant as the difference between a proactive civilian, and a cowering civilian who waits for police.

    He also points out that the statistics could be even worse if not for the fact that many mass shootings aren't actually stopped by the police, but that the shooter kills himself; AND that at least 2 of the police ones were where a police was very greatly assisted by armed civilians.

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In fairness, the police are only ever involved in mass shootings when they continue for an extended period of time, so it's natural those events would have a higher fatality rate. Still, this pretty clearly answers the question in the affirmative. – kbelder Dec 19 '12 at 22:32
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Quite surprising (and seems relevant for this question): "within the civilian category 11 of the 17 shootings were stopped by unarmed civilians." – Suma Dec 20 '12 at 0:34
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Definitely interesting, but with such tiny sample sizes I'd feel a little uncomfortable trusting those rates too much. A single new incident could sway the numbers quite a lot. – Doug Kavendek Dec 21 '12 at 16:00
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@DVK I'm not making that argument. The argument as I understand it is whether citizens or police are more effective at preventing shootings. My point is that this data contributes nothing useful to that debate. – DJClayworth Dec 22 '12 at 18:28
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Sorry, but until you reference reputable sources (i.e. not naturalnews) then this answer is wrong. – Tim Scanlon Dec 27 '12 at 4:15
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up vote 12 down vote

Armed Bystander stops a stabbing.

Police say a bystander who happened to be a concealed handgun license holder pulled his weapon and ordered Barron to drop the knife. Barron surrendered and was taken into custody by the bystander and a school district officer.

From a blog.. Don't know how factual it is though as it is a personal account.

It happened in a town where I used to live. Back in 1997, a kid took a gun to the high school in Pearl, Mississippi, and started firing. He killed two students and wounded seven, then fled the building. Hearing the shots, assistant principal Joel Myrick ushered a few kids into the safety of his office, then ran to get his .45 automatic from his car in the parking lot (state law allowed him to have it there). By the time Mr. Myrick got back, the shooter was in his own car, trying to get away.

"I just pointed at him and I said--I said, freeze," Mr. Myrick told Nightly News the next day. He continued, "I said, don't move. And I could see his--the whites of his knuckles on the steering wheel. And I came up and I grabbed the door, and I opened the door. I said, don't you do anything, you know. I said, I'm going to shoot you. And he got out, he laid on the ground, and then put my foot on the back of the neck."

Man with Conceal and carry permit stops shooting.

Deputies say about 2:25 a.m., 30-year-old Ernesto Villa Gomez walked into the bar and starting shooting. 20-year-old Jose Torres and his 19-year-old brother Margarito Torres were killed. When Villa Gomez was reloading his semi-automatic gun, a man from Reno took out a gun and shot Villa Gomez. That man has a concealed weapons permit.

App State law school Shooting. I'll sum this one up. It did involve an two students who were off duty officers, a county sheriff and a police officer. They confronted the man who had shot several people and he dropped his gun at that point and was subdued by several other students.

This posting lists 2 of the events I have listed as well as two more. One did involve a former police officer.

Most of these the shooter was stopped after someone was killed, but in this example, the shooters were stopped before anyone was killed.

In December 1991, two armed men burst into a Shoney's restaurant in Anniston, Ala., and held the patrons and employees at gunpoint, herding them into a walk-in refrigerator. The robbers kept the manager behind for his assistance as they looted the restaurant. One patron, however, also remained behind. Thomas Glenn Terry had opted against being locked in a refrigerator, hiding from the attackers under a table.

As one of the armed robbers ransacked the cash register, another patrolled the restaurant. When he came across Mr. Terry, he pulled his gun. But unlike the recent victims in Atlanta, this victim was armed. Using his own legally concealed handgun, Terry shot and killed the robber. The other armed robber, busily holding the manager at gunpoint, then opened fire on Terry. Terry shot back, mortally wounding the second robber. The two dozen hostages were released unharmed. Only the criminals -- who had been armed with stolen guns, by the way -- didn't make it out alive.

So in summation, Yes it does happen. When a shooting is stopped I am willing to say that it would get much less coverage. How often do you hear about good Samaritans vs criminals? Bad news brings more attention than good news. Bad news can cause sensationalism more so than good news, which will lead to increased viewer or reader numbers.

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Any comment on the reason for the downvote? – Chris Dec 19 '12 at 19:19
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Arguably, in your second case, having a gun prevented the killer get away, but it didn't prevent anyone getting killed, and in the last case, the armed men apparently weren't intending to kill anyone. – Benjol Dec 20 '12 at 9:07
That is true. In the second case you could argue that he stopped the kid from killing anyone else, since he had already killed people. In the last case, even though you don't know if they weren't going to kill anyone, you don't know if they would have either. A man with a concealed carry permit stopped a crime that could have resulted in several murders. – Chris Dec 21 '12 at 0:50

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