PA Bill Number: HR541
Title: Recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Description: A Resolution recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Last Action:
Last Action Date: Sep 27, 2024
Do Civilians with Guns Ever Stop Mass Shootings? :: 10/05/2015
The media rarely reports on people fighting back or using a weapon to stop any crime.
Backers of laws that let pretty much all law-abiding people carry concealed guns in public places often argue that these laws will sometimes enable people to stop mass shootings. Opponents occasionally ask: If that’s so, what examples can one give of civilians armed with guns stopping such shootings? Sometimes, I hear people asking if even one such example can be found, or saying that they haven’t heard of even one such example.
A while back I posted about a few examples, but since then there have been some more, so I thought I’d note them. Naturally, such examples will be rare. Even in states which allow concealed carry, there often aren’t people near a shooting who have a gun on them at the time. Many mass shootings happen in supposedly “gun-free” zones (such as schools, universities or private property posted with a no-guns sign), in which gun carrying isn’t allowed. And there is no central database of such examples, many of which don’t hit the national media, especially if a gunman is stopped before he shoots many victims. Moreover, at least some examples are ambiguous, because it might be unclear — as you’ll see below — whether the shooter had been planning to kill more people when he was stopped.
Still, for whatever they are worth, here is a list of some such incidents (which deliberately excludes killings stopped by people who were off-duty police officers, or police officers from other jurisdictions, at the time of a shooting, as well as some other cases which struck me as borderline):
1. In Chicago earlier this year, an Uber driver with a concealed-carry permit “shot and wounded a gunman [Everardo Custodio] who opened fire on a crowd of people.”
2. In a Philadelphia barber shop earlier this year, Warren Edwards “opened fire on customers and barbers” after an argument. Another man with a concealed-carry permit then shot the shooter; of course it’s impossible to tell whether the shooter would have kept killing if he hadn’t been stopped, but a police captain was quoted as saying that, “I guess he [the man who shot the shooter] saved a lot of people in there.”
3. In Plymouth, Pa., in 2012, William Allabaugh killed one man and wounded another following an argument over Allabaugh being ejected from a bar. Allabaugh then approached a bar manager and Mark Ktytor and reportedly pointed his gun at them; Ktytor, who had a concealed-carry license, then shot Allabaugh. “The video footage and the evidence reveals that Mr. Allabaugh had turned around and was reapproaching the bar. Mr. [Ktytor] then acted, taking him down. We believe that it could have been much worse that night,” Luzerne County A.D.A. Jarrett Ferentino said.
4. Near Spartanburg, S.C., in 2012, Jesse Gates went to his church armed with a shotgun and kicked in a door. But Aaron Guyton, who had a concealed-carry license, drew his gun and pointed it at Gates, and other parishioners then disarmed Gates. Note that in this instance, unlike the others, it’s possible that the criminal wasn’t planning on killing anyone, but just brought the shotgun to church and kicked in the door to draw attention to himself or vent his frustration.
5. In Winnemucca, Nev., in 2008, Ernesto Villagomez killed two people and wounded two others in a bar filled with 300 people. He was then shot and killed by a patron who was carrying a gun (and had a concealed-carry license). It’s not clear whether Villagomez would have killed more people; the killings were apparently the result of a family feud, and I could see no information on whether Villagomez had more names on his list, nor could one tell whether he would have killed more people in trying to evade capture.
6. In Colorado Springs, Colo., in 2007, Matthew Murray killed four people at a church. He was then shot several times by Jeanne Assam, a church member, volunteer security guard and former police officer (she had been dismissed by a police department 10 years before, and to my knowledge hadn’t worked as a police officer since). Murray, knocked down and badly wounded, killed himself; it is again not clear whether he would have killed more people had he not been wounded, but my guess is that he would have.
7. In Edinboro, Pa., in 1998, 14-year-old Andrew Wurst shot and killed a teacher at a school dance, and shot and injured several other students. He had just left the dance hall, carrying his gun — possibly to attack more people, though the stories that I’ve seen are unclear — when he was confronted by the dance hall owner James Strand, who lived next door and kept a shotgun at home. It’s not clear whether Wurst was planning to kill others, would have gotten into a gun battle with the police, or would have otherwise killed more people had Strand not stopped him.
8. In Pearl, Miss., in 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham stabbed and bludgeoned to death his mother at home, then killed two students and injured seven at his high school. As he was leaving the school, he was stopped by Assistant Principal Joel Myrick, who had gone out to get a handgun from his car. I have seen sources that state that Woodham was on the way to Pearl Junior High School to continue shooting, though I couldn’t find any contemporaneous news articles that so state.
Of course there’s much we don’t know about civilians and mass shootings: In what fraction of mass shootings would such interventions happen, if gun possession were allowed in the places where the shootings happen? In what fraction would interventions prevent more killings and injuries, as opposed to capturing or killing the murderer after he’s already done? In what fraction would interventions lead to more injuries to bystanders?
Finally, always keep in mind that mass shootings in public places should not be the main focus in the gun debate, whether for gun control or gun decontrol: They on average account for much less than 1 percent of the U.S. homicide rate and are unusually hard to stop through gun control laws (since the killer is bent on committing a publicly visible murder and is thus unlikely to be much deterred by gun control law, or by the prospect of encountering an armed bystander). Still, people had asked for examples of some shootings in which a civilian armed with a gun intervened and brought down the shooter, so here is what I found.
For an explanation of why I didn’t include the December 2012 Clackamas Mall shooting, see here. Some of these incidents are drawn from a list on the Crime Prevention Research Center site, though I have independently read the media reports to which I linked (as well as some other media reports on the incidents, for background).
Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and tort law, at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy.
The Clackamas Mall Shooting and Civilian Defense Against Mass Shooters
By Eugene Volokh on December 16, 2012 12:16 pm in Guns
A bunch of people have pointed me to this Portland TV station’s story about the Clackamas Town Center shooting in Oregon. On December 11, Jacob Tyler Roberts killed two people at the mall and wounded a third. Nick Meli, who had a concealed carry license, was apparently at the mall, took out his gun, aimed at Roberts, but didn’t shoot because there was someone running across the field of fire. Meli then took cover, and Roberts shot and killed himself.
I didn’t add this to my earlier post on armed citizens capturing, killing, or stopping mass shooters because it’s hard to tell just why Roberts acted as he acted. (I’m also hesitant to rely on self-reports by defenders; though I have no specific reason to doubt Meli’s story, I’m generally a skeptical guy, especially when it comes to uncorroborated accounts. Even people who aren’t making things up — and Meli’s story isn’t the sort of especially heroic tale that particularly smacks of possible fabrication — might easily misremember important details, especially when they were under serious stress at the time of the event.) Unlike in the Colorado Springs shooting, the shooter hadn’t been wounded, and didn’t necessarily have the sense that the gig was up. Roberts’ killing himself might thus have little to do with his seeing Meli (assuming Meli is correct in saying that Roberts did see him) and more to do with Roberts’ being ready for his exit at that point.
At the same time, it’s also possible that the shooter did kill himself in response to the sense that someone was gunning for him. My vague and nonprofessional sense is that many (though of course not all) of the shooters kill themselves because they kill to seek a feeling of power, and therefore prefer death to the extended pain, humiliation, and contempt — the very opposite of power — to which they will surely be subjected if they are captured. And when someone seems ready to shoot at you, it’s possible that he’ll hit you in a way that doesn’t kill you but does keep you from killing yourself; therefore, if you want to be certain to avoid capture, you have to kill yourself right away.
Perhaps that’s also what happened in the Colorado Springs shooting, where the killer shot himself after being wounded (though there the pain of the wounds might also have played a role). And it seems to have happened in the Connecticut shooting, where the murderer killed himself as the police were closing in, but before the police had even shot at him (though query whether shooters might have a different reaction to a mass police arrival than to seeing one defender, who might or might not be an off-duty police officer). Do any readers know of any psychological literature on these questions?
In any case, I think the Clackamas incident is too uncertain and ambiguous for me to include in my earlier post, but I thought I’d mention my extremely tentative thoughts (and reservations) about it, since so many people have brought it up. And if someone has more information, whether pointers to contemporaneous eyewitness reports or pointers to psychological literature, I’d love to see them.
http://volokh.com/2012/12/16/the-clackamas-mall-shooting-and-civilian-defense-against-mass-shooters/
