Shortly after the Aurora Colorado movie theatre shooting rampage, Blogger Davi Barker posted an article on the Daily Anarchist titled “Auditing Shooting Rampage Statistics”. At the time his limited research uncovered the fact that indiscriminate rampage shooters stopped by law enforcement tallied far more murders than those stopped by citizens [ref]. Why? It usually takes a while for law enforcement to arrive on the scene. By the time they do, a lot of damage is already done.
After his initial post, Barker continued researching and compiling information, which further confirmed his initial hypothesis. He found that, on average, 14.29 people die in mass shootings that are halted by law enforcement intervention, while only 2.33 people die when courageous citizens deter the attacker.
Barker concluded his post with this statement:
Given that far less people die in rampage shootings stopped by a proactive civilian, only civilians have any opportunity to stop rampage shootings in roughly half of incidents, and armed civilians do better on average than unarmed civilians, wouldn’t you want those heroic individuals who risk their lives to save others to have every tool available at their disposal? [ref]
In other words, taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens will limit their ability to defend themselves and others, and will likely result in higher death tolls from mass rampage shootings.