Active Shooter Study

M

MinorTyrel

Inactive
I have always been interested in active shooter information! Stopping an active shooter is actually the primary reason for me carrying a firearm! That being said, I wanted to know all I could about active shootings. I tried searching for the locations, the shooter information and even the guns they use! I found one study of the different guns used and I instantly started crunching numbers! The resource I found had a list of 49 shooting in the past couple of decades. I took the information and compiled a few different statistics! Of course I did this on ol' fashion pen and paper so it is not on a spreadsheet! I am writing this, not only because I'm really excited, to ask if anyone would be curious about the results I found. If anyone wants to see them I'd love to share and hear what you guys have to say!
 
me

I'd be interested........if nobody else bites, you can send me a PM.

Malls, schools, churches, work place (ie locations) would be one stat I'd be interested in.
 
MinorTyrel said:
Stopping an active shooter is actually the primary reason for me carrying a firearm!
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That makes very little sense. The chances of you being involved in an active shooter situation are extremely miniscule. You are FAR more likely to need your gun to protect yourself against a more traditional criminal attack. There's nothing wrong with being prepared for an active shooter scenario, but using that as the primary reason to carry a firearm is ridiculous.

If you're only worried about active shooter scenarios, doesn't it make sense to prepare for a much more likely scenario? You should also carry around an insulating mat and a defibrillator to protect yourself from lightning strikes. After all, you're MUCH more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to be involved in an active shooter incident. Oh, and always wear a life jacket and keep your car windows open when you drive; you're more likely to die in a sinking car than you are to be killed by an active shooter.
 
Welcome to TFL!

Your reasons for being armed are your reasons, and I won't fault them. However, I suggest you reconsider what you state your primary reason is. I understand you are concerned with the possibility and want to be able to do something about it, if it happens, but stating that it is your prime reason for being armed is not the wisest course.

We go armed, so that we may defend ourselves in gravest need.
(I don't see where any further elaboration or explanation is needed, or useful)

We are not police (well, I'm not, ;)), and note that trained professional police (line officers), generally do not try to "stop" an active shooter. They contain the area while the tactical specialists (SWAT) does the hunting.

That being said, I would be interested in seeing your compilation(s).

Studies can be interesting, the collected data can be useful, but one has to beware of the trap of conclusions based on the data. A correct, and many incorrect conclusions can be drawn from the same data.

As an example, consider this situation:
2 female officers, armed criminal, who shoots. Range is short (feet not yards). Both officers empty hi cap 9mm pistols, Attacker is struck once, and gives up.

Conclusions:
A) females are not suitable for police work.
B) the 9mm is not suitable for police work.
C) the officers involved would benefit from further training.

Personally, I think only one of those conclusions is correct. Care to bet on which one??
;)
 
In an active shooter scenario my only function is to get myself and my loved ones to safety. If the only option is to engage the shooter then I’ll do what I have to do. However, in most cases I’ll be fleeing the opposite direction and keeping my weapon hidden so Police or other gun owners don’t shoot me.

As for your data I agree with everyone else it would be interesting to see what you’ve concluded.
 
Conclusions:
A) females are not suitable for police work.
B) the 9mm is not suitable for police work.
C) the officers involved would benefit from further training.

Personally, I think only one of those conclusions is correct. Care to bet on which one??
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I'll bite. I think you would choose C.

And couldn't everyone benefit from further training anyway?
 
MinorTyrel, just curious - is the data you are collecting for historical interest or are you adjusting your carry equipment based on the averages you extrapolate?
 
There have been quite a few studies on this. I suggest going to Google scholar - scholar.google.com and reviewing some.

Also, if one is concerned with active shooter response on a serious level, there are quality courses for civilians. Some localities offer them as well as private trainers.
 
Active Shooter Definition

This is all very relative to your personal meaning of the Term Active Shooter. The most common is someone who will go in and shoot up a school, mall, theater, etc. This is not the only type of active shooter however. The term does not really make sense considering that any shooter is considered active. There is no such thing as an inactive shooter. It does not matter what scene this is taken out of. A shooter can be a robber, a burglar, a gangster, a drug dealer, a pimp, an angry spouse in a domestic dispute, or more traditionally a mass murderer. The study I conducted was based on any of these typed of shootings and I prefer it that way because you are right, it is very very rare that in my civilian life I will end up being the victim of a rampage mass murderer. It is a lot more likely though, that I may be caught in a gang shootout, an armed robbery, or have a neighbor with a domestic dispute. Because like I said: any shooter is an active one, so I am preparing for any shooter. It would be silly to carry a gun to only stop a knife attack, or a bombing attack, as these would require different tools. Almost everyone I know carries a gun to stop a gun attack.
 
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Active Shooter Data

My study is simply on the most common weapons used and the fatality rates based on these weapons. I will enter it all into the computer today and post it.
 
As I just said - the definitions are laid out in the scholarly literature, so a layperson redefining the definitions is redundant. There are many lists and summaries of various incidents.

It is a lot more likely though, that I may be caught in a gang shootout, an armed robbery, or have a neighbor with a domestic dispute. Because like I said: any shooter is an active one, so I am preparing for any shooter. It would be silly to carry a gun to only stop a knife attack, or a bombing attack, as these would require different tools. Almost everyone I know carries a gun to stop a gun attack.
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This is a touch troubling. The main goal of the armed citizen is avoidance and deescalation, disengage, evade and escape. You use the instruments of lethal force as last resort. You don't want to get into a neighbor's domestic except in extreme circumstances and that still might not go well. A gang shootout - run for your life. I don't understand the knife statement. Knives are extremely dangerous and dealing with them using a gun is not the easiest thing.

I would go back to training - some gun carriers have come to a bad end when they intervened in a rampage killer attack - Tyler courthouse and Tacoma Mall come to mind. On the other hand Dr. Lee Silverman and the Colorado church shooting were successful interventions.
 
I would remind contributors that if you see CENSORED in a post, it means the language filter (which we have to make this a family friendly site and not some gun rant blather-fest) has removed the word.

It is not an indication to repost the content with *** to avoid the filter. That leads to infractions.

Plenty of other forums to say nasty words.
 
Stats

So I used information from this website here:
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0057.html
The website may not be there anymore but I copied the table of incidents onto a excel page. I am not taking any credit for the gathering of the information. I was just simply curious of what guns are most common and how fatal they are compared to the weapons frequency. This also is not meant to be slanderous towards any victims in any of the events.

I started with a list of these shootings and took three different categories: schools, public places, and private places. With these three locations I also searched the list for the types of firearms. The most common and frequent being: Semi- auto Pistol, Semi-auto Rifle, shotgun and revolver. I found the following about each.
School Public Place Private Place
SA Pistol: 54% 52% 67%
SA Rifle: 7% 17% 11%
Shotgun: 14% 9% 11%
Revolver: 7% 13% 6%
This means that for example: If there was a shooting in a Private Place, there would be a 67% chance that the weapon used would be a Semi-Auto Pistol.
I also found that in 49 incidents there were 87 weapons used. This would equal about 1 ¾ weapons per event.
Clearly the SA Pistol is the most commonly used firearm in any location of shooting. This got me wondering about how deadly these are, so I came up with another list. I found the 10 most common single weapon/weapon combinations and sorted them out. Out of the 49 events, 43 fell into a category of a common combo of weaponry, and these 43 accounted for 318 deaths.
Here are the combinations:
Weapon(s) Times Used (Out of 49) Deaths Caused (Out of 318)
SA Pistol Only: 24 times 56% 167 deaths 53%
SA Rifle Only: 5 times 12% 48 deaths 15%
SA Pistol, SA Rifle & Shotgun: 3 times 7% 32 deaths 10%
SA Pistol & Revolver: 3 times 7% 27 deaths 8%
SA Pistol, Revolver & Shotgun: 1 time 2% 8 deaths 2%
Revolver Only: 2 times 5% 4 deaths 1%
SA Pistol & SA Rifle: 1 time 2% 4 deaths 1%
Shotgun & Revolver: 1 time 2% 5 deaths 2%
SA Pistol & Shotgun: 2 times 5% 16 deaths 5%
SA Rifle & Shotgun: 1 time 2% 7 deaths 2%
Using this I came up with a very simple equation for fatality. It is Deaths/Times, and the results are in order of most fatal to least are below.

Deaths/Times Combination
11 SA Pistol, SA Rifle and Shotgun
10 SA Rifle Only
9 SA Pistol and Revolver
8 SA Pistol, Revolver and Shotgun
8 SA Pistol and Shotgun
7 SA Pistol Only
7 SA Rifle and Shotgun
5 Revolver and Shotgun
4 SA Pistol and SA Rifle
2 Revolver Only

Some may read all of this differently than me. My conclusion from this study is that over half of any shooting has been with a SA pistol, but they are nowhere near the most deadly. The most deadly combination is the SA Pistol and Rifle along with a shotgun, but this combination is rare only occurring 7% of the time.
That’s what I got. If you have any more questions feel free to ask. This is not supposed to change any load outs or any responses, but to give a mental picture of what the most common and deadly shooting incidents have contained.
 
Reply

Sorry for the language. This is just a study of how things have been. I like numbers and was excited to get my hands on this. I would like to say again that this is not to change the way you do things, and I would appreciate if my reasons for carrying weren't so questioned. Yes I understand that I should run, but if there are no other options I will be putting my life on the line. It is ridiculous that you cannot understand that all I am trying to say is that an Active Shooter is ANYONE who is shooting. This is not a knife attack, and please do not tell me that anyone carries a gun just for defense against a knife. I understand that a gun is reserved for Lethal Force against a Life Threatening incident. I carry to stop a threat that will take any life, and the most common is a firearm threat. Thus, an active shooter.
 
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Interesting, I carry only to protect me and my family.

Every scenario I can think of involves a decision whether or not to even employ a weapon.

I consider the possibility of my involvement making the situation worse. The shooter could target me now. Someone else might mistake me as a threat.
I may draw fire in the direction of my family. I may not even have a clear shot.
I may get incapacitated, now an extra loaded weapon is available to the shooter.

So many variables involved, don't mean to sound selfish or affraid to take action, just being aware that the gun may not be an answer.

One thing I do now, I sit far back in a theater so I can see all entrances and exits and most of the crowd. But this could be bad, puts me further away from exit if something bad happens.
I avoid businesses with "no gun" signs. I respect their rule. Amazon usually replaces those establishments.

No gun eateries don't get my business either.
 
As long as it's kept you off the streets and out of the bars.
Any conclusions on how many shootings occur in taverns and bars, especially on Saturday nights?
 
MinorTyrel said:
...I started with a list of these shootings and took three different categories: schools, public places, and private places. With these three locations I also searched the list for the types of firearms....
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But there's still the question of whether the data means anything.

Rampage murders have certainly been committed without a gun:

  • The worst school mass murder in U. S. history was committed without a gun: The The Bath School disaster -- 1927, 45 people killed (including 38 children) with dynamite, firebombs, pyrotol, a club and Winchester rifle (the rifle was used only in the killer's suicide).

  • In 1995, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people and injured over 800 with a home made bomb in a truck

  • One of the worst mass murders in U. S. history was committed without a gun: The Happy Land fire -- 1990, arson killing 87 people (and don't forget 9/11).

  • And there was Priscilla Ford who in 1980 intentionally drove her car onto a crowded Reno, NV sidewalk killing 7.

  • If you have a look at the listing of rampage killings on Wikipedia, you'll see that a great deal of damage has been done world wide without firearms.
 
Just an observation, but if I were to rate my chances of death caused by another individual, I would say that I would mostl likely be killed in traffic.

I've noticed an increase in agressive angry drivers that take huge risks with little to gain. It's not that I'm getting older, there really is a marked increase in agressive drivers.

I weigh all of this compared to a mass killing event occurring near me.
We want to defend ourselves from crime.

I can't help to think that many people for guns to protect themselves, as well as those that view guns as a danger to society will aggressively pass someone in a bike lane at twice the posted speed. This makes not sense.
 
This is all very relative to your personal meaning of the Term Active Shooter.
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My understanding of the term "Active shooter" is someone who has shot, and has /is moving. The opposite is not "inactive shooter", it is "Static shooter", meaning one who does not move (sniper in a tower, for example).

Interesting numbers.

I came up with a very simple equation for fatality. It is Deaths/Times,
Click to expand...

While I won't fault your mathematics, I believe your base premise is flawed.

The class of gun used simply does not equal percentage of deaths. Locations matter. Concentrations matter. The killers aim matters. Target behavior matters. Pardon my apparent callousness for a moment, but all these things, and more matter, and should not be lumped into a single category of "deaths".

The killer who has 20+ people trapped in a room has a different situation than the one with 100 people trying to get out of the mall, theater, etc.

The only constant is when no one fights back, the killers do as they please.

here's another point, (and if you took this into consideration, please explain), where do you put cases where the killer had various weapons but didn't use them all, or where they killed with one, and then used another only to kill themselves?

Numbers on what was actually used, I find interesting. Numbers speculating on what is "most deadly", I do not.
 
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