Armed civilians have stopped several would-be mass shootings, crime researcher says
WASHINGTON (TND) — At Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana Sunday, an armed civilian was able to intervene just moments after a deadly shooting broke out, saving lives.
The gunman, 20-year-old Jonathan Douglas Sapirman, shot five people at the suburban Indianapolis shopping mall — killing three of them — before 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken shot and killed him.
Many are calling Dicken a hero and according to crime researcher and gun rights advocate Dr. John Lott, despite mainstream media reports claiming this was a statistically unusual event, research indicates that incidents like this happen more often than people realize.
“In the last year, there have been 10 of these — what police say would have been mass public shootings — that would have been worse if not for the presence of somebody legally carrying a gun. Since the beginning of 2020, you have 23 of these instances that have been stopped,” Lott said. "They rarely get national attention."
Lott says that in many cases of mass shootings, diaries or manifestos left behind by the killers make note that their goal is to get media attention and they often note that they know the more people they kill, the more media attention they're going to get.
“The Buffalo mass public shooter, in his manifesto, he explicitly talks about how he picked the target that he did and the number one thing that he looked at was whether or not the victims there, the civilians, were going to have concealed handguns still going protect themselves,” Lott said. “These guys may be crazy in some sense but they're not stupid.”
The Greenwood Park Mall has a gun-free policy in place, which Lott says may have contributed to the shooter’s decision to target that particular venue.
“Time after time after time, when these people leave statements about why they hit the target that they did, they explicitly talk about going to a place where they know victims can't defend themselves. They're not stupid,” Lott said. “They know that if people are able to go and defend themselves, they're not going to be able to kill as many people and that means they're not going to get as much media attention as they want to get.”
It remains a contentious issue as gun rights advocates and gun control activists continue debate how best to protect the American public. Lott says he hopes this case could lead to more meaningful discussions about gun rights among U.S. lawmakers.
“I hope we begin to realize that 96% of these mass public shootings take place in areas where people are not able to defend themselves,” Lott said. “Let's try to talk about things that actually matter. This young man, this hero, this 22-year-old, was an example of how we can stop these attacks.”
