One of the favorite fetishes of the legacy mainstream media is the idea of the expert. This idea is how they justify (in their own minds) that they should be the only source of information about the world that people have access to.
And you see their love of experts when you see them getting commentary from so-called experts in a field.
Now, ignoring the fact that the legacy mainstream media chooses their experts from a pool of people who already share the media’s preferred narrative bias so that people only get the “facts” from one side of the issue, there are legitimate experts in any number of fields.
You just need to be able to recognize who is and who isn’t an expert, and you also need to recognize that waiting for an expert isn’t always the best option.
Especially if someone’s life is on the line.
And that’s the problem with the media narrative that only law enforcement officers, who are presumed to be trained experts with firearms, and criminals should be the ones who have access to guns.
It’s true that most law enforcement officers are trained with firearms, and there are certainly many, many extremely competent LEOs when it comes to firearms usage.
But they can’t be physically everywhere at once.
And that’s why we need to ask who is more effective at stopping mass shootings: LEOs or civilians? Fortunately, John R. Lott, Jr. with the Crime Prevention Research Center has done the number crunching for us. Lott and Carlisle E. Moody write,
Our findings show that armed citizens are significantly more effective than uniformed police at stopping potential mass shootings. This result isn’t a criticism of law enforcement, it simply reflects the tactical realities they face. Their uniforms make them visible targets, and longer response times give attackers more opportunity to cause harm. These results also suggest a broader conclusion: having armed citizens dispersed throughout public spaces improves public safety. Conversely, gun-free zones are likely to be counterproductive, a view supported by other research showing that the overwhelming majority of mass public shootings happen in such zones (Lott, 2010, Crime Prevention Research Center, 2025).
Armed citizens are not trained like police officers as to the correct response to an active shooter event. Consequently, they could make the situation worse by inserting themselves into the event. Our analysis soundly rejects that idea. In fact, we find the opposite to be true: armed citizens do not interfere with police, and in active shooter situations, they reduce deaths and injuries significantly more effectively than the police.
So, who is more effective?
Certainly, law enforcement is effective at stopping mass shootings, and they deserve our respect and appreciation for that work.
But Lott and Moody’s research shows that civilians with firearms are more effective at stopping mass shooters, at least partially due to the element of surprise (no uniforms to identify them as defenders of the innocent) and because they can be on site even when law enforcement hasn’t arrived yet.
And this data just further emphasizes that you should train to proficiency with your firearms and carry daily. You don’t know how many lives you may save today.
The suicide rules lol