# Good Guy with a gun, fallacy or not? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 16, 2016, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501 "2016-06-16T06:41:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/21 "2016-06-16T16:47:51Z")
Somebody should take this concept and run with it for a mystery short story. I’m planning to murder someone for some reason, with a gun. I tail him to a public area, and we’re suddenly in the middle of one of our weekly mass gun murders. During the confusion I shoot my personal victim, leave him in the pile of bodies, and walk away scott-free, his death just another attributed to the Bad Guy with the Gun. Kinda like the G.K. Chesterton Father Brown story “The Sign of the Broken Sword,” where the murder victim is killed on a battlefield. Contains the famous lines “Where does a wise man hide a pebble?” “On a beach.” Tell the story first-person on the part of the murderer. Title it “The Good Guy with the Gun.” – Uke, ex-crime novel editor ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/22 "2016-06-16T17:05:20Z")
> [@Orwell](#): > > How is that accomplished? Recent mass shootings in France, London, Brussels, Chicago and elsewhere where gun laws are stringent strongly indicate that laws do nothing to persuade nutjobs from willingly breaking gun laws as a preliminary step in their murderous carnage. QFT Criminals will find ways to acquire guns. No matter what laws are in place. People prepared to commit serious crimes aren’t concerned about getting charged for having a gun. Gun laws do an excellent job of disarming the public. They don’t want to face the stiff penalties for getting caught with a gun. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/23 "2016-06-16T17:08:22Z")
Reminds me of a made-for-TV movie from the 1980s, [The Right Of The People.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091857/) A small town made open-carry legal and easy, and pretty soon everyone in town had a pistol on their hip. I don’t remember much of the show except for one comical moment when some bad guys from out of town walked into a grocery store to rob it, and reconsidered their plan (albeit briefly) after observing that damn near everyone was armed. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/24 "2016-06-16T17:18:09Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > Here’s a quote from the link: Mina said the off-duty officer engaged in a shoot-out with Mateen up until more officers arrived. Additional police officers arrived and also engaged the suspect, and “forced him to stop shooting and retreat to the bathroom where he had some hostages.” > > So, here is a case where an off duty police officer was doing security at a club. Gunman starts firing, off duty police officer on scene calls for back up and engages in an exchange of gunfire with the perp. Back up arrives soon thereafter. > > This seems like a case where a bad guy with a gun is met by a good guy with a gun (no less an off duty LEO). On duty police arrive, perp retreats into the bowels of the nightclub with hostages. We know the story. > > IMHO, this appears to be the case where there is a good guy with a gun, and it didn’t really prevent any of the tragedy. In fact, the good guy with a guy should be at least better trained than your average “good guy with a gun.” > > I don’t really see this as an example of why there should be less restrictive gun laws? In fact, the opposite seems true to me. I am pro-gun (though I don’t own or have a desire to own any), I’m not a fan of this argument, not because I don’t think it’s probably true, but rather because it’s almost impossible to prove because we don’t know how the situation might have gone down differently and how convincing these speculations are will depend on one’s already existing views, making it thoroughly unconvincing to anyone on either side. Like in this case, we know what happened with one person carrying, but he was the security guard, everyone else was legally prohibited from carrying. If no one was carrying and had to wait for the police, would more or less people have been shot? Similarly, what if the patrons could have carried, particularly those held hostage, what would the results have been? We can speculate, but all we’re doing is speculating, so it’s meaningless. Or even take some other random situations. For a given robbery where it goes down without a gun, would introducing one to the shop owner have scared off the criminal or made him panic and start shooting? If there were shots fired, would introducing a gun have prevented or lessened that or would it have made it worse? Again, I know what I think about it, but I’ll never convince someone who disagrees with me that my speculation is more likely than theirs. > [@](#): > > 2nd enthusiasts, please educate if you have a differing opinion on how making gun control less restrictive (and Florida is one of the more accommodating States in terms of access to firearms), would have helped this situation? The argument in this case would generally be that it was a gun-free zone, none of the patrons could carry. As such, even though the security guy had a gun, if one or more other people had had one, it may have been stopped sooner. Or, in fact, had it been the case that more people would likely be carrying and that he would likely be prevented altogether, that it might discourage him from even attempting it. > [@filmore](#): > > One problem with the GGWAG is that these events are pretty rare. We’d probably need to have 10-20%(?) of the population carrying to ensure that a good guy is there to stop them. However, good guys aren’t necessarily good guys all the time. They are humans and may get angry and snap just like anyone else. They may not go on shooting rampages, but they may pull out their gun if someone makes them mad, cuts them off in traffic, is rude to them, has more than 10 items in the express lane, etc. I suspect that the more people are carrying, the more there will be shootings of 1-2 people in a moment of passion. > > I think if the GGWAG were just people who were well trained (like military, police) for these situations, then it would be a good thing. But the reality is that you’d have a lot of people who want to feel tough (George Zimmerman) who wouldn’t always use their guns responsibly and wouldn’t be trained in how to react in those situations. Frankly, this is just nonsense. A quick Google search says there’s 12.8 Million CCW holders in the US, obviously that isn’t spread evenly and doesn’t include areas where no permit is required, or people open carrying, or people carrying as part of a job (policeman, security guard, etc. though that’s probably a large overlap), or even people carrying illegally, but that’s still roughly 5.5% of the adult (over 21) population. That means more than 1/20 people are likely carrying a weapon around you at any given time and you don’t even know. In places like Virginia, here, I’ve heard statistics putting it in the 1/12 to 1/8 range, but I can’t seem to find any good numbers to verify that now. In short, with THAT many people carrying, if people with them were as likely to snap as you’re scared they are, we’d see a lot more road rage incidents ending in shootings and all than we do. Just because we’re human beings and get angry doesn’t mean people are going to snap and kill people. Hell, surely you know at least one person who knows martial arts. Are you worried that person is going to get angry and go around snapping necks and breaking limbs? In this particular situation, you don’t need 10-20% carrying to ensure that someone there was carrying, even running with the low number of 5.5% (and I imagine it would be much higher in Florida given that they’re generally pretty gun-friendly), it’s pretty darn certain that there would have been at least one patron carrying even if there were only 100 people there (99.7% at least one of the 100 people would have one assuming 5.5% chance), and that’s conservative since it’s probably higher than 5.5% chance and I know there were a lot more people there. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/25 "2016-06-16T18:04:50Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > In short, with THAT many people carrying, if people with them were as likely to snap as you’re scared they are, we’d see a lot more road rage incidents ending in shootings and all than we do. Just because we’re human beings and get angry doesn’t mean people are going to snap and kill people. Hell, surely you know at least one person who knows martial arts. Are you worried that person is going to get angry and go around snapping necks and breaking limbs? It’s a lot easier for someone with a gun to kill people than someone with martial arts training, and a lot easier to protect yourself from martial arts than a shooter. And bystanders might be hit by stray bullets, but they are very unlikely to be hit by stray karate kicks. And it’s the same for any other weapons, like knives or baseball bats or anything else. If I had a co-worker who was in an abusive relationship and her husband was really into martial arts, I’d be worried he might karate chop her or otherwise hurt her. But if I had a co-worker in an abusive relationship whose husband was really into guns, I’d be worried about her and myself, [since in a lot of mass shootings, the killer kills their spouse along with others](https://everytownresearch.org/reports/guns-and-violence-against-women/): > [@](#): > > At the same time, an astonishing share of gun violence in America is driven by domestic violence. More than half of women murdered with guns in the U.S. in 2011 — at least 53 percent — were killed by intimate partners or family members.5 And research by Everytown for Gun Safety establishes that this is also true for mass shootings: in 57 percent of the mass shootings between January 2009 and June 2014, the perpetrator killed an intimate partner or family member. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/26 "2016-06-16T18:37:37Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > I have a gun. I got it in NYS. It’s one of the more restrictive states and I am fine with that. I had to undergo a background check, etc. I had to show them my ID, and had to jump through a few hoops. CCW is different from just buying a gun. In Florida, you can buy a gun, but you cannot legally carry it on your person unless you have a CCW. That entails some fairly rigorous training by a certified instructor, or an honorable discharge from the armed services (where presumably, the soldier/sailor/marine/pilot etc has already been trained in how to properly handle a weapon.) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/27 "2016-06-16T18:57:40Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > I don’t really see this as an example of why there should be less restrictive gun laws? Because the prevalence of guns is inversely correlated with homicide rates. Whether people are able to correctly deal with an armed criminal or not when they have guns available to them, it’s irrelevant if we still know that more guns = fewer homicides. Based on the math, the largest predictor of homicide rates is the gini coefficient. By focusing political effort on restricting guns, instead of income disparity, you’re both actively working against saving lives and not acting towards saving lives. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/28 "2016-06-16T19:12:24Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Because the prevalence of guns is inversely correlated with homicide rates. Whether people are able to correctly deal with an armed criminal or not when they have guns available to them, it’s irrelevant if we still know that more guns = fewer homicides. > > Based on the math, the largest predictor of homicide rates is the gini coefficient. By focusing political effort on restricting guns, instead of income disparity, you’re both actively working against saving lives and not acting towards saving lives. I wasn’t aware of this, do you have cites? I’d like to learn more if this is the case. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/29 "2016-06-16T19:49:45Z")
> [@Sam\_Lowry](#): > > I wasn’t aware of this, do you have cites? I’d like to learn more if this is the case. There’s things [like this](http://www.hngn.com/articles/141814/20151020/harvard-gun-study-the-more-guns-the-less-criminal-activity.htm), but I doubt that most people would trust a “study”. So really, what I encourage you or anyone to do is to grab the data and analyze it yourself. Use real, public, official data that’s not cherry-picked by anyone and wasn’t prepared with guns in mind. Use graphs and data mining tools, and see if you can find any way to positively correlate guns with homicide. I’ve tried all manners of suggestions in previous threads and it stubbornly resists anything but a negative correlation. Copying and pasting from the other thread (as my post was overlooked there): * * * Start grabbing statistics out of the Wikipedia and plugging them into here: [http://shodor.org/chemviz/tools/multireg/index.html](http://shodor.org/chemviz/tools/multireg/index.html) Put the homicide rate in as the Y column and any variables which you think might affect it (guns, income disparity, etc.) into one of the Xn columns. > **[List of countries by intentional homicide rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)** > > The list of countries by UNODC homicide rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 100,000 individuals per year. A homicide rate of 30 (out of 100,000) corresponds to 0.03% of the population dying by homicide. The reliability of underlying national murder rate data may vary. Only UNODC-vetted data is used in the main table below. In some cases, it may not be as up to date as other sources. See further down as to why its data is used over other sources. > Homicide rates may be under-report... > **[Estimated number of civilian guns per capita by country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country)** > > This is a list of countries by estimated number of privately owned guns per 100 people. The Small Arms Survey 2017 provides estimates of the total number of civilian-owned guns in a country. It then calculates the number per 100 people. This number for a country does not indicate the percentage of the population that owns guns. This is because individuals can own more than one gun. > See also: Percent of households with guns by country. It gives the percent of households with guns. It is furthe... > **[List of countries by income equality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality)** > > This is a list of countries or dependencies by income inequality metrics, including Gini coefficients. The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality (where everyone has the same income) and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality (where one person has all the income—and everyone else has no income). > Income distribution can vary greatly from wealth distribution in a country (see List of countries by wealth inequality). Income from black market economi... > **[List of countries by GDP (nominal)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IMF_ranked_countries_by_GDP)** > > Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. Countries are sorted by nominal GDP estimates from financial and statistical institutions, which are calculated at market or government official exchange rates. Nominal GDP does not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results can vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currenc... > **[List of countries by Fragile States Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index)** > > This is a list of countries by order of appearance in the Fragile States Index (formerly the Failed States Index) of the United States think tank Fund for Peace. > A fragile state has several attributes. Common indicators include a state whose central government is so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory; non-provision of public services; widespread corruption and criminality; refugees and involuntary movement of populations; and sharp economic dec... > **[List of countries by ethnic and cultural diversity level](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level)** > > This is a list of countries by ethnic and cultural diversity level, as per Fearon's analysis. > The lists are commonly used in economics literature to compare the levels of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious fractionalization in different countries. > Fractionalization is the probability that two individuals drawn randomly from the country's groups are not from the same group (ethnic, religious, or whatever the criterion is). In Fearon's analysis, only groups containing over one percent ... Based on the range of the output numbers and the range of the values in a column, you can determine what percentage of the input was actually used to decide the output. If the multiplier is positive then there’s a positive correlation. If the multiplier is negative, there’s a negative correlation. Gini coefficient is the principal variable, that I’ve seen. Reducing guns causes deaths (though, not at a meaningful level). Reducing the gini coefficient saves lives. If you want to save lives, support the 2nd amendment and measures which reduce income disparity. * * * If you do go looking for studies, watch out for “gun homicides”. It’s a bit of mental gymnastics that people do to try and make it look like guns increase homicides. It’s actually just the percentile of homicides which used that as the weapon - which is an irrelevant statistic since dead people don’t care what weapon the murderer used, and similarly irrelevant if the total number of homicides increases as gun count is reduced. And, even there, it’s a vanishingly small effect, if at all. I’ll also note that it appears that where the linear regression is the most off-target is with countries that are major trafficking hubs (drugs or human). Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any good statistics for “criminal revenue as percentile of GDP” or “drug export revenues” that are listed by country and use a consistent methodology. I suspect that if I had such a thing, the Gini and that would be the principal predictors across the globe and really tighten up the margin for error. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/30 "2016-06-16T19:56:31Z")
The blogger (and professor at UCLA School of Law) Eugene Volokh discusses this in [Do citizens (not police officers) with guns ever stop mass shootings?](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/03/do-civilians-with-guns-ever-stop-mass-shootings/) As Volokh notes, the question “what examples can one give of civilians armed with guns stopping [mass shootings]?” can be difficult to answer: > [@Eugene Volokh](#): > > 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. Nonetheless, Volokh does give a number of examples of cases where–at least arguably–mass shootings were stopped by a “good guy with a gun”. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/31 "2016-06-16T20:01:51Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > QFT > > Criminals will find ways to acquire guns. No matter what laws are in place. People prepared to commit serious crimes aren’t concerned about getting charged for having a gun. > > Gun laws do an excellent job of disarming the public. They don’t want to face the stiff penalties for getting caught with a gun. Criminals will always find a way to acquire guns because the number of guns is never going to be zero, but the less guns out there the less guns criminals will have. This is such a simple and straight forward concept that it simple boggles the mind that people still try to make the “but you can’t stop every single criminal from owning a gun” argument. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/32 "2016-06-16T20:25:56Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > The blogger (and professor at UCLA School of Law) Eugene Volokh discusses this in [Do citizens (not police officers) with guns ever stop mass shootings?](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/03/do-civilians-with-guns-ever-stop-mass-shootings/) As Volokh notes, the question “what examples can one give of civilians armed with guns stopping [mass shootings]?” can be difficult to answer: > > Nonetheless, Volokh does give a number of examples of cases where–at least arguably–mass shootings were stopped by a “good guy with a gun”. There was also the case where a off duty cop hired for security stopped\* two\* terrorists. I’d count him. > **[Texas shooting: Outgunned traffic officer stopped 2 attackers | CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/05/us/texas-police-shooting-hero/)** > > An off-duty traffic officer working security in Garland, Texas, used a Glock .45 to shoot dead two men wearing body armor and armed with assault rifles. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/33 "2016-06-16T20:27:49Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > If you do go looking for studies, watch out for “gun homicides”. It’s a bit of mental gymnastics that people do to try and make it look like guns increase homicides. Another loaded and misleading term is “gun deaths”- which are mostly suicides. And include justified police and self-defense shootings. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/34 "2016-06-16T20:29:55Z")
One of the statistical challenges as well, a GGWG intercepts bad guy with scary gun about to enter the back door of a movie theatre. They exchange fire and GGWG kills bad guy. There was no mass shooting therefore many like to say a GGWG never stops a mass shooting, just because its less likely to become a mass shooting. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/35 "2016-06-16T20:33:27Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > There’s things [like this](http://www.hngn.com/articles/141814/20151020/harvard-gun-study-the-more-guns-the-less-criminal-activity.htm), but I doubt that most people would trust a “study”. So really, what I encourage you or anyone to do is to grab the data and analyze it yourself. Use real, public, official data that’s not cherry-picked by anyone and wasn’t prepared with guns in mind. Use graphs and data mining tools, and see if you can find any way to positively correlate guns with homicide. I’ve tried all manners of suggestions in previous threads and it stubbornly resists anything but a negative correlation. I’d love to see a study, and your first link talks about a Harvard study, but when I google it to find out more, the first link that pops up is [this Snopes link](http://www.snopes.com/harvard-flaw-review/). I’m not going to crunch the numbers myself, partly because I’m not a statistician, and I could see myself messing up the numbers or how I’m analyzing them. I guess what I want is for the CDC to start doing studies again, which they haven’t been able to do because [the House has been blocking funding](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2015/01/14/why-the-cdc-still-isnt-researching-gun-violence-despite-the-ban-being-lifted-two-years-ago/). ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/36 "2016-06-16T20:41:12Z")
One of the statistical challenges as well, a GGWG intercepts bad guy with scary gun about to enter the back door of a movie theatre. They exchange fire and GGWG kills bad guy. There was no mass shooting therefore many like to say a GGWG never stops a mass shooting, just because its less likely to become a mass shooting. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/37 "2016-06-16T21:24:53Z")
> [@Sam\_Lowry](#): > > I’d love to see a study, and your first link talks about a Harvard study, but when I google it to find out more, the first link that pops up is [this Snopes link](http://www.snopes.com/harvard-flaw-review/). I’ll look for some better (i.e. real) studies tonight, when I’m not at work. Sorry about that. I can’t do a good job making my point when I’m trying to do work at the same time. But you really don’t need to be a statistician. Just drop the gun ownership and homicides into Excel and ask it to graph them on a coordinate plane. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/38 "2016-06-16T21:54:05Z")
> [@Sam\_Lowry](#): > > II guess what I want is for the CDC to start doing studies again, which they haven’t been able to do because [the House has been blocking funding](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2015/01/14/why-the-cdc-still-isnt-researching-gun-violence-despite-the-ban-being-lifted-two-years-ago/). Why? What does the Center for _Disease_ control had to do with gun studies? They are blocked as it’s totally outside their purview and they are clearly biased. ---
**Author:** ![Orwell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/dfb087/32.png) [@Orwell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orwell)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/39 "2016-06-16T21:56:58Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Why? What does the Center for _Disease_ control had to do with gun studies? They are blocked as it’s totally outside their purview and they are clearly biased. Exactly right. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2016, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501/40 "2016-06-16T22:06:19Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > Criminals will always find a way to acquire guns because the number of guns is never going to be zero, but the less guns out there the less guns criminals will have. This is such a simple and straight forward concept that it simple boggles the mind that people still try to make the “but you can’t stop every single criminal from owning a gun” argument. Reducing the numbers of guns that law-abiding citizens own only serves to embolden criminals to commit more crimes. The number of violent crimes will increase. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-guy-with-a-gun-fallacy-or-not/757501.md?page=3)