Key Takeaways
- Elisjsha Dicken stopped an active shooter in Greenwood, Indiana, by fatally shooting the attacker just 15 seconds after the attack began.
- The Crime Prevention Research Center argues that the FBI significantly underreports the percentage of attacks stopped by armed civilians, estimating it at 36.6% or higher.
- Major media outlets suggested Dicken’s actions were rare, citing FBI data which indicates that civilians rarely stop active shooter events.
- The FBI’s broad definition of active shooters includes various types of incidents, and they acknowledge armed civilians stopped attacks in 8 of 12 years reviewed.
- Dicken’s successful intervention highlights the importance of being armed and prepared in active shooting situations, contradicting many media narratives.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Elisjsha Dicken was 22 years old and carrying a licensed handgun when an attacker opened fire inside a Greenwood, Indiana, mall on July 17, 2022. The attack killed three people and injured another. Dicken fired his first shot 15 seconds after it began, from 40 yards away, and fatally shot the attacker.
Those two numbers, 15 seconds and 40 yards, are why his name drew national attention, and they are why the Crime Prevention Research Center put Greenwood at the front of a new analysis, as reported by CPRC on September 9, arguing the FBI has badly undercounted how often armed civilians stop active shooters.
In the days after Greenwood, much of the national press reached for FBI statistics to frame what Dicken did as a near impossibility. Reuters wrote that “it is rare for a bystander to stop an ‘active shooter’ attack in the United States,” pointing to an FBI report showing only two of 61 such attacks the prior year ended when “citizens engaged the shooter.” CNN called cases of an armed bystander confronting an active shooter “rare.” The Associated Press, the Washington Post, and the New York Times ran headlines to the same effect, and Politifact, citing the same FBI reports, said it “rarely happens.”
CPRC’s review of the FBI’s active shooter reports from 2014 through 2025 puts the share of attacks stopped by armed civilians at no less than 36.6 percent, not the 3.9 percent the FBI numbers imply. Set aside attacks in gun-free zones, the one category where a permit holder is barred from carrying in the first place, and CPRC says the average climbs above 52.9 percent. For 2025 alone, the group puts it at 58.3 percent.
The FBI’s own definition is broad. The Bureau counts an active shooter as one or more people actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a public place, excluding gang violence and crimes such as robbery. That sweeps in everything from a single missed shot to a mass public shooting. And the FBI’s reports do credit armed civilians with stopping attacks in eight of the twelve years reviewed. The cases exist in the Bureau’s own data. CPRC’s argument is that far more of them exist than the Bureau ever lists, and it has published its spreadsheet and the underlying news stories for anyone who wants to check the work.
When John Stossel asked the FBI about the omissions, the Bureau’s answer, as CPRC quotes it, was that its data is “not intended to explore all active shooting incidents but rather to provide a baseline understanding.” That is a fair thing for a research office to say about a baseline. It is not a fair basis for a headline calling Greenwood a fluke, and that gap between what the FBI says its data is and what reporters used it for is the whole problem.
More from USA Carry:
Dicken’s shot is remembered for the distance and the clock, and both deserve it. Forty yards with a handgun during an active attack is not a range-day number. Neither would have mattered without the simpler fact. He was carrying. The mindset that put a licensed handgun on his body that day is the only reason the distance and the timing were ever his to use.
Three people died in Greenwood. The attack ended because a 22-year-old with a licensed handgun was there and fired 15 seconds after it started. CPRC’s numbers say he had far more company than the headlines allowed.
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