WSJ's Fearmongering Doesn't Survive Contact With Evidence

Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics,

Legally armed civilians, we’re told, pose a major danger. They shoot innocent bystanders, justifiably kill others whenever they personally believe “force is reasonably necessary,” and rely on racist self-defense laws.

At least these concerns are the case in several recent news articles in the Wall Street Journal. On Monday, with the story on the front page of the Journal, reporter Mark Maremont continued his attacks on people legally carrying concealed handguns. His article presents four stories from 2021 to the present where citizens who used a gun in self-defense accidentally shot a bystander.

But with more than 1.6 million defensive gun uses each year, almost 21 million permit holders, and 29 constitutional-carry states where a permit to carry isn’t necessary, four cases over four years offers little perspective.

Even worse, only two of the four cases even involve people who were legally carrying concealed handguns in public (one case each from Massachusetts and Michigan). In the Ohio case, the convenience store employee had the gun at her workplace, so concealed-carry laws didn’t apply. In the California case, the state required a permit, but there is no evidence that the individual had a permit.

The Wall Street Journal article warns about the dangers of constitutional carry (what it calls “permitless carry”) and quotes gun-control advocates claiming that “When untrained or panicked shooters miss their target, it’s children, neighbors and bystanders who pay the price.” Yet, not a single one of the article’s examples involved constitutional carry.

To examine the issue more directly, the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I head, used ChatGPT and Grok to search news reports and compile a list of cases from the past decade in which concealed-carry permit holders accidentally shot an innocent bystander. Since 2016, we have also collected cases where people legally carrying guns in public have used them to stop crimes and we have reviewed those cases. All together there were four cases from 2016 through nearly all of 2025. One listed incident involved a security guard, who arguably should not be counted.

From 2016 to 2025, including the security-guard case, permit holders accidentally shot five bystanders – two killed and three wounded. Excluding the security guard, permit holders shot three bystanders – two killed and one wounded.

But the issue isn’t one of perfection. The question is: What is the alternative?

We then did the same review of police incidents from 2016 to 2025 and found 20 cases in which officers accidentally shot a total of 28 bystanders: six killed and 22 wounded. In one case, an officer wounded six people; in another, three officers wounded three people. Some news stories do not make clear whether the criminal or the police shot the bystander, so these numbers may understate the total number of bystanders shot by police.

Overall, police accidentally wounded 5.6 times as many bystanders as civilians (including the security-guard case), killed three times as many, and wounded seven times as many. Excluding the security guard, police shot seven times more bystanders, killed three times more, and wounded 22 times more. Without the security guard case, bystanders were seven times more likely to be accidentally shot by police than by civilians.

Other research using the FBI’s active-shooter definition confirms this pattern. We looked at cases from 2014 to 2024 – cases where individuals actively attempt to kill people in a public area and excluding shootings tied to other crimes – showing that armed civilians consistently act safely and effectively. They stopped over half of the attacks in places where they could legally carry, more frequently than police.

Police are extremely important in stopping crime, and research shows they are the single most important factor. But their uniforms make them operate at a real tactical disadvantage in stopping these shootings. Attackers can wait for officers to leave, strike elsewhere, or shoot them first. As a result, police were killed at eleven times the rate of intervening civilians and accidentally killed civilians or fellow officers five times – or five times more than civilians accidentally shot bystanders.

Attackers don’t just avoid police officers – they risk encountering far fewer of them than permit holders. In 2020, the U.S. had roughly 671,000 full-time sworn law enforcement officers, and typically fewer than 240,000 were on duty at any given time, amounting to less than 0.1% of the population. By contrast, almost 21 million adults held concealed-carry permits, representing about 7.8% of the adult population.

Permit holders are also extremely law-abiding, losing their licenses for firearm-related violations at rates of thousandths or tens of thousandths of 1 percentage point. Police rarely commit crimes, but concealed handgun permit holders are even more law-abiding, facing a conviction rate for firearms offenses that is just 1/12th the rate of police convictions.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the only recent problem with the Wall Street Journal news articles. Another long article co-authored by Maremont at the end of October warns that justifiable homicides increased after Stand Your Ground laws made it easier for people to defend themselves. What the article ignores is that while justifiable self defense killings rose, in the first five years after Stand Your Ground laws are adopted, murder rates fell on average by more than 8%.

The article misstates the legal principal that governs what is justifiable self-defense. It claims that anyone can shoot another person by simply claiming they thought force was “reasonably necessary.” But that isn’t the standard. The law requires that a reasonable third party believe the defendant faced a serious risk of injury or death from the attack.

But the fact that there were fewer murders and more self-defense uses is exactly what the proponents of Stand Your Ground would predict. On top of that, yet another Journal piece attacked these laws as racist because “Nationwide, Black men and boys account for almost two-thirds of the victims in civilian justifiable homicides, according to the Journal analysis of FBI data from 2019 to 2024.” Yet, the Journal ignores past research showing that blacks, who are the most likely victims of violent crime, are also by far the most likely to use Stand Your Ground laws as a legal defense. It is also important to note that about 90% of murders of blacks are committed by other blacks.

The Wall Street Journal alarms readers by focusing on anecdotes, yet it ignores extensive evidence showing that armed civilians pose little risk – and far less risk to bystanders than police. Permit holders regularly stop crimes and active shooters with minimal collateral harm. Stand Your Ground laws are not racist nor do they cause excessive violence; instead, they have reduced murder rates and empowered vulnerable communities – especially black victims – to defend themselves legally. By prioritizing sensational stories over solid data, such news stories ultimately undermine public safety.

John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.