>>>>>>
>>>>>>That could be a very interesting question to ask directly of the NRA: "How many shooting incidents in the last X years were ended by armed members of your organization, who were not trained professionals acting in the course of their regular duties?"
>>>>>
>>>>>I'm sure they wouldn't dodge the question as they have run a column in National Rifleman since 1958 addressing exactly that question
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>http://www.nraila.org/armedcitizen/
>>>>>
>>>>>http://www.old-yankee.com/rkba/armcit/
>>>>>
>>>>>Of course this isn't objective but I assume all the facts stated are checkable and I don't ever remember anyone "exposing" their making it all up and I'm sure in 52 years somebody would have if that were the issue.
>>>>
>>>>Thanks for the links - I looked for something like that earlier on the NRA site but couldn't find anything.
>>>>
>>>>Searching on the keyword "mass" gives a bunch of hits but most seem to be basically self-defense. On an admittedly brief scan, I didn't see any cases where an armed citizen, acting as a third party, ended an incident.
>>>
>>>Just a couple to get you started:
>>>
>>>http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2008/05/concealed-carry-permit-holder-defends.html
>>>http://www.davekopel.com/2A/OthWr/principal&gun.htm
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James_Church_Massacre
>>>http://articles.latimes.com/1992-01-01/local/me-1021_1_public-safety
>>>
>>>A lot of different media reports on this one and they still persist on some sights today (like wikipedia):
>>>http://johnrlott.tripod.com/postsbyday/topic-appalachianlawschool.html
>>>
>>>An interesting perspective on the conceal and carry law:
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby%27s_massacre
>>
>>So, there appear to be some. Although the St. James Church one was not 3rd party, return fire was from a congregation member so first-party.
>>
>>Still, they don't appear terribly common, especially if you have to go to South Africa for examples...
>
>Come on, Al. The mass shooting isn't all that "common" - it is a small sample. The fact that it has happened at all should mean something.

Possibly poor choice of words on my part. I think I'm involved in 3 different threads on this topic. In one of them I mentioned the statistic there are roughly 10,000 firearm homicides per year in the U.S. So, if you're referencing incidents over the last 10 years or so, for "commonality" you'd need to compare them to about 100,000 firearm homicides over that same period.

Mass shooting incidents are much less common, whether recorded "armed citizen" responses is an "uncommon" fraction of those incidents is open to debate.

>Also, look at the paper I referenced in my reply to Tracy
>
>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272929&http://www.kc3.com/CCWSTATS.html
>
>I think more telling is the curious failure of most media to report that that gunmen in the Appalachian Law school shooting was subdued by two *armed* students. Somehow it is not polite for the media to mention that.

According to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting ) the two students (a police officer and a sheriff's deputy BTW) were not initially armed, but retrieved weapons from their vehicles. According to one version of events, yes, they did subdue the shooter.

Lott's analysis re: concealed carry has been reviewed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_lott#Concealed_weapons_and_crime_rate ) by the National Academy of Science, amongst others. There is some similar analysis for Canada (with some US comparisons) at http://members.shaw.ca/vancouver-cssd/ArmedSelfDefence-Canada-SFUpaper.pdf .