Our Research on Errors in the FBI’s Active Shooting Reports given Extensive Coverage in the Washingt
John Lott - Crime Prevention Research Center | Published on 3/19/2023
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler has a long discussion about our research on the FBI’s Active Shooting cases. One benefit from Kessler’s piece is that he was actually able to get the Texas State University people to respond to two of the cases that we provided. Dr. Lott has tried numerous times over the years to get responses from the people at Texas State University without any success. In their response to Kessler, the TSU people claim that they don’t include cases involving domestic disputes or instances where a suspect started shooting after being denied entry to a lounge or bar. Yet, at the end of the long quote from Kessler’s article, we list 14 instances where the FBI list does include shooting resulting from domestic disputes and three others that involve people being denied entry to a lounge or bar. Excluding these 17 cases would reduce the FBI’s 252 active shooting cases from 2014 to 2021 by seven percent.