Mr. Hawkins do you mean Chris Matthews "lied" when he said there is not one documented case of a civilian with a gun preventing a mass killing? I remember reading about a couple of such up there in your article. Perhaps you could send the reference source to Mr. Matthews - he might learn something.
In a nation that already has more than 200 million guns, gun control does little other than make the work of rapists, robbers, murderers and nuts like Adam Lanza easier. When faced with gun control laws, the law abiding citizen has no choice other than to disarm or become an outlaw, but people with bad intentions are faced with no such moral dilemma. That's why the best friend of a rapist or a potential Adam Lanza is the gun control advocate who's working tirelessly to insure that his targets can't adequately defend themselves.
On some level,...
(1) It discounts every instance in which fewer than 4 fatalities occurred. That means that if a citizen stopped the shooter before they could do very much damage, it does not get counted. Several documented cases that could have been mass shootings fell out of the study this way, including the Oregon mall shooting Hawkins mentions.
(2) It discounts every instance in which the citizen stopping the shooter was EVER employed in law enforcement -- even if they were off duty or no longer thus employed.