An analysis published by Reason examines how often civilians use guns to stop shooters who pose ongoing threats to multiple people. It opens with the Bend, Oregon school shooting, where a father of two students saw a pickup truck being shot at, drove onto the sidewalk, and ran inside the school. He found the gunman wrestling with a teacher and shot him several times with a .40-caliber handgun that had been legally secured in his truck; the suspect died carrying 44 more rounds of ammunition.
The analysis relies on a Crime Prevention Research Center spreadsheet, which counted 23 such incidents in 2025. After checking linked news accounts and excluding one-on-one self-defense cases or clearly unsuccessful interventions, the author arrived at a more conservative count of 12 to 14. The article acknowledges that exact numbers are hard to establish because some cases are ambiguous, some defenders may only scare a shooter away, and some incidents never make the news. It also says 2020–2024 saw roughly similar numbers.
None of the 2025 defensive gun uses took place at a school, which the article attributes to laws that generally ban guns on school grounds and make it harder for law-abiding gun owners to intervene there. The Bend case involved a civilian entering the school after the shooting had begun. The article lists other examples from Nebraska, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Washington, where armed civilians fired at or helped subdue attackers threatening crowds or multiple victims.