On Friday, the FBI released its report on active shooter incidents in 2025. The news, however, was quickly overshadowed by the active shooter incident that unfolded on Saturday afternoon in Twin Falls, Idaho, where a 24-year-old man opened fire on employees and customers at an In-N-Out restaurant before an off-duty police officer and an armed citizen sent him fleeing.
Like that shooting, the FBI report shows that the most common place for an active shooter incident in 2025 was businesses, though not all of them are open to the public. Of the 34 incidents recorded by the FBI last year, 14 of them took place in commercial areas. That’s double the number of shootings that happened in “open places,” which was the next most common category. There were six incidents in government buildings, four in educational settings, and three in houses of worship.
The 34 incidents recorded are ten more than the 24 shootings identified by the FBI in 2024, but are still well below the five-year average. These events are exceedingly rare, but there are some details that are significant.
First, handguns remain the weapon of choice for active shooting assailants, despite claims by gun control activists that AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles are the most common tool for these killers. Handguns were used in 53 percent of attacks, rifles in 33 percent, and shotguns in 14 percent (some assailants used more than one weapon).
Gun control activists routinely suggest that bans on so-called assault weapons are the most effective way to prevent active shootings, but the FBI report clearly refutes that notion. Even if gun bans were able to prevent those with evil intent from arming themselves (and they’re not), the FBI’s statistics show that handguns are far more commonly used in these kinds of shootings than rifles of any kind.
Another key takeaway, according to the FBI, is that almost 68 percent of the incidents (23 out of 34) were intentionally planned by the shooter, up from 58 percent in 2024. Again, the number of these incidents is so low that it’s tough to say that this a trend, but it’s a number worth paying attention to, especially since there is a subculture that glorifies and idolizes mass shooters. The FBI doesn’t say how many of these active shooter incidents were inspired by earlier killings, but at least one of the shooters (a 17-year-old who opened fire at Antioch High School in Tennessee) referenced previous mass shooters in his writings. Several other active shooting incidents were politically motivated, including a shooting outside the Capitol Jewish Museum committed by a pro-Palestine zealot who denounced Israel as a genocidal state.
A fair number of these incidents took place in “gun-free zones,” including a shooting at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, Brown University in Rhode Island, Antioch High School in Tennessee, and Florida State University in Tallahassee. Some of the shootings that took place in commercial locations are also “gun-free zones” under state law, like the Alas Locas bar in Liberty County, Texas where two people were killed and four others injured by an unknown assailant. Other businesses where active shootings occurred have corporate policies banning lawful carry, including Target stores.
The FBI report also notes that several of these incidents were stopped by citizens.
In 2025, civilians intervened in seven active shooter incidents. In more than one in five incidents (21%), members of the targeted population confronted the shooter, an increase compared to one in 24 incidents (4%) in 2024. In three incidents, civilians who intervened sustained injuries.
Of the 34 attacks, civilians intervened in 50% at government locations, 67% at houses of worship, and 14% at commerce locations. However, civilian intervention was not reported in education or open space locations.
During these incidents, civilians took a range of actions. In four attacks, they successfully disarmed and/or restrained the shooter, while in three, they used weapons to intervene. At the Sky Meadow Country Club shooting, a civilian hit the shooter with a chair, disarming and causing him to flee. At the KDC/One Warehouse shooting, civilians disarmed the shooter, forcing him from the scene. In the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team Complex shooting, unarmed soldiers disarmed and restrained the suspect until military police arrived; and in the Jackson County Public Library incident, civilians overpowered the shooter during a shotgun malfunction. Law enforcement apprehended the shooters at the scene in all cases except the KDC/One Warehouse incident, where officers captured the shooter the following day at a different location.
In three incidents, members of the targeted populations confronted the shooters using firearms or other weaponized objects. At the Border Patrol Annex and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shootings, civilians fired personal firearms at the shooters before law enforcement arrived. At CrossPointe Community Church, a civilian used his vehicle to strike the shooter. In all three incidents, the shooters were killed at the scene.
The CrossPointe Community Church was also defended by a team of volunteer security members who engaged the shooter.
These seven incidents underscore something my colleague Tom Knighton pointed out in a post about the Twin Falls, Idaho armed citizen: these attackers aren’t generally expecting resistance, so it is vitally important to fight back. I’d prefer that folks have a gun of their own to do so, but we know that these killers are often specifically targeting “gun-free zones” in order to reduce the chances of them encountering an armed response. In three of the four incidents where civilians were able to disarm or restrain the shooter, it took multiple individuals to do so. Armed or not, there’s strength in numbers.
Law enforcement won’t always be able to arrive on scene fast enough to engage an active shooter. Of the 34 incidents recorded by the FBI last year, police “intervened in 13 attacks while the shooter was still targeting victims, and in five of those attacks, law enforcement exchanged gunfire with the shooter.” The vast majority of these incidents ended because citizens fought back or the shooter fled or took their own life, which makes it even more important that we have the tools to fight back as effectively as possible. “Gun-free zones” don’t prevent active shooting incidents. They do, however, prevent an armed response from happening until police arrive. If we want to save lives, we need to get rid of these civilian disarmament zones and allow lawful gun owners to protect themselves and others if necessary.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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