“Missing From the Headlines” – How Often Guns Are Used to Save Lives.

In his recent video, journalist John Stossel starts with a familiar script: on TV, armed citizens are bumbling liabilities. But in his latest video, Stossel says that portrayal is less about reality and more about narrative. He admits he “is no gun person,” raised among “lefty gun haters,” and yet the more he looked, the more he found cases where regular people used guns to stop violence. That simple observation put him on a collision course with federal statistics and the way legacy media turns those stats into “truth.”

What The FBI Says – and Why It Matters

Stossel points out that FBI reports depict armed self-defense as rare, especially instances where civilians stop “active shooters.” Those top-line numbers are repeated in press conferences and policy debates, then amplified by networks and pundits. If the FBI’s line is the baseline, it shapes everything from editorial choices to legislative talking points. And yet, Stossel argues, the baseline itself is incomplete.

John Lott’s Counterpoint: The Missing Cases

Criminal justice researcher John Lott tells Stossel the FBI is “simply missing a huge number of cases.” Lott’s work – admittedly controversial in some academic circles—catalogs incidents in which civilians stopped attackers, often without firing or with minimal loss of life. Whether you agree with every one of Lott’s conclusions or not, his basic claim is falsifiable: there are more defensive gun uses than the FBI counts, and some are dramatic life-savers.

Media Partnerships And Scripted Skepticism

Stossel adds an uncomfortable wrinkle: gun-control groups openly consult with Hollywood writers. He quotes one organization bragging about a “partnership with Hollywood” and being “consulted on scripts.” Combine that with the FBI’s “rare” framing, and it’s no surprise TV tropes teach viewers that armed citizens mostly make things worse. If you start with an assumption that good-guy self-defense is fantasy, you’ll write it that way.

A Tale Of Two Nightclubs

To illustrate selection bias, Stossel and John Lott juxtapose two nightclub stories. Everyone knows the Pulse massacre – horrific and wall-to-wall coverage. But one week later in South Carolina, a concealed carrier shot an attacker who arrived with “like 125 rounds,” Lott says. The casualty count was far smaller precisely because he was stopped – and the story barely rippled beyond local news. The tragedy leads; the prevention, if it makes it into a segment at all, gets a shrug. That media asymmetry can make defensive gun uses appear vanishingly rare even when they are not.

Parkland’s Shadow And A Florida Near-Miss

After the Parkland shooting dominated headlines, a man began firing at a large event next to an elementary school in Titusville, Florida. According to Stossel’s interview, a legally armed bystander shot and seriously wounded the attacker before he could murder anyone. Police said the “bystander saved a lot of people’s lives.” And yet, Stossel notes, this incident also attracted little national attention – and the FBI did not include it in its tally. If your database ignores the near-misses that didn’t become mass shootings because someone stopped them, your conclusion will inevitably understate the protective effect of armed citizens.

Raul Mendez: “I Was Prepared, And It Saved Lives”

The most harrowing account in Stossel’s piece comes from Raul Mendez. At a neighbor’s party, a guest opened fire and shot Mendez in the head, the bullet exiting through his eye. Miraculously regaining consciousness, Mendez drew his concealed handgun and stopped the attacker. He credits his preparation with saving his pregnant wife, his daughters, and other guests. Mendez tells Stossel the FBI hasn’t recorded his case at all: “They’re not recording the true numbers.” It’s not a comic-book fantasy; it’s a survivor’s testimony.

The FBI’s Response: A Narrow “Baseline”

Stossel says he asked the FBI about these missing cases. The Bureau’s answer: their reporting isn’t “intended to explore all active shooter incidents,” but to provide a “baseline understanding.” That sounds like an admission that the coverage is incomplete by design. Baselines can be useful, but when politicians and anchors treat a partial dataset as comprehensive, the downstream narratives – and the policies built on them – can go off the rails.

Counting What’s Hard To Count

Here’s my take: defensive gun uses are notoriously hard to measure. Many events end with no shots fired; a gun is displayed and the criminal flees. Police don’t always take reports on non-crimes, and victims may not call at all. Even when shots are fired, if the story never rises above local coverage, federal tallies can miss it. That doesn’t mean you must accept every estimate you see (scholars disagree widely), but it does mean modesty is warranted when anyone claims precise totals. In this fog of underreporting, Mendez-style cases can fall through the cracks.

The Policy Trap Of One-Sided Evidence

Stossel argues that when the media and Hollywood treat defensive uses as “statistically unrealistic,” the public is nudged toward policies that disarm the law-abiding first. Lott’s blunt line is that bans tend to be heeded by “the most law-abiding,” leaving victims more vulnerable. You don’t have to accept that as iron law to see the common-sense core: if you remove tools from those likely to obey, you may not change the behavior of those who won’t. Good policy should account for both the harms guns can cause and the harms that can occur when good people are forbidden to meet force with force.

The Asymmetry Of News Value

Another point Stossel hammers: prevented tragedies are boring. If a would-be killer is stopped early, the death toll is low and the national media move on. That editorial logic is human – but it’s also how we undervalue the role that armed citizens sometimes play. When a shooting is interrupted before it turns catastrophic, it looks, on paper, like a “small” incident. In reality, an ordinary person’s preparation kept it small. That’s newsworthy, too.

What Better Data Would Look Like

If we want a clearer picture, we’d collect standardized reports of defensive gun uses across jurisdictions, including no-shot incidents; we’d audit federal tallies against local cases; and we’d tag active-shooter near-misses where a civilian intervention plausibly reduced casualties. We’d also disclose methodologies prominently so the public knows exactly what’s in and what’s out. In short: measure more, measure honestly, and don’t pretend the baseline is the full story.

Preparedness Isn’t A Fantasy

Stossel gives the last word to the people closest to the violence. John Lott insists the FBI is missing many civilian stops. Raul Mendez insists that carrying every day “saved lives.” And John Stossel insists the legacy press ignores these stories while repeating a comforting myth that only trained authorities can be protectors. My opinion: responsible armed self-defense isn’t a cure-all, but it’s also not an “adolescent rescue fantasy.” Sometimes it’s the reason a headline reads “injured” instead of “dead.” If we’re serious about truth, we should count those saves, tell those stories, and build policy that sees the whole field – not just the part that’s easy to tally.

For more info, watch John Stossel’s video here.