Two Armed Citizens Stopped a Mass Shooting. Nobody Talked About Their Training.
On May 26, 2024, a man opened fire at a graduation party in Akron, Ohio. He killed one person immediately. He was reloading when two armed citizens—neither law enforcement—engaged him. One of them fired the fatal shots. The shooter was stopped. The story died in the news cycle in 48 hours.
I watched the details come out and realized something: nobody asked what training these two men had. Nobody asked if they'd taken a concealed carry course. Nobody asked if they'd ever practiced drawing under stress, or how many rounds they'd shot at a range in the past year, or what their decision-making process was in those three seconds when it mattered.
That silence tells you everything about how broken the conversation around armed self-defense really is.
Background & Context
Defensive gun use—actual DGU events where a citizen stops an active threat—happens more often than most people think. The numbers vary wildly depending on who's counting. The CDC found between 60,000 and 2.5 million DGU incidents per year in a 2018 review. That range is absurd, which is exactly the problem. We don't track this data the way we track mass shootings, so we don't build institutional knowledge around what works.
The Akron case is one data point. But it's not alone. In 2021, a woman with a concealed carry permit stopped an active shooter in Charleston, West Virginia—same pattern. Minimal media coverage. No breakdown of her training history. In 2007, a New Life Church volunteer stopped a shooter in Colorado Springs. That one got more attention because it was on church property, but again, the training question got buried.
What we know from law enforcement after-action reports is this: citizens who stop threats faster than police respond have usually trained. Not always formally, but they've invested time. They've thought about scenarios. They've practiced drawing. They understand their limitations.
What This Means for Gun Owners
Here's what I think every armed citizen needs to understand: carrying a gun without training is security theater. It makes you feel safer. It doesn't actually make you safer in a dynamic threat scenario.
I'm not saying you need to spend $5,000 on tactical courses. That's gatekeeping garbage. But you need something. A basic concealed carry class—most run $100 to $300 and take four to eight hours—teaches you the legal framework for using force and gives you repetitions drawing from a holster under time pressure. That matters. Those reps build muscle memory. Your hands know what to do when your brain is flooded with adrenaline.
After that, shoot regularly. Monthly minimum. Know how your gun behaves at 7 yards, 15 yards, 25 yards. Know how you shoot when you're tired or stressed, not just when you're fresh at the range. If you can't hit a target consistently at 15 yards, you're not ready to defend yourself in public. You're just carrying.
The second thing: train on decision-making, not just marksmanship. Can you identify a threat in crowd? Do you know the legal rules for using force in your state? (They vary massively. What's legal in Texas might be felony in Massachusetts.) Can you articulate after the fact why you drew your weapon? That's the training that gets you through the legal aftermath. And there will be an aftermath. Ask the Akron citizen who fired the fatal shots.
The third thing: understand your role. If you're a civilian with a handgun, you're not a tactical operator. You're a person trying to survive and protect people near you. That changes everything about how you approach a scenario. You're not clearing rooms. You're not moving to contact. You're identifying the threat, creating distance, and engaging if the threat is actively killing people. The moment the shooter is stopped, you stop. You get out. You holster. You identify yourself to police clearly so you don't get shot by responding officers.
The Industry Angle
Training companies in the 2A space know this matters. Names like Firearms Policy Coalition, USCCA, and NRA offer concealed carry courses. Smaller outfits like Active Self Protection and Force Science do serious work on the decision-making side. But penetration is weak. Most gun owners never take a formal course beyond whatever their state mandates for licensing.
That's a market failure. The industry has an incentive to sell guns. It has almost no incentive to push owners toward training after the sale. A $400 handgun is a one-time purchase. A $250 training course is a loss leader that might never pay off in sales.
Manufacturers are starting to move. Some high-end makers bundle training credits with gun purchases. That's good. But it's not enough. The conversation in gun shops and online communities needs to shift. The default assumption should be: you don't carry until you've trained. Not suggested. Required. That's a culture problem, and culture changes slowly.
What I want to see: state-level incentives for completing recognized training courses. Tax credits. Insurance discounts for gun owners who can prove training completion. Make the economic case for training so strong that it becomes a no-brainer.
What I'm Watching Next
The Akron shooting happened, two trained citizens stopped it, and the case closed. That's the outcome we want. But the fact that nobody dug into the training angle tells me the conversation still isn't mature.
I expect that to change. Mass shootings aren't stopping. Armed citizens are going to stop more of them. Each time it happens, the question "How were they trained?" gets louder. Eventually, someone's going to do the real research. Someone's going to track which armed citizens who stopped threats had formal training and which didn't. That data will force a shift.
Until then, my advice is simple: if you carry, train. Not because it's trendy. Not because it looks good. Because the moment you might need that gun, all the theory and intention in the world won't help you. Only the reps will. Only the muscle memory will. Only the decision-making practice will.
Carry responsibly. Train harder.