SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Now, a huge part of the story is the fact that an armed bystander was able to stop the shooter. NPR's Jaclyn Diaz is here to talk more about that. Hey, Jaclyn.
JACLYN DIAZ, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
DETROW: So what do we know about how often something like that happens? - somebody with a gun ends a shooting.
DIAZ: Yeah, so local officials are calling this bystander a hero. As we just learned, he is a father of two students at the school that just happened to be in the neighborhood and saw the shooter go into the school. And he doesn't appear to have any law enforcement background. Experts say intervention from civilians in this way is rare.
I spoke with James Densley. He's a professor at Metro State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He's also a co-founder of the Violence Prevention Project, which studies incidents of public violence. Densley and his colleagues tracked every homicide at K-12 schools in the U.S. since 2,000. In about 400 incidents, they found no cases of a civilian shooting to stop an attacker, so this case in Bend appears to be the first, based on his research.
JAMES DENSLEY: What we usually see is when a school shooting is stopped before the police get there, it's almost always by someone with no gun. It's actually usually a teacher, a custodian, a coach, sometimes it's a fellow student, a child, that intervenes.
DIAZ: And he said, usually those interventions happen when a shooter's gun jams or they are reloading their weapon.
DETROW: So this seems this could be a first. It seems like this person was - shot the shooter very quickly, and it could have been a lot worse. But I'm curious, what do the experts say about how people should respond in these situations?
DIAZ: Yeah, so I spoke with James Keith. He's with a group called ALERRT, the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, at Texas State University. The group trains civilians and law enforcement on how to respond to something like a mass shooting. Keith says he does not recommend civilians try to stop an attacker. So if you hear gunshots...
JAMES KEITH: What we're teaching people is get away, don't stop. When you hear that and you think it's a gun, run.
DIAZ: He said, if you can't get away, do the next best thing - block an attacker's access. That means hiding in a room with no windows, Block any doors to create a barrier between you and a shooter. And finally, if you can't do that, Keith says, that is when you fight and defend yourself.
DETROW: This moment reminds me of a high-profile moment in the conversation about school shootings, going way back to 2012 after the Sandy Hook shootings. The head of the NRA, the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, said this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WAYNE LAPIERRE: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
DETROW: Is that the way that the NRA still frames this and talks about this?
DIAZ: So - yeah, so, LaPierre isn't part of the NRA anymore, but the group did put out a statement after news of the shooting in Bend. They said this tragic incident reflects the importance of having, quote, "law-abiding," unquote, gun owners, and that they still stand by LaPierre's idea. It remains central to the NRA's work in advocating for the Second Amendment.
But I also spoke with Arizona State University professor Jennifer Carlson. She's a sociologist whose work examines the politics of guns in American life. She said more people from diverse backgrounds own guns now, and personal protection remains a core reason people decide to buy a gun. But Carlson said this good-guy, bad-guy framing oversimplifies deeper anxieties over personal safety and whether police can or will protect people, and it doesn't actually address those really big issues and concerns. So it's going to be interesting to see how this event factors into gun rights debates going forward.
DETROW: NPR's Jaclyn Diaz. Thank you so much.
DIAZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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