Disarming Mass Shooters

John Cale: I got three rounds. Tell me you got some weapons in the residence.
President James Sawyer. No. We usually have two agents right there with machine guns.
John Cale: What?
President James Sawyer: They're big knives.
John Cale: Great, then you can make me a sandwich.
--White House Down

A frequent argument made by gun grabbers for banning 'high capacity' magazines (e.g., reducing the legal limit for AR-15 style mags from 30 rounds down to 10) is that mass shooters would need to reload more often, giving victims more opportunity to, um, grab the perp's gun.

There is some element of truth in this argument. When shooters are reloading, they are not firing, leaving them vulnerable to counterattack. Moreover, the more times perps have to slam fresh mags into their weapon and rack the slide, the greater the likelihood that a gun will jam, which creates additional downtime for vics to disarm or flee.

However, as Mas Ayoob recounts, little historical evidence supports the claim that reloads have resulting in clean gun takeaways. In fact, there appears to be more evidence that trying to disarm shooters by hand are usually unsuccessful and often lethal.

One reason why this is so is that it is difficult to get close to a mass shooter. Nearby targets are usually the first victims. Plus, the natural reaction of untrained people is to move farther away from a shooter, leaving them in poor position to exploit a temporary cease fire while gunmen are reloading.
Mass shooters are also prone to carry multiple guns which serve to offset lower capacity magazines.
There is also, of course, the reality that people motivated to commit heinous crimes are unlikely to be deterred by laws of any kind--including those limiting how many bullets they can put in their guns.

History suggests that waiting for a shooter to run empty and then grabbing the gun is not a very viable strategy.

Another strategy works far better. In nearly every mass shooting incident on record, as soon as the gunman is met with return fire, he ceases to attack. He is either killed, kills himself, or surrenders.

The most viable strategy to disarm mass shooters is for the would-be targets to be armed.