He actually bothers me from time to time in regard to methodology, even though I'm a, "If the government can have it, I should be allowed to have it." level of gun guy.
That said, Lott made a couple of important points about how the state and the media pretend that Eli Dicken cases, wherein a law-abiding citizen with a gun stops a mass shooting, are incredibly rare.
One factor is something that informed people have been saying for decades -- that most mass shootings happen in gun free zones.
By definition, a law-abiding citizen can't have a gun in a gun free zone. A good person can choose to break the law. Still, as a guy who carries a gun, and has a CCW, I will tell you that, if I need to pick my niece or nephew up from school, I'm not gonna be carrying. Despite what the media say, shootings at schools are incredibly rare. I would be more likely to spend time behind bars by carrying than I would be likely to stop a shooter.
That said, if it were lawful to carry in these gun free zones, the numbers regarding lawful gun owners stopping mass shootings would clearly skyrocket.
The other issue is that cases in which law-abiding gun owners stop mass shootings, by definition, made the shootings not mass.
The Dicken case was only rare insofar as it was impossible for the media to pretend that the shooting wouldn't have been much worse if it weren't for Dicken. The raging leftist morons on The View tried to spin it against Dicken. But, most media outlets took the story as a loss against their narrative while trying to soften the blow by pretending that this almost never happens.
The reality is that the numbers are likely deflated because, just like self-defense incidents, we're talking about what could have happened, or what was likely to happen.
A disgruntled ex-employee could walk into the old office with a gun and be taken out by a law-abiding citizen with a gun.
The way the FBI tends to record that is to assume that the disgruntled employee was only targeting one person. Therefore, it wasn't a mass shooting stopped. But, this is pretty clearly am imperfect assumption.
Once again, it looks like the gun control people are playing with the numbers.