Armed Citizen

Landon Harr was at home with elderly family members in Columbus Ohio, when three armed men in masks and gloves broke into the house. The criminals threatened to shoot the elderly family members and forced Harr to open a safe inside the home. The robbers then took Harr and his uncle to the porch, but as the criminals struggled with the safe, Harr ran inside and retrieved a gun. Harr fired three shots at the criminals, who fled through the back yard. Later, Harr recounted the incident to the local media, stating, “All I could do was shoot back at them if they gave me a chance… I wasn't going to stand there and die. Nobody's going to do that.” (WBNS, Columbus, Ohio, 08/24/10, WSYX, Columbus, Ohio, 08/27/10)

During the decades the American Rifleman has published “The Armed Citizen” column, thousands of incidents of law-abiding Americans using firearms to halt or prevent crime have appeared in the magazine. Editorial space allowing, the total could have been far greater of course, as award-winning survey research shows that each year in the U.S. gun owners use firearms for protection as frequently as 2.5 million times.

This archive contains “Armed Citizen” entries from the present back to 1958. The database is searchable by key word and state and results are displayed in chronological order according to the month of publication in the American Rifleman.