Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey thinks people should stay and fight active shooters

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey, a firm believer that a "good guy with a gun" is the simple solution to our nation's plague of mass shootings, has a new idea for anyone involved in a mass shooting. 

Responding to Orlando's recent attack at Pulse nightclub, Ivey says people should no longer run and hide from a shooter, but instead stay and fight. 

“I’m taking a different approach now," Ivey said to WEFS-TV last Wednesday. "We need to talk to our citizens about the importance of not only fighting, but fighting together as a team to eliminate the threat.”

Rather than law enforcement, Ivey believes heat-packing vigilantes are "our fist line of defense," an idea that has been debunked over and over again. 

It's an interesting theory, one that the Department of Homeland Security has even endorsed, but attempts by armed civilians to stop shooting rampages are rare and usually ineffective. Basically stopping a shooter is easier said than done, and there's zero studies that prove this method would work. 

Speaking to Mother Jones, Dr. Stephen Hargarten, a leading expert on emergency medicine and gun violence at the Medical College of Wisconsin, said there is no evidence indicating that arming Americans further will help prevent mass shootings or reduce the carnage. 

Hargaten goes on to say that armed civilians attempting to intervene are actually more likely to increase the bloodshed, "given that civilian shooters are less likely to hit their targets than police in these circumstances."

It's worth remembering that there was an armed and uniformed police officer at Pulse the night of the shooting.