Do you carry a gun?

Bad idea, says Hollywood. Civilians with guns are fools. You are more likely to hurt yourself than the bad guy.

“Leave it to a good guy with a gun to really screw things up,” says a cop on ABC’s “The Rookie.”

Liberal politicians agree.

“A good guy with a gun will stop bad guys with a gun?! It doesn’t hold up,” smiles New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“An adolescent rescue fantasy,” adds an “expert” on CBS.

Now, I’m not a gun person. I was raised among lefty gun haters. I assumed Hollywood and “experts” were right.

When I saw economist John Lott’s book, “More Guns, Less Crime,” I rolled my eyes. But now I understand that Lott makes a good point.

“A couple million times a year, people use guns defensively,” he says in my new video. “When a civilian tries to stop one of these instances, they’re overwhelmingly successful.”

But FBI reports say self-defense with guns is rare.

“They’re simply missing a huge number of cases,” says Lott. He’s posted a list of cases the FBI ignored, where civilians stopped shooters.

The FBI lists the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Forty-nine people were killed.

“One week afterwards,” says Lott, “there was a similar attack at a nightclub in South Carolina.”

But there, a civilian shot the attacker.

“Still had 125 rounds of ammunition on him when he was stopped!” says Lott.

Somehow, the FBI missed that case, along with so many others.

When 17 people were killed at Parkland, Florida, that got lots of news coverage.

Few people know that “just a few months later in Titusville, Florida, (at) an elementary school,” says Lott, “a man came up, started firing his gun. Fortunately, a hot dog vendor (with a) concealed handgun was able to wound the attacker and stop him before he was able to kill.”

“Stepped in and saved a lot of people’s lives,” said a local police officer.

But the FBI somehow missed that, too …

Lott’s list of ignored cases includes the story of Raul Mendez, who was at a party when a guest opened fire.

“Bullet enters right by my ear, goes straight through my face and out my left eye … Blind from one eye and covered in blood, I unloaded four rounds and finished him off.”

Mendez probably saved the lives of a dozen people at that party.

I tell him, “The FBI records instances like this, but somehow they have no record of your case.”

“They’re not recording the true numbers,” Mendez replies.

I ask Lott why.

“There’s a lot of political views that infect their data,” he says. “I had interactions with the people in the FBI … I had people tell me, ‘Well, I’m a Democrat.'”

I push back. “The FBI, who carry guns, are anti-gun? It’s not believable.”

“They think that it would go against the narrative that they want to push,” answered Lott.

Stossel TV asked the FBI why they don’t include self-defense cases like Mendez’. They replied that their data is: “not intended to explore all facets of active shooter incidents.”

Too bad politicians and the media don’t realize that.

“It’d be great if we could just make all guns disappear,” says Lott. “But when you ban guns, it’s basically the most law-abiding good citizens who obey. Every place in the world that’s banned all guns or all handguns has seen murder rates go up.”

So-called experts like a psychiatrist featured on Detroit’s CBS station confidently say, “There haven’t been good guys with a gun who stop mass shootings. It’s the kind of thing you learn reading comic books!”

Mendez replies: “I was prepared, and it saved lives. There’s no comic book story about that. Those are facts. That’s what happened. I was there. I’m sure there’s many more out there that go unheard.”

Award-winning news correspondent John Stossel is the creator of Stossel TV videos. Before making the change to Stossel TV, he was the co-anchor of ABC News’ “20/20.”