There has been much discussion about the effectiveness of firearms in Executive Protection. For many protectors, as well as for the protected, firearms mean protection and, moreover, an indispensable requirement to be able to exercise it. That is why we set ourselves the difficult task of determining, with data and facts, how effective firearms really are in executive security in real situations.
However, this purpose is almost impossible to determine with absolute scientific rigor, since, in Mexico alone, it would be practically unfeasible to count how many people are engaged in this activity, including private security elements, complementary police, police commissioned to guard people, military personnel who perform these tasks on official orders, retired military personnel who do it on their own, private individuals with or without carrying a weapon who provide services without having a security company, bodyguards of large corporations and those who are called "escort drivers". That is to say, by principle, we do not have the precise number of the protectors; we do not know how many of them have a weapon or not, nor the number of total events in which they may have used it successfully or unsuccessfully.
We know, according to INEGI, that in the last three decades we have had a total of 2,877 executives and officials murdered, but we do not know how many of them had protectors and how many of them carried a firearm. If we extrapolate this to a worldwide scale, then it becomes impossible to make a completely accurate study.

What were the criteria for considering these 139 cases?

In order for the sample to be meaningful, the following aspects were taken into account:
- Universal in nature, since the cases are worldwide.
- Historically verifiable and widely disseminated facts.
- The number must be sufficiently representative.
- Covering a significant period of time.
- It must be verifiable that the victims had an armed security team.
- Victims who are persons of the highest or very high rank in their respective countries, or persons with official protection assigned by the authorities (In this way, it can be presumed that the elements that provided them with protection were duly selected and trained. Thus, the failures in the reaction cannot be attributed to a lack of training or aptitude, a characteristic of utmost relevance for the present analysis).

Only attacks have been taken into account, since kidnapping cases, likewise, would be impossible to quantify. Moreover, it would be extremely difficult to have historically verifiable facts about the performance of armed personnel in each case. The same applies to the use of firearms against random assaults and other similar problems, since they are even less documented.

The sample of 139 universal and verifiable cases is sufficiently broad and representative to show us what the best armed security groups, in their respective countries, managed to do in the cases of real attacks that took place over more than a century and what relevance firearms had in protecting people in all these events.

In order to consider that in an attack the use of firearms was successful, the criterion is that they must have been used in a timely manner; that is to say, that their intervention was decisive for the unharmful outcome of the protected person, otherwise his survival could be attributed to chance and not to the effectiveness of the firearms.

The cases are divided into two parts: in the first, there are those in which the attack was not consummated for various reasons, and, in the other, there are those that had a fatal outcome.

The study shows that in only 3.60% of the cases were firearms decisive in saving the protected persons, so that this particular study shows the very little relevance that this tool has in the protection of executives and high dignitaries.

Of course, as we could also see, the 3.60% also means saving the life of the protected, so it should not be a disregarded percentage; however, firearms should not be considered as main tools in Executive Protection, nor should the security system of a VIP be centered on their employment.

It is important to emphasize once again that only those attacks against certain types of people and with a very specific type of protectors were taken into account, without taking into account the enormous number of kidnappings that plague Latin America in particular.

Of course, this is not intended to be a definitive study, but it can give a general idea of the scope that firearms have in Executive Protection. It is also important to note that, for decades, their preponderance in this industry was based on myth, or action movies, and not on facts and hard data.

Strikingly, in 10.79% of the cases studied, the attacks were either foiled or the attackers were subsequently pinned down "empty-handed," either by protectors or by the crowd itself. These techniques were used against lone individuals attacking public figures from the crowd (attacks against Reagan, Yitzhak Rabin, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, etc.).
This does not necessarily mean that hand-to-hand combat techniques are more effective than weapons; they simply showed their effectiveness for a specific threat that was prevalent in the study.

Also noteworthy is the attack against the Colombian presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galán, in 1989, who was assassinated despite having 18 bodyguards armed to the teeth. Something similar happened in 2024 when José Alfredo Cabrera Barrientos, candidate for mayor of Coyuca de Benítez in Mexico, was assassinated with 15 heavily armed and trained escorts provided by the Mexican Federal Government.

These facts show that a strong operation is not necessarily an effective operation.
In conclusion, the present representative sample analysis gives a value of approximately 3.60% for firearm effectiveness in real situations.

This means that in Executive Protection the firearm is a tool of minor importance and of little reliability, however, it should not be underestimated, since, as we have seen, in some conditions, even if they are few, it can save our lives. The important thing is to focus our operations on preventive activities that allow us to deactivate attacks before they happen and not to focus our operations on methods that historically have not been successful.
results.

Attempts
1. Eduard, Prince of Wales - 1900
2. Leopold II, King of Belgium - 1902
3. Alfonso XIII, King of Spain - 1906
4. Theodore Roosevelt, US presidential candidate - 1912
5. Lenin - 1918 (attacker subdued using empty hands)
6. Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France - 1919
7. Benito Mussolini, Leader of Fascist Italy - April 1926 (attacker subdued by using empty hands)
8. Benito Mussolini, Leader of Fascist Italy - May 1926 (attacker subdued using empty hands)
9. Herbert Hoover, President USA - 1928
10. Franklin D. Roosevelt, US President - 1933 (attacker subdued using empty hands)
11. Keisuke Okada, Prime Minister of Japan - 1936
12. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran - 1949
13. Harry Truman, President of the United States - 1950 (firearms were decisive)
14. Prince Hussein, Prince of Jordan - 1960
15. Konrad Adenauer, German Chancellor - 1952
16. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa - 1960 (attacker subdued empty-handed)
17. Charles De Gaulle, President of France - 1961 (driving was decisive)
18. Charles De Gaulle, President of France - 1962 (vehicle handling was decisive)
19. Georgios Papadopoulos, President of Greece - 1968
20. Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Union - 1969
21. George Wallace, US Presidential Candidate - 1972
22. Anne, Princess of England - 1974
23. Sukarno, President of Indonesia - 1962
24. Gerald Ford, President of the United States - 1975 (attacker subdued empty-handed)
Elizabeth II, Queen of England - 1981
26. Pope John Paul II - 1981 (attacker subdued with empty hands)
27. Ronald Reagan, President of the United States - 1981 (attacker subdued using empty hands)
28. Chun Doo Hwan, President of South Korea - 1983
29. Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister - 1984
30. Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile - 1986 (firearms were decisive)
31. Wolfgang Schäuble, German Minister of the Interior - 1990 (attacker subdued using empty hands)
32. John Major, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - 1991 (armored windows were decisive)
33. Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia - 1992
34. Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia - 1995
35. Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt - 1995 (firearms were decisive)
36. Kiro Gligorov, President of Macedonia - 1995
37. José María Aznar, Spanish politician and former Prime Minister - 1995 (armored vehicle and attackers' failures were decisive).
38. Prince Charles of Wales - 1995
39. Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia - 1998 (armored vehicle was decisive)
40. Jacques Chirac, President of France - 2002 (attacker subdued with empty hands)
41. Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan - 2002 (firearms were decisive)
42. Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan - 2003
43. Murat Zyazikov, President of Ingushetia - 2004
44. Shaukat Aziz, Prime Minister of Pakistan - 2004
45. Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister Bangladesh - 2004
46. Ibrahim Rugova, President of Kosovo - 2005
47. Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan - 2007
48. George W. Bush, President of the United States of America and Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia - 2005
49. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, President of Somalia - 2006
50. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Secretary of Defense of Sri Lanka - 2006
51. Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States - 2007
52. Guillaume Soro, Prime Minister of Côte d'Ivoire - 2007
53. Abdul Gayoom, President Maldives - 2008 (attacker subdued using empty hands)
54. José Ramos Horta, President of East Timor - 2008
Queen Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands - 2009
56. Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, Leader of Ingushetia - 2009
57. Stephen Timms, British Labour MP - 2010
58. Ali Abdulah Saleh, President of Yemen - 2011
59. Alpha Condé, President of Guinea - 2011 (firearms were decisive)
60. Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, Leader of the Pakistani Senate - 2017.
61. Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela - 2018
Omar García Harfuch, Chief of Police of Mexico City - 2020
63. Iván Duque, President of Colombia - 2021
64. Assimi Goïta, President of Mali - 2021 (attacker subdued empty-handed)
Aleksandar Vučić, President of Serbia - 2022.
66. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Vice President of Argentina - 2022
67. Emmanuel Macron, President of France - 2023 (attacker subdued with empty hands)
68. Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan - 2023 (attacker subdued with empty hands)
69. Lee Jae-myung, Leader of the South Korean Opposition - 2024
70. Robert Fico, Prime Minister of Slovakia - 2024
71. Donald Trump, Former U.S. President - July 2024
72. Donald Trump, Former President of the USA - September 2024 (early warning was decisive)
73. Daniel Uribe - 2025 (firearms were not effective)

74. Serhiy Sternenko, Ukrainian activist - 2025 (empty hands were decisive)