CPRC in the News: Al.com, Business & Political Reporter, Argus Leader (South Dakota), American Thinker, World Net Daily, Bearing Arms, and much more
Longtime readers of this column know we like data, from Rasmussen surveys to the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report. The gun prohibition lobby may argue with a homely old news hack, but they’re far less likely to reject numbers from the feds or a well-established polling company.
This is why when John Lott — the economist and author who founded the Crime Prevention Research Center some years back — writes an Op-Ed somewhere, I jump right on it. Lott has written a few books about guns, crime and media bias including the ground-breaking More Guns, Less Crime and makes anti-gunners crazy. They have gotten used to reflexively declaring anything he says as “debunked” — often, it seems, before they’ve had time to actually read it.
When Lott recently took a look at crime data and gun sales over the past couple of years, it made for some fascinating reading. . . .
Here’s something Lott recently revealed in the Washington Times: “We found that of the 47 countries in Europe today, 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote.” This seems pretty reasonable. If someone is going to vote, they ought to vote under their own name, and only once. What’s wrong with that?
Lott also discovered 35 of the 47 European countries “completely ban absentee voting for citizens.” Ten more countries, including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain, let people vote absentee, he noted, but “they require voters to show up in person and present a photo ID to pick up their ballots.”
What about prosecutions for trying to buy a gun when you’re a prohibited person? Lott has the score on that too. “Since the Brady background checks began in 1994, there have been 3.8 million initial denials,” Lott wrote. However, it is one thing to stop a felon from buying a gun. It is quite another to stop a law-abiding citizen from buying a gun just because their name is similar to a felon’s. In 2017, for example, there were 112,000 initial denials for supposedly attempted prohibited purchases, but just 12 federal prosecutions for prohibited people trying to buy guns by June 2018.”
Many, if not most, of the initial denials were false flags, he said in a 2018 piece published by the New York Times. In that Op-Ed, Lott observed, “The background check system confuses the names of law-abiding individuals with those of criminals, resulting in thousands of ‘false positives’ every year. Relying on phonetically similar names along with birth dates just doesn’t allow for much accuracy.” . . .
Writing at Townhall last month, Lott said this: “Gun sales increased dramatically in 2020 before receding some in 2021. Background checks on gun sales soared from 12.4 million in 2019 to 20.3 million in 2020 and declining back to 17.6 million in 2021.”
A few lines later, Lott reported, “But what the media ignores is that the number of violent gun crimes dropped dramatically in 2020. Last October, the US Department of Justice released a study showing victims reported 212,470 gun crimes to police in 2020, a drop of 27% from the 290,790 in 2019. The share of violent crimes committed with guns also fell – by over 30%.” . . .
Dave Workman, “DATA DRIVES ‘EM CRAZY: INSIGHTS FROM JOHN LOTT,” Guns Magazine, 2022.
South Dakota likes to pack heat. More than 11% of the state’s adult population has a concealed carry permit, according to data from the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Given the change in concealed carry laws in the state in 2019 as well as the state seeing a dramatic rise in the number of stolen guns, some people might not know their rights. . . .
Stringer is the former police chief in Satsuma. He lost his job as a captain with the Mobile County sheriff’s department because of his differences with Sheriff Sam Cochran on the permit issue. Cochran persuaded the Mobile County Commission to approve a statement saying they opposed the legislation to repeal the permit requirement.
Stringer co-wrote an opinion column submitted to AL.com about why the repeal would be good policy. It said predictions that crime would increase have not been accurate in other states that have passed “constitutional carry.”
The column, co-written with John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, said:
“The most significant change from constitutional carry is how quickly people can carry a gun if needed. Right now, it takes about a month for Alabama to issue a concealed handgun permit after someone has met the requirements. If a woman is being stalked or threatened, the harm from that threat may have already occurred well before a month is up.”
Mike Cason, “Sheriffs, police, urge lawmakers to keep permit requirement for concealed carry of handguns,” Al.com, February 1, 2022. Other papers throughout the state such as the Dothan Eagle.
Now John R. Lott Jr., the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and formerly an adviser for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, claims it is worse than that.
In a column at Real Clear Politics, he explained not only federal officials “will have the name of everyone who legally obtained a gun,” but Joe Biden now “wants to make universal background checks nationwide so he can have an even more complete registration list.”
“According to a Rasmussen Reports survey, Democrats support the idea by a 2-1 ratio, while Republicans oppose it by a similar margin,” wrote Lott. “Two-thirds of Republicans believe the policy will lead to gun confiscation, and even 40% of Democrats believe the same. Confiscating legally owned firearms, it seems, is not merely a right-wing conspiracy theory,” he warned.
“Similarly, a recent Gallup poll shows that 40% of Democrats want a complete ban on civilian ownership of handguns. Countries such as Canada, the U.K., and Australia aren’t the only ones to use registration to ban and confiscate guns. California, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. have also used registration to know who legally owned different types of guns before banning them.”
The Biden administration, through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, has reportedly illegally compiled records of nearly one billion firearms sales in a searchable, digital database.
Some Second Amendment supporters claim that this could be a backdoor registry that, in the end, may lead to an outright gun ban or even confiscation.
Along those lines, a group of GOP lawmakers have launched an investigation into the transaction trove that could be used by the government to target legal gun owners.
Gun rights advocate John Lott, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and former Justice Department advisor, claims in a Real Clear Politics commentary, headlined “Democrats Pushing Gun Registry as Precursor to Gun Ban,” that the ATF has swept up about 54 million of such records last year alone. . . .
. . . John Lott, Jr., Ph.D. has done the heavy lifting in compiling voting laws in other countries. Here is what his research has found.
Of the 47 countries in Europe, a staggering 46 require government-issued photo IDs for in-person voting. The only exception is the United Kingdom, where a photo ID is required for national elections in Northern Ireland but not for Scotland, Wales, and England. Both Canada and Mexico require a government-issued photo ID. Mexico goes a step farther by making its ID biometric with both photo and fingerprints.
European, Canadian, and Mexican absentee ballot laws are much more restrictive than ours. None automatically sends absentee ballots to all registered voters.
Of the 27 nations in the European Union, only five give absentee ballots to any qualified voter who requests one. In 18 of the countries (67%), absentee ballots are only provided to citizens living abroad. A photo ID is required to obtain an absentee ballot in 11 of the countries (47%). A whopping 25 of the 27 (93%) either do not permit people living in the country to vote absentee or require a photo ID to get an absentee ballot.
In the 16 European countries that are not members of the E.U., absentee ballot rules are equally tough if not tougher. Only two provide absentee ballots to any qualified voter who requests one. Fourteen of the 16 countries (88%) provide absentee ballots only to citizens living abroad. In five of the countries, a photo ID is required to obtain an absentee ballot. All (100%) of the countries either do not allow absentee voting for people living in the country or require a photo ID to get an absentee ballot.
In Canada, any eligible voter can request an absentee ballot, but a government-issued picture ID is necessary to obtain it. In Mexico, absentee ballots are only provided to citizens living abroad, and a photo ID must be shown to get it. . . .
1. Download Dr. Lott’s full reports and study them.
2. Whenever you see a local TV news or local newspaper report parroting the Democrat line that demanding a picture ID to vote is racist, email copies of Dr. Lott’s report and ask the question: “If Mexico, Canada, and 46 of 47 countries in Europe demand a photo ID to vote, why is it racist to demand a photo ID to vote in the U.S.?” . . .
From testimony before the Ohio state House on Constitutional Carry.
If that is not current enough, additional current research from the Crime Prevention Research Center provided substantial supporting research. Data was compiled from 13 states that had at least three years of data since the enactment of Constitutional Carry. Those states are as follows: Alaska – 03, Arizona – 10, Arkansas – 18, Idaho – 16, Kansas – 15, Kentucky – 19, Maine – 15, Mississippi – 15, Missouri – 17, New Hampshire – 17. North Dakota – 17, West Virginia – 16, Wyoming – 11.
The research findings were significant and relevant to this bill. I would ask members of this committee to recall how many times you have been told that allowing Ohioans to exercise their constitutional rights would result in blood in the streets? This latest research put the lie to that old saw showing a significant drop in the murder rate, and a small but insignificant drop in violent crime. . . .
Clement is clearly correct. Crime data stubbornly shows that Americans who legally carry concealed basically don’t commit crimes; for example, John Lott, a noted criminologist and founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, found that, as a group, concealed-carry permit holders are some of the most law-abiding people in the United States. So much so, that the rate at which they commit crimes is somewhere between one-sixth and one-tenth of what police officers commit. To see this data from a different angle, realize that between 2007 and 2015, the murder rate dropped 16% as the percentage of adults with concealed-carry permits rose 190%. Indeed, until the mayhem of 2020 erupted as politicians on the Left refused to use resources to pro- tect people and property, violent-crime rates had basically been dropping for decades while the number of people who carry concealed rose dramatically.
Frank Miniter, “Two-Faced,” America’s 1st Freedom, January 22, 2022.
Research by Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center has compiled several government reports which reveal the overwhelming failure of NICS false-positive denials.
In 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) denied 71,010 individuals at the gun store, but only 6.6% (4,681 individuals) were referred for further investigation by ATF field offices. A Department of Justice report stated:
“The remaining denials (66,329, or about 93%) did not meet referral guidelines or were overturned after review by Brady Operations or after the FBI received additional information.”
Of those ATF field office investigations, 51% (2,390 individuals) were of delayed denial cases, not initial denials. 572 of these were admitted to “not [be] a prohibited person.” This leaves 4,154 legitimate FBI denials in 2009, resulting in a false-positive denial rate of roughly 94.2%. Tell your Senator about the outrageous false-positive denial rate of the NICS background check system today!
Research by Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center has compiled several government reports which reveal the overwhelming failure of NICS false-positive denials.
In 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) denied 71,010 individuals at the gun store, but only 6.6% (4,681 individuals) were referred for further investigation by ATF field offices. A Department of Justice report stated:
“The remaining denials (66,329, or about 93%) did not meet referral guidelines or were overturned after review by Brady Operations or after the FBI received additional information.”
Of those ATF field office investigations, 51% (2,390 individuals) were of delayed denial cases, not initial denials. 572 of these were admitted to “not [be] a prohibited person.” This leaves 4,154 legitimate FBI denials in 2009, resulting in a false-positive denial rate of roughly 94.2%. Tell your Senator about the outrageous false-positive denial rate of the NICS background check system today!
This is only with the data released and assumes there were no ongoing record-keeping errors still present in government databases at the time of the report’s compilation. Data from 2010 is extremely similar.
While the sheriffs were on the statehouse steps stumping for the bill’s defeat, the primary sponsor of Constitutional Carry in the state House took to the pages of the state’s biggest news site to provide another perspective. Rep. Shane Stringer, a former Mobile County sheriffs captain who was fired from his job after introducing a permitless carry bill last year, was joined by Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center in explaining why Constitutional Carry would be a good thing for the state.
Whenever a state considers a constitutional carry bill, opponents offer dire warnings about rising rates of homicide and violent crime.
However, according to new research from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), allowing permit-less carry hasn’t led to increasing rates of violent crime. If anything, these rates have gone down in states that removed the requirement to obtain a permit before carrying a handgun.
Professor Carl Moody, CPRC’s research director, aggregated crime data from 13 states that have passed constitutional carry and could provide data since 2018. He compared the rates of murder, violent crime, police officer killings, and firearm homicides from the four years before a state introduced constitutional carry to the six years after.
He reported no statistically significant change in violent crime, police killings, and firearm homicide, and a drop in the murder rate. . . .
Research by Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center has compiled several government reports which reveal the overwhelming failure of NICS false-positive denials.
In 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) denied 71,010 individuals at the gun store, but only 6.6% (4,681 individuals) were referred for further investigation by ATF field offices. A Department of Justice report stated:
“The remaining denials (66,329, or about 93%) did not meet referral guidelines or were overturned after review by Brady Operations or after the FBI received additional information.”
Of those ATF field office investigations, 51% (2,390 individuals) were of delayed denial cases, not initial denials. 572 of these were admitted to “not [be] a prohibited person.”
