CPRC in the News: Baltimore Sun, Real Clear Politics, Townhall, All Sides, and much more
. . . I don’t believe firearms are the leading cause of death for children. One should not accept the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the only or most reliable data source. I challenge Murthy to investigate data from the Crime Prevention Research Center and the FBI. In addition, his statistics include children from one to 19 years old, but 18-to-19-year-olds are considered adults in the United States. The sad truth about suicide is that in places where guns are banned, total suicide rates remain unchanged as people find other ways to commit suicide. . . .
Analysis by Dr. John Lott at the Crime Prevention Research Center highlights an increasing discrepancy in the percentage change of total violent crime rates. While the percentage change in rates of crimes reported to law enforcement according to NCVS and UCR are rarely in agreement, the discrepancy in most years from 2008 to 2018 is in single digits. However, from 2019 to 2022, the difference in percentage change of violent crimes reported to the police is consistently in double digits. In 2020 and 2022, Lott found a difference of about 30 percentage points. This wide gap creates more uncertainty about the actual movement of violent crime trends.
In his analysis, Lott used the NCVS rate for total violent crime reported to the police, which includes simple assault. While the FBI UCR program does collect data on simple assault, it is not one of the four index crimes used to produce the aggregate violent crime rate. The NCVS also publishes a violent crime rate excluding simple assaults, facilitating a nearer comparison, and when using this figure, the percentage changes in crime rate are even more dramatic (see below). This is still not an apples-to-apples comparison of aggregate violent crime because the NCVS does not capture data on homicide, the rarest violent crime, as the survey asks respondents if they personally have been the victim of a crime.
The figures below show the annual percentage change in aggregate violent crimes (excluding simple assault) and property crimes reported to the police since 2018 according to UCR and NCVS. . . .
The study, from John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, was covered widely by right-rated media and was cited by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a speech. It was also met with pushback from people who said it mistakenly included legal immigrants.
“[Lott’s study] includes people who have green cards, temporary work permits, a tourist visa, and it also includes illegal immigrants,” Alex Nowrasteh of the pro-immigration Cato Institute (Lean Right bias) told The Washington Post (Lean Left) in 2018. “We just don’t know how many and John wrote in his paper numerous times that the advantage of his study is that he can identify illegal immigrants, but he can’t.” . . .
. . . Now, we’ve addressed all of these before, but John Lott, who wrote the above, does it again and does it well. Go and read the whole thing [Lott’s piece at The Federalist].
The truth is, though, Lott is correct about Harris. If she wins, she’ll likely be far more anti-gun than Biden was. If Democrats get control of Congress, particularly with a veto-proof majority in the Senate, then our gun rights will not emerge from her administration unscathed. . . .
Buttigieg’s Bold Crime Claim Doesn’t Hold Up. John Lott examines the assertions from the president and the secretary of transportation that violent crime is “at a 50 year low.” . . .
The Crime Prevention Research Center, run by John Lott Jr., highlights problems with such laws.
For example, a married Pennsylvania state trooper last fall was arrested for falsely committing his ex-girlfriend to a mental health facility and assaulting her. The trooper is alleged to have intentionally misrepresented the texts she had sent him, all to exert control over her.
She was held involuntarily for 72 hours for psychiatric evaluation without any due-process hearing under the assumption that she was a danger to herself and others, all because a law-enforcement officer doctored her text messages.
In addition to unconstitutionality, red flag laws are useless. Lott was part of a 2018 study published by Michigan State University, titled “Do red flag laws save lives or reduce crime?”
In December 2018, John R. Lott, Jr., and Carlisle E. Moody of the Crime Prevention Research Center published a paper titled “Do Red Flag Laws Save Lives or Reduce Crime?” Using the most recent data at the time, the team investigated the effect of red flag laws on murder, suicide, and deaths due to multiple victim public shootings. The findings of the study read, “Red flag laws had no significant effect on murder, suicide, the number of people killed in mass public shootings, robbery, aggravated assault, or burglary. There is some evidence that rape rates rise. These laws apparently do not save lives.” . . .
Elizabeth Beinas, “The Top 5 Anti-Gun Myths,” Guns.com, July 29, 2024.
A 2018 study using Arizona state prison records from 1985-2017 found that immigrants in the country illegally were more likely to be convicted of a crime. The study, by conservative economist John Lott, found immigrants in the U.S. illegally tend to commit more serious crimes and serve longer sentences. But the Cato Institute’s Nowrasteh criticized the findings, saying Lott had included immigrants who had legal status in the U.S. and may have violated the terms of a visa by committing a crime. . . .
Professor Carl Moody and Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) have just released an updated paper, How Does Concealed Carrying of Weapons Affect Violent Crime? (May 31, 2024). These researchers examined information related to claims that carry concealed weapons (CCW) laws indirectly increase violent crime by driving up firearm thefts or by decreasing police effectiveness.
Using a unique new data set that employs the number of permit holders as the variable of interest, the authors found no evidence that CCW laws are associated with significant increases in gun thefts or impact the effectiveness of police.
On gun thefts generally, an existing government source on how criminals obtain their firearms suggests that only a small amount of crime guns are acquired by theft. A Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016 (Jan. 2019) shows that only 6.4% of state and federal prisoners who had possessed a firearm during the offense for which they were serving time listed “theft” (burglaries, thefts from retail sources or a family/friend, or “other”) as their gun source.
Previous literature from the CPRC indicates that CCW permit-holders are unlikely to be violent criminals — in fact, as a class they tend towards the extreme opposite end of the law-abiding spectrum. In jurisdictions where information on crimes and permits is available, it shows that permit-holders are less likely to drive recklessly or under the influence than non-permittees, and permit-holders are “convicted of firearms-related violations at one-twelfth the rate of police officers.”
Professor Moody and Dr. Lott analyzed the theft question (whether CCW permit holders are a significant source of stolen guns beyond the amount expected due to the existing burglary rate) using variables that included the number of CCW permits (and a dummy variable for constitutional carry laws), the number of stolen guns, and the burglary rate as a control.
“Stolen guns,” they conclude, “are apparently independent of CCW permits or permitless carrying.” The evidence revealed that neither the number of CCW permits nor the effect of constitutional carry laws had a significant impact on the rate at which guns are stolen. Constitutional carry states do not have significantly higher gun theft rates but, because most of the constitutional carry laws are relatively recent (since 2015), “it may be too early to draw any conclusions” on their impact.
The second issue examined was whether CCW permit-holders were associated with declines in police effectiveness, measured as the clearance rate of violent crimes. Variables included the clearance (arrest) rates and the number of crimes recorded for several given violent crimes types. Here, too, the analysis showed that “police effectiveness is unrelated to either the number of CCW permits and or existence of constitutional carry laws.” . . .
