CPRC in the News: Fox News (2), Orlando Sentinel, Yahoo! News, Missoula’s KGVO, Bearing Arms, and more
. . . Americans have frequently used legal guns to thwart crimes, defend themselves or their homes and even stop mass shootings. Some estimates suggest instances of firearms being used in self-defense stretch into the millions yearly.
“Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves,” Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital earlier this year.
Lott believes that the media has dramatically undercounted the amount of times Americans use guns in self-defense, saying in a typical year there are only about 2,000 news stories about defensive use of guns. That number is more likely to stretch into the millions, Lott said, pointing to an average of 18 national surveys that estimated guns are used in self-defense about 2 million times per year.
“The vast majority of successful self-defense cases don’t make the news,” Lott said. . . .
Valimont’s group pointed to studies showing firearm-related crime increased in states that loosened regulations on guns in public. Supporters of permitless carry have drawn the opposite conclusion and cite the work of pro-gun researcher John R. Lott Jr. . . .
Dr. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center based in Missoula, recently testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on gun control, in which he referred to his vast research about gun violence in the U.S.
Dr. Lott was only allotted five minutes to address the subcommittee which was chaired by Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, and included comments from actual serial killers on why they choose gun-free zones for their attacks. . . .
“There are four facts I’d like to try to get across,” began Dr. Lott. “One. Over 92 percent of violent crime in America has nothing to do with firearms. That percentage has remained fairly constant for the last couple of decades. The vast majority of violent crime has nothing to do with firearms.”
Despite the heavily publicized mass shootings in the U.S., Dr. Lott said this country has far fewer such attacks than the rest of the world. . . .
“Over the 20 years from 1998 to 2017, the United States had 1.1 percent of the world’s share of mass public shooters and 1.8 percent of the mass public shooting murders,” he said. “Both are significantly less than the US’s 4.6 percent share of the world population. People don’t take into account that the United States has over 330 million people. You can’t compare it to a country with 5 million or even Germany with 80 million without adjusting for the different sizes and populations.” . . .
The CDC isn’t likely to be on many gun owners’ Christmas card lists this year. Not after revelations that they removed defensive gun use statistics at the behest of gun control advocates. The decision to do that made it very clear that while the CDC may have been prohibited from advocating for gun control, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t help push it any way they can.
John Lott is one person who has been consistently vilified over his research that counters the anti-gun narrative. Now, he’s lashing out over the CDC’s actions. . . . [Extensive quotes from Lott’s Real Clear Politics that was republished at Florida Daily]
Tom Knighton, “Lott blasts CDC over defensive gun use shenanigans,” Bearing Arms, December 23, 2022.
. . . “Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves,” Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital earlier this year.
Lott believes that the media has dramatically undercounted the amount of times Americans use guns in self-defense, saying in a typical year there are only about 2,000 news stories about defensive use of guns. That number is more likely to stretch into the millions, Lott said, pointing to an average of 18 national surveys that estimated guns are used in self-defense about 2 million times per year.
“The vast majority of successful self-defense cases don’t make the news,” Lott said. . . .
A woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about three to four times more than a man doing the same.
And this message is getting across to women. Between 2012 and 2022, in states that provide data by sex, permits for concealed handguns increased 115% more quickly among women than among men. The percentage of women who say that gun ownership protects people from crime has also been growing faster than their male counterparts.
…
The high cost of permits disarms the very people who most need protection, including minorities who live in high-crime urban areas.
The CDC isn’t likely to be on many gun owners’ Christmas card lists this year. Not after revelations that they removed defensive gun use statistics at the behest of gun control advocates. The decision to do that made it very clear that while the CDC may have been prohibited from advocating for gun control, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t help push it any way they can.
John Lott is one person who has been consistently vilified over his research that counters the anti-gun narrative. Now, he’s lashing out over the CDC’s actions. . . .
I suggest you go and read the examples he provides because it’s worthy of your understanding just where Lott is coming from.
The truth is that there’s no reason for any of us to trust the CDC.
While officials decried the center’s hands supposedly being tied on gun research, that was never really the case. They could conduct unbiased research. They just couldn’t use taxpayer dollars to advocate for gun control. It was the CDC who interpreted that to be a ban on all gun research.
Now that the ban has been lifted, expect a further deluge of anti-gun studies, all while anything that may suggest guns save lives gets repressed. We already know why the research is garbage and now we have yet another reason to distrust the supposed science here.
The thing is if gun control were really such a universal good, an unassailable thing that unerringly reduces violent crime rates across the board, then why cook the books? If the data was always going to point toward positive outcomes for gun control then there’s no reason to pull this kind of crap.
Lott is right to criticize and call them out over this stuff.
Tom Knighton, “Lott blasts CDC over defensive gun use shenanigans,” Bearing Arms, December 23, 2022.
While we will continue to report these stories, groups like the Crime Prevention Research Center, led by Dr. John Lott, are fastidious in studying the use of firearms for self-defense. Stay up to date with all news on self-defense by following CPRC and Ammoland.
Rob Morse, “Armed Homeowner Stops Attacker’s Advance,” Ammoland, December 20, 2022.
Another valuable indicator of how Americans really feel about their Second Amendment rights is the number of concealed carry permits. Dr. John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) has recently published its latest annual report, Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2022, available at the CPRC website, here.
The reality here, too, is one of undiminished interest. According to the report, there are now at least 22.1 million concealed carry permittees in the United States, compared to 2.7 million in 1999. The number continues to grow even as more and more states embrace constitutional (permitless) carry. Overall, 8.5% of American adults have concealed carry permits; in 17 states, over ten percent of adults have permits, and in some places the percentage is much higher. “In 2018, there is at least one county in Alabama where almost two-thirds of the adults have a concealed handgun permit (Cleburne with 64.6%). In 2017, there were five counties in Pennsylvania that had between 30% and 50% of their adult populations with concealed handgun permits…” On the flip side, in California, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, less than one percent of adults have permits.
The concealed carry community continues to grow increasingly diverse. Information from the 15 states that track permittees by gender shows that “women made up 29.2% of permit holders,” up from 28.3% last year. Looking at the seven states where gender data is available for 2012 and 2021-2022, “the number of permits increased by 278% for women and by 129% for men –– a 115.4% faster rate among women.” Although few states release data on the race of permit holders, the available information likewise suggests that permit issuance for minorities is increasing exponentially and, in some cases, outpaces the rate for whites. “When permit data is broken down by [both] race and gender, we find that black females have had the fast growth, especially during the pandemic. The rates of permit holding among American Indian, Asian, Black, and White females all grew much faster than the rates for males in those racial groups.”
On the relationship between crime rates and concealed carry permitting, the report notes that generally, permit holders tend to be exceptionally law-abiding and, as “permit holders commit virtually no crimes, right-to-carry laws can’t increase violent crime rates.” According to the CPRC, the 25 states with the highest concealed carry rates, compared to the rest of the country, “experienced markedly lower rates of murder and violent crime… we find that states with the sharpest increases in permits had the largest percentage drops in murder rates. A 10 percent increase in the share of the adult population with permits reduces the murder rate by 1.4 percent.”
“Reality Check: Gun Sales, Carry Permit Numbers Remain Strong,” NRA-ILA, MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2022
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