CPRC in the News: Just the News, Patriot Post, Times-Call (Colorado), Ammoland, and more
If passed by the House and Senate, it would impact nearly 22 million Americans who hold concealed-carry permits, according to cosponsor Kansas GOP Rep. Tracey Mann’s office, citing data from the Crime Prevention Research Center. . . .
But as author and researcher John Lott puts it, “In real life, guns are only left at the scene of a crime when the gunmen have been seriously injured or killed. With both the criminal and weapon present at the scene, police can solve these crimes without registration. In the exceedingly unusual instances where registered guns are left at the scene, they aren’t registered to the person who committed the crime.”
Indeed, as Lott adds, “Police in jurisdictions from Hawaii to Chicago to Pennsylvania to New York that have had registration for decades can’t point to any crimes they have been able to solve with it. Even entire countries such as Canada haven’t had success.” Other gun-grabbing states have spent lavishly building databases with the unique ballistic identification of every new gun sold — only to do away with those worthless repositories.
“Why do Democrats keep pushing a policy that costs so much and has no crime-reducing benefits?” asks Lott. “Someday,” he says, “knowing who owns guns will help them to target their confiscation efforts.” . . .
Douglas Andrews, “SCOTUS Upholds Ghost Gun Regulations,” The Patriot Post, March 28, 2025.
John Lott, président du Crime Prevention Research Center, a examiné les données compilées par Fox News Digital et a déclaré que, bien que « les graphiques établissant des comparaisons entre les lieux soient très courants », « ils sont trop simplistes car ils ne tiennent pas compte des nombreuses autres raisons pour lesquelles les taux de criminalité peuvent varier (comme l’application de la loi, les problèmes de gangs de drogue, les différences démographiques et culturelles) ».
Il a conseillé d’examiner un lieu unique au fil du temps pour voir comment les taux de criminalité évoluent « en fonction de l’évolution des taux de possession d’armes à feu et de les comparer dans de nombreux endroits différents ».
Il a noté qu’il existe des endroits dans le monde qui « ont interdit soit toutes les armes à feu, soit toutes les armes de poing, et pourtant, chaque fois que ces interdictions ont été promulguées, les taux de meurtres et d’homicides ont augmenté ».
English translation.
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, reviewed the data compiled by Fox News Digital and stated that while “charts comparing locations are very common,” “they are overly simplistic because they don’t account for the many other reasons why crime rates can vary (such as law enforcement, drug gang problems, demographic and cultural differences).” He advised examining a single location over time to see how crime rates change “in relation to changes in gun ownership rates and comparing them across many different locations.”
He noted that there are places around the world that “have banned either all firearms or all handguns, and yet, each time these bans have been enacted, murder and homicide rates have increased.”
Statistics on gun-violence either increasing or decreasing after new anti-gun legislation is introduced is usually slanted left or right depending on the data used and the tendencies of the author.
I rely on analyses from Crime Prevention Research Center (Crimeresearch.org) since the chief researcher, Dr. John Lott, Ph.D., has been dedicated to gathering and analyzing this type of data for many years and is completely transparent. You can download the raw data and analyze it yourself if you want. He has shown that new anti-gun legislation, after a settling period, usually increases the rate of gun-violence since the net effect is to disarm law abiding citizens and make the bad guys feel safer. . . .
Donald Cage, “Anti-gun legislation,” The Longmont Times-Call (Colorado), April 2, 2025.
According to John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, “Civilians stop more active shooters than police and do so with fewer mistakes.” He’s not disparaging police to say that — far from it.
Lott’s purpose is to show that people who lawfully carry firearms are a tremendous benefit to public safety. He writes, “In non-gun-free zones, where civilians are legally able to carry guns, concealed carry permit holders stopped 51.5 percent of active shootings, compared to 44.6 percent stopped by police.”
Not only do permit holders succeed in stopping active shooters at a higher rate, but law enforcement officers face significantly greater risks when intervening. Our research found police were nearly six times more likely to be killed and 17 percent more likely to be wounded than armed civilians.
We have a running tribute page for officers killed in the line of duty. You can find those on our End of Watch page.
Lott lays out many of the specifics, including one specifically relevant to the Boulder study: “Was the shooting they prevented likely to be a mass public shooting? In 58 cases (32 percent).”
As the author of More Guns, Less Crime, Lott knows the subject quite well. He knows that while crime with guns, especially of the “mass shooting” variety, gets a lot of media attention, the better and largely untold story is that the rise in law-abiding American citizens carrying firearms is having a positive impact on society. Once again, it turns out that the Founders were right and that exercising constitutional rights is a good thing.
Nate Jackson, “The Success of Concealed Carry,” Patriot Post, April 1, 2025.
Despite the increase in concealed carry permits causing a less friendly environment for violent criminals to find soft targets, D.C.’s permit requirements and application process remain cumbersome and far more onerous than almost all other jurisdictions, ranking close to last when it comes to the percentage of the adult population permitted to carry a concealed firearm, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center president, John R. Lott Jr. in his paper, Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2024.
Since then, D.C. has operated under a “shall-issue” regime, whereby a person need not show an extraordinary need to obtain a carry permit. In March 2024, the Washington Post reported that there were 17,647 carry permits in the District, up from 123 prior to Wrenn.
Despite this welcome increase, the federal enclave’s permit requirements and application procedure remain far more onerous than almost all other jurisdictions, and – according to research from economist John R. Lott Jr. – D.C. ranks near the bottom in terms of the percent of the adult population with a carry permit. The Trump administration’s move to expedite D.C.’s permitting process is an excellent step in the right direction. . . .
Staff, “President Trump Works to Expedite D.C. Carry Permits,” NRA-ILA, March 31, 2025.
Recent data from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) indicates that civilians have stopped more active murderers than police officers.
The CPRC reviewed 515 active murderer incidents from 2014 to 2023 and found that armed civilians intervened in 180 of them. In locations where concealed carry was legally allowed, permit holders intervened in 158 of 307 cases. The study concluded that civilians stopped 51.5% of active shootings in non-gun-free zones, whereas police officers, in these same areas, stopped 44.6% of active murderers.
These findings challenge common perceptions about who is most effective in preventing these attacks. The FBI defines an active shooting as an event in which an individual attempts to kill people in a public place, excluding incidents tied to robberies or gang violence.
The study revealed that civilians not only stopped more active shooters in areas where firearms were permitted but also did so with fewer errors and casualties. In just one case—0.56% of instances—an armed civilian accidentally shot a bystander, whereas police officers mistakenly shot the wrong person in four cases, or a rate of 1.14%.
Civilians stopping active shooters were rarely killed, with permit holders losing their lives in just two instances or 1.1% of cases. By contrast, police officers attempting to stop an active shooter were killed at a 7.7% rate, with 27 officers losing their lives. Officers were also wounded in 28.6% of cases, whereas civilians who intervened were injured at a slightly lower rate of 24.4%.
A key factor in these outcomes is visibility. Police officers, identifiable by their uniforms, often become immediate targets, while armed civilians can engage a murderer before being detected. Another likely reason for the difference is that police officers have to deal with hostage situations and other scenarios in which an armed civilian would necessarily need to get out of the way of law enforcement. . . .
At the same time, Fox News was quoting John Lott, founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, who stated, “For some reason, the media, they did pick the crime data that they think goes and makes the Democrats look as good as possible. And then even when the crime data that they’ve relied on turns out by the very source of that data to be wrong, none of them fix it.” . . .
