CPRC in the News: The Baltimore Sun, National Interest, Daily Wire, Wyoming News, and Much More
After suffering alarming spikes in violent crime, some cities are now reporting better news. But the past four years have been filled with debate over the national trends. Some say the government has been manipulating numbers. I spoke with a data expert about the how reporting of crime statistics has changed, and whether we’re getting the full truth.
“There has been a big change,” said John Lott, a crime data analyst and former senior advisor for research and statistics in the Justice Department, which is over the FBI.
Lott says the FBI crime statistics shouldn’t be taken alone at face value. . . .
Where there are gaps in data, Lott says the FBI does attempt to fill in the blanks.
“They try to guess,” he said. “The question is how good of a job they do in guessing. I don’t think they do a very good job in terms of guessing.”
He points to two distinct databases that he says should reflect similar trends, but have produced impossibly opposite results: the FBI statistics and the National Crime Victimization Survey, which tries to capture additional crimes that people don’t officially report. . . .
Concealed-carry permit holders are nearly the most law-abiding demographic of Americans, a new report by the Crime Prevention Research Center says—comparing the permit holders foremost with police.
“Indeed, it is impossible to think of any other group in the U.S. that is anywhere near as law-abiding,” says the report, titled “Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States 2016.”
From 2007 through 2015, permits issued by state and local governments increased by 215 percent, to more than 14 million Americans, according to the data.
The study compared permit holders to police, who committed 703 crimes from 2005 to 2007, and 113 of those were firearm violations.
“With about 685,464 full-time police officers in the U.S. from 2005 to 2007, we find that there were about 103 crimes per hundred thousand officers,” the report reads. “For the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher—3,813 per hundred thousand people.”
The study refers to Texas and Florida, which it says mirror most other states, to compare permit holders with police and the overall population. It used data from 1987 through 2015. . . .
Jones, a former Republican candidate for Wyoming’s House District 40 seat in the Legislature, referenced a Crime Prevention Research Center study that indicated 94% of mass shootings between 1950 and June 2019 had occurred in a gun-free zone. There is no indication whether the study is peer-reviewed. . . .
Joseph Beaudet, “Gun-free zone discussion returns to Wyoming Legislature,” Sheridan Press, January 17, 2025. “Gun-free zone discussion returns to legislature,” Gillette News Record, January 20, 2025. “Gun-free zone discussion returns to legislature,” Buffalo Bulletin, January 21, 2025. “Gun-free zone discussion returns to legislature,” SVI News.com, January 20, 2025.
“This commonsense legislation ensures that law-abiding citizens can exercise their constitutional right to carry concealed firearms across state lines while respecting the laws of each state,” North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis stated. “This legislation is a critical step in protecting the right of self-defense for Americans, no matter where they travel.”
Last week, the House of Representatives introduced a companion bill, H.R. 38. The Crime Prevention Research Center states that nearly 22 million Americans hold concealed carry permits. . . .
Hank Berrien, “GOP Senate Introduces Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act,” Daily Wire, January 16, 2025.
Jones, a former Republican candidate for Wyoming’s House District 40 seat in the Legislature, referenced a Crime Prevention Research Center study that indicated 94% of mass shootings between 1950 and June 2019 had occurred in a gun-free zone. . . .
Joseph Beaudet, “Gun-free zone discussion returns to Wyoming Legislature,” January 17, 2025.
The annual report on concealed carry in the United States, published by the Crime Prevention Research Center, has some eye-opening details about the number of legally armed citizens and a very plausible explanation for why the number of active permits and licenses has dropped slightly for the second year in a row.
According to the CPRC, which was founded and is run by author and researcher John Lott, nobody should be fooled into presuming people are giving up their guns. With 29 states now online with permitless (a.k.a. “Constitutional”) carry, many citizens are simply not renewing their carry document and are still legally packing. How many folks are packing hardware? Who really knows? For Second Amendment purists, that’s exactly the way things are supposed to be.
Released late last year, the report says at least 8.2% of American adults have carry permits/licenses. Leave New York and California out of the equation, and the percentage jumps to 9.8%. Stop and think about this for just a bit. Odds are pretty good that in many places, nearly one-in-ten adults within your view might be armed, and it has been this way for a few years. It’s enough to give the gang at Everytown for Gun Safety the shivers.
In 16 states, the report reveals, “more than 10% of adults have permits. . . .
Combining a bunch of different gun laws into one number isn’t an accepted research practice.
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), has been debunking annual reports like this for decades. Before Everytown, the Brady Campaign conducted a similar ranking using equally flawed measurements to obtain the results they desired.
“Lumping all the different gun-control numbers into one number is pretty arbitrary,” Lott said in an earlier analysis. “Not only is there the issue of what gun-control laws to include, there is also the issue of how to weight them.” . . .
“This discretion allows a lot of possible data manipulation,” said Lott. “You can exclude or include what laws to use in constructing your score based on how it is correlated with homicides or suicides.” . . .
