CPRC in the News: The Wall Street Journal, Real Clear Politics, Magnum (Brazil), The Truth About Guns, and more
Instead of relying on incomplete FBI data, Republicans point to the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey, which John Lott, founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, tells RCP is the “gold standard” in crime statistics because it includes both reported and unreported crime. In 2022, it found that only 42% of crimes are reported to police.
The NCVS found that while the FBI registered a 2% drop in overall violent crime from 2021 to 2022, there was actually a 42% increase in violent crime. . . .
As for reporting crime statistics, there seems to be a problem far beyond Oakland. John Lott wrote for the Journal in April:
Americans think crime is on the rise, but the media keep telling them they’re wrong… Americans aren’t mistaken. News reports fail to take into account that many victims aren’t reporting crimes to the police, especially since the pandemic.
The U.S. has two measures of crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting program counts the number of crimes reported to police every year. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, in its National Crime Victimization Survey, asks some 240,000 people a year whether they have been victims of a crime. The two measures have diverged since 2020: The FBI has been reporting less crime, while more people say they have been victims.
The divergence is due to several reasons. In 2022, 31% of police departments nationwide, including Los Angeles and New York, didn’t report crime data to the FBI. In addition, in cities from Baltimore to Nashville, Tenn., the FBI is undercounting crimes those jurisdictions reported.
Another reason crimes reported to the police are falling is that arrest rates are plummeting. If victims don’t believe criminals will be caught and punished, they won’t bother reporting them.
James Freeman, “Lies, Damn Lies, and Crime Statistics,” Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2024.
Gun control groups campaign against right-to-carry laws by claiming that guns carried in public pose a substantial threat to public safety, and that concealed carry permitting laws lead to more violent crime, not less. Giffords, for instance, alleges that “the dangers of permissive public carry laws” include an increase in gun thefts and “other undesirable outcomes,” with absolutely no counterbalancing public safety benefits.
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.
The first study was conducted by Dr. John Lott, a former University of Chicago economist and current director of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Lott is also the author of More Guns, Less Crime and The War on Guns, both of which lay out his arguments against the efficacy of gun control. Lott’s work is cited by most gun rights activist groups and many pro-gun politicians. Lott himself frequently testifies before legislative bodies and debates gun policy in the media.
The second study comes from Everytown for Gun Safety. Everytown is a leading gun control advocacy group founded and funded by former New York City Mayor and multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg also funds the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions, a major gun control think tank, the Moms Demand Action group, and dozens of anti-gun politicians at every level. Bloomberg is perhaps the country’s most ardent and engaged gun control activist.
These two studies disagree on almost everything, including what constitutes a “gun free zone.” Lott defines them as places classified by police or military policy “where it is illegal to carry a permitted concealed handgun, places that are posted as not allowing a permitted concealed handgun, places where ‘general citizens’ are not allowed to obtain permits, or where permits are either not issued to any general citizens or to only a very tiny selective segment.” Bruen ended that last one in 2022, but it’s still part of the study.
The Everytown definition is much simpler. Gun free zones, the study says, are “areas where civilians are prohibited from carrying firearms and there is not a regular armed law enforcement presence.” Everytown’s narrower definition partially accounts for the disparity between the two studies’ conclusions. . . .
William Lawson, “Do Gun Free Zones Keep Us Safe?” The Maglife, July 2, 2024.
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.”
These results confirm what many in the Second Amendment community know already – that despite all the spurious rationalizations advanced against lawful carrying, CCW permittees and others carrying responsibly are not the ones who threaten public safety or produce more crime.
