CPRC in the News: Washington Post, Seattle Times, National Review and much more
In 1997, researchers John R. Lott Jr. and David Mustard published an influential study finding that states saw reductions in violent crime after the adoption of “shall issue” laws and that up to 1,500 homicides a year could be prevented by adopting such measures.
The original study analyzed data from 1977 to 1992. Many states adopted “shall issue” laws afterward. Lott later published a book based on his research, “More Guns, Less Crime”; a third edition was released in 2010 with data from 1977 through 2005.
“There are large drops in overall violent crime, murder, rape, and aggravated assault that begin right after the right-to-carry laws have gone into effect. In all those crime categories, the crime rates consistently stay much lower than they were before the law,” Lott writes about the latest data through 2005. “The murder rate for these right-to-carry states fell consistently every year relative to non-right-to-carry states. When the laws were passed, the average murder rate in right-to-carry states was 6.3 per 100,000 people. By the first and second full years of the law it had fallen to 5.9. And by nine to ten years after the law, it had declined to 5.2.”
Lott’s research led to more research, including research into his research. Some academics were able to replicate his findings. Others analyzed the same data he used and came to the opposite conclusion: that violent crime rises. Some have found no significant effect. . . .
In response to our questions, Lott said “none of the results claiming a bad effect account for the huge differences in the percent of the population with concealed handgun permits.”
“For example, you have Illinois at 4% and Indiana at over 20%, but because it is so costly to get a permit in Illinois, you overwhelmingly have wealthy whites who live in the suburbs getting permits,” Lott said. “In Indiana, many more people who live in poor, heavily minority zip codes have permits. My research shows that you will get a much greater reduction in crime in areas where the people who are by far the most likely victims of violent crime get permits.”
Salvador RIzzo, “Fact check: The claim that crime falls when states relax gun laws,” Washington Post, November 12, 2021. “Fact check: The claim that crime falls when states relax gun laws,” Seattle Times, November 12, 2021.
According to the most recent estimate from the Crime Prevention Research Center, there are now more than 21.5 million active carry permits and licenses in circulation. That doesn’t count the number of people now carrying without a license in 20 states where permits are no longer required. . . .
In an article, John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News that the rise in crime and the disempowerment of the police movement contributed to the rise in gun permits….
While he’s running as a Republican, in the past Oz has made some statements supporting gun control measures that may not ring well with Keystone State gun voters. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, Pennsylvania is one of six states where more than 1 million active concealed carry permits have been issued. The state also fields hundreds of thousands of hunters every year. . . .
According to the most recent estimate from the Crime Prevention Research Center, there are now more than 21.5 million active carry permits and licenses in circulation. That doesn’t count the number of people now carrying without a license in 20 states where permits are no longer required. . . .
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Deep in December it’s nice to remember: Philip Wegmann, Philip DeVoe, Richard Brookhiser, Hank Aaron, James Rosen, Susan Konig, Anne Bayefsky, Cam Edwards, John R. Lott Jr, Quin Hillyer, Jibran Khan, David Limbaugh.
Jack Fowler, “Follow, follow, follow,” National Review Online, December 8, 2021.
“Between the No-Fly List and the NICS List, there are two secret lists the government uses to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) tweeted. “But they do so in secret. With no charges. No hearing. No due process. It is a remnant from Soviet Russia, and it needs to end.”
He was referring to an October 28 letter that he wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland about reports the government was denying guns to citizens who don’t fit into any of the 10 classes of legally enacted “prohibited persons” categories, including convictions for crimes punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, fugitives from justice, and the like. His concern was that people not so prohibited by law were still being denied their rights, including through “false positives.”
“The background check system confuses the names of law-abiding individuals with those of criminals, resulting in thousands of ‘false positives’ every year,” author and Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott argues. Rather than refute that it happens or demand that it stops, the antis came out in furious force to smear and try to discredit Lott.
He’s an easier target for them than Congressional Research Service, which operates out of the Library of Congress to provide public policy analyses for our representatives and senators to consult when crafting legislation. In a 2019 analysis of denials, denials appealed but sustained and denials overturned over a 20-year period, CRS found “The majority of these overturned denials were due to misidentifications.” . . . .
As Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center recently pointed out, defensive gun uses are actually very common. They’re also often unreported by the media. . . .
There’ve also been plenty of folks (me included) who’ve pointed out that defensive gun uses among minors are not unheard of. In fact, Dr. John Lott recently documented several recent incidents.
The national media rarely covers instances where young children use guns to save someone’s life. I found 11 cases that got local news coverage where a juvenile used a gun to save someone’s life. On June 30, a 12-year-old Louisiana boy used a hunting rifle to stop an armed burglar threatening his mother’s life during a home invasion. On Feb. 13, after two masked men broke into a North Carolina house and shot a 73-year-old woman in the leg, another 12-year-old shot the intruders in self-defense, causing them to flee. In St. Louis on June 16, a 13-year-old shot his father as he was choking his mother. And the news media also misses the vast majority of defensive gun uses.
As the Crime Prevention Research Center’s Dr. John Lott has demonstrated, far fewer than 1% of concealed carry licenses are revoked in any given year because of any felony offense, much less murder. If folks legally carrying guns were driving up the homicide rate, we wouldn’t need a study to document it. . . .
