CPRC in the News: Washington Post, Yahoo! News, The New York Sun (2), PJ Media, and much more
In his Feb. 5 Fact Checker column, “What’s more common: A ‘good guy’ without a gun or a ‘good guy’ with one?,” Glenn Kessler made a great case for the FBI to include all incidents of active shooters stopped or curtailed by good Samaritans, armed or not. . . .
Perhaps The Post — following the example of John R. Lott Jr., a gun rights researcher — should preempt the FBI and create a database for civilian crimes interdicted by the good guys, regardless of the method or means used by these courageous heroes.
Emory Damron, “FBI data should cover the good and the bad guys,” Washington Post, February 17, 2023.
“It’s the reason why you’ve seen the increase in gun sales,” said John Lott, president and founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center. “Because people realize that the police and law enforcement broadly isn’t being allowed — the criminal justice system isn’t being allowed — to go and do its job.
“And the people know that they ultimately have to be responsible for protecting themselves and their families,” Lott told Fox News Digital in a recent phone interview. . . .
John R. Lott Jr., founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, said Maryland’s laws would be outliers.
“In fact, if you look across the country, there’s no state that adopted a right-to-carry law or a constitutional carry law that’s even had a legislative hearing afterwards to try to undo the law once it’s in place. There’s a lot of concerns and fears about things that might happen but look at the experience to see whether or not it happens or not.” . . .
The president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, John Lott, told The New York Sun that laws like that proposed in Colorado will do nothing to stop crime and will infringe on manufacturers’ right to engage in lawful commerce.
“People could sue manufacturers and sellers whenever a crime, accident, or suicide occurs with a gun,” Mr. Lott said. “The straightforward result would be to put gun makers out of business. Should Ford or GM be sued when car accidents occur because a driver isn’t paying attention or drives recklessly, perhaps under the influence?”
The president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, John Lott, testified in a hearing about the bill that the gun-free zones proposed in Maryland would be “magnets” for criminals.
“The people who obey these laws are law-abiding citizens,” Mr. Lott said, adding that criminals have been known to explicitly pick those areas for attacks to take advantage of the idea that their victims won’t be carrying weapons.
“You can go through many diaries or manifestos from mass murderers,” Mr. Lott said. “For example, the Buffalo mass murderer last year wrote about areas where concealed carry is outlawed or prohibited that are good areas for attack.”
It is alarming to me that the media provide little coverage of the fact that some shooters, in their manifestos, describe how they pick their targets. The shooter who killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket in last May went into great detail about how he chose a place where guns were not allowed. The staggering reality is that 94% of these tragedies happen in gun-free zones, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center, a gun-rights advocacy organization. Let’s address that, Mr. President. . . .
John Lott, President and founder of the Missoula-based Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), told KGVO News on Wednesday that gun control groups claim that he and his research and writings are at least partially responsible for the tragic shooting deaths of three Michigan State University students on Monday night.
Lott said groups such as Bloomberg’s ‘Everytown for Gun Safety’ immediately blame people like Lott and his research with the Crime Prevention Resource Center for these mass shootings.. . .
Despite the high number of murders, many parts of the country don’t have the same problem with crime. A study conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center revealed that in 2020, only 1% of counties had serious problems with homicides, making up 42% of the investigations recorded nationwide. On the other hand, more than half of the counties, 52%, did not have a single case involving individual deaths at the hands of another person. . . .
Rosana Sainz, “42% of murders occurred in only 1% of the counties,” Voz media, February 20, 2023.
According to a 2018 study by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), a whopping 97.8% of mass shootings over a 68-year period occurred in “gun-free zones.” . . .
In a notable address to Congress, John Lott, founder and CEO of the Crime Prevention Research Center, quickly detailed the facts about crime the mainstream media has no interest in reporting. He appeared as an expert witness before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee. Before he spoke, Rep. Andy Biggs (R) said, “Milton Friedman noted John Lott has few equals as a perceptive analyst of controversial public-policy issues.” This is a statement that, no doubt, would make any member of the mainstream media present groan (if, that is, given the insular worldview of so many of today’s media members, they even know who Milton Friedman was). As much of the media won’t report on this, here are the highlights.
“I desperately want to do something to stop the horrific violence … but I want to do something that actually matters. Unfortunately, many of the proposals won’t help or will actually make matters worse,” said Lott in his testimony.
• Over 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms. The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey for 2020 shows 4,558,150 rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults, and the FBI reports 21,570 murders. Of those, firearms were involved in 350,460 of those crimes, which means that firearms were only involved in 7.9% of these violent crimes.
• While the U.S. media doesn’t give much coverage to mass murders in other countries, over the 20 years from 1998 to 2017, the U.S. had less than 1.13% of the world’s share of mass public shooters and 1.77% of its mass public murders. That’s much less than the U.S.’s 4.6% share of the world population.
• Like many other mass murderers, the killer in the 2022 attack at a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store targeted defenseless people. He even wrote in his manifesto: “Attacking in a weapon-restricted area may decrease the chance of civilian backlash. Schools, courts, or areas where CCW are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack. Areas where CCW permits are low may also fit in this category. Areas with strict gun laws are also great places of attack.” The national media often refuses to report the fact that 94% of mass public murders occur in places where civilians are banned from having firearms.
New research from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) proves, once again, what most of us have known all along—when it comes to murder in America, the country’s millions of lawful gun owners are not the problem.
The research paper, titled “Murders in U.S. Are Very Concentrated, and They Are Becoming Even More So,” revealed that 2% of American counties experienced 56% of murders in 2020, proving that increasing murder rates are very localized and in historic hotspots.
“When it comes to murder, there are three types of counties in the United States,” the study stated. “Most counties experience no murders, a smaller set where there are a few murders and then a tiny set of counties where murders are very common.”
According to the research, in the year studied, 52% of counties, which had 10% of the population, had no murders. Further, 68% of counties had no more than one murder. These counties accounted for only 2.6% of all murders in the country in 2020.
“The worst 1% of counties (the worst 31 counties) have 21% of the population and 42% of the murders,” the report stated. “The worst 2% of counties (62 counties) contain 31% of the population and 56% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 73% of murders.”
Even within those dangerous counties, however, the murders are very heavily concentrated in small, localized areas. In looking at the high-murder-rate counties by zip codes, some are mostly murder free.
Take Los Angeles County, Cali., as an example. There, the worst 10% of the zip codes account for 41% of the murders, the worst 20% have 67% and the worst 30% have 82% of murders.
“By contrast, the safest 40% of the counties have just 1% of the murders,” the report stated. “Recent research shows that murders in Los Angeles County have become less concentrated over time, but they are still fairly concentrated.” . . .
. . . John Lott, head of the Crime Prevention Research Center, brought that to the attention of Congress when he testified before a House subcommittee. According to Lott, after hiring academics at Texas State University to find news stories about DGU incidents, the FBI reported that armed citizens stopped only 11 of the 252 active-murderer incidents that it identified for 2014-2021. Lott’s group, however, looked at news stories and discovered 360 active-murderer incidents during that time period, with 124—more than one-third—being stopped by armed citizens. . . .
Mark Chesnut, “The CDC Killed a Gun Study,” America’s 1st Freedom, February 24, 2023.
David Clarke . . . board member of the Montana-based Crime Prevention Research Center.
