CPRC in the News: Yahoo! News, Washington Post, The Volokh Conspiracy, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Townhall, and much more
You can see the list from the Crime Prevention Research Center; it goes back more than a year, but I counted the incidents just since June 4, 2021. The list is supported by links to media coverage of each incident, so you needn’t trust and can instead verify. I checked a few and they seem to check out, though of course there’s always the possibility of error in news coverage (plus of course there’s no reason to think that the list is complete, since there may well have been such incidents that weren’t covered in the news in a way that would come up on the Center’s searches).
Naturally, it’s also hard to tell how the incident would have played out had the defender not interceded; it doesn’t cover the almost certainly far more common scenarios of self-defense against non-mass shootings (and of the non-mass shootings themselves); and of course this doesn’t tell us whether some particular gun control proposal might, on balance, reduce underlying gun crime in a way that doesn’t unduly interfere with lawful self-defense. Still, I think it’s worth noting these incidents, to help us keep in mind the possible costs of gun control measures that do unduly interfere with lawful self-defense. . . .
Myth 2: “These kinds of mass shootings never happen with the kind of frequency that they happen in America,” President Joe Biden recently asserted.
A 2020 paper by John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, looked at mass shootings around the world. He found that the United States “ranks 66th in the per capita frequency of these attacks and 56th in the murder rate.”
Americans generally pay little attention to what’s happening in other countries. For instance, the day before the Texas shooting, gunmen murdered 11 people in Mexico. Mexico’s strict gun control laws didn’t stop that massacre. Also, comparisons to other countries frequently fail to adjust for population. . . .
Victor Joecks, “Debunking 4 common gun-control myths,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 4, 2022.
Mass shootings are not a uniquely American problem. In fact the United States does not even make the top 10 in mass shootings per capita in the Crime Prevention Research Center’s 2015 report that measured the average death rate per million people from mass public shootings from 2009 to 2015. . . .
George Sweeney, “Gun control proposals won’t deter real criminals,” Yahoo! News, June 10, 2022.
But did Australia’s gun buyback program reduce violent gun crime?
No, according to John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center. “Their firearms homicide rate,” said Lott, “had been falling for a decade prior to the buyback. It continued falling at the same rate after the buyback. There was no sudden drop, just a fairly constant decline that continued even as gun ownership rose back up to previous levels. The armed robbery rate rose in the first five years after the buyback. After another 10 years, the rate had fallen to pre-buyback levels.”
Larry Elder, “If ‘No One Wants to Take Our Guns,’ Stop Saying the Opposite,” Townhall, June 2, 2022.
According to a Crime Prevention Research Center report, “schools that allow teachers to carry guns are extremely safe.” As of 2019, 20 states allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property.
“There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 a.m. and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns,” the report states. “Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed.
“While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly – doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018,” the report points out. . . .
Figures like John Lott and Dana Loesch have been enmeshed in guns for years, if not decades. Agree or disagree with their opinions, they’ve studied the topic aggressively and offer sober insights.
What has McConaughey done to measure up? . . .
Meanwhile, a 2019 study of GCOs by the Crime Prevention Research Center’s Dr. John Lott found “no significant effect on murder, suicide, the number of people killed in mass public shootings, robbery, aggravated assault, or burglary.” . . .
There are currently 21.5 million concealed carry permits in the U.S., according to a 2021 study: “Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States,” by John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and author of the book “More Guns, Less Crime.” That means Florida has nearly 12% of concealed weapons permits nationwide. . . .
Mary Wozniak, “Conceal Carry,” Florida Weekly, June 2, 2022.
In a recent op-ed published in Newsweek, a gun rights advocate researcher argues that Democrats’ focus on gun control won’t solve any of our problems. So if gun control isn’t the answer, then what is?
Dr. John Lott joined The National Desk to discuss the issue and provide some perspective on the debate.
We want to do something but we want to do something that’s going to actually matter and the only policy that I know of that’s had any effect on these is getting rid of these gun-free zones. These killers may be crazy in some sense but they’re not stupid. They want to try to go to someplace where they can kill as many people as possible,” Lott said. . . .
Cruz spokesman Steve Guest told The Washington Post that Stone’s line of questioning surrounding mass shootings in the United States was incorrect. Guest pointed to research from the Crime Research Prevention Center, a pro-firearms nonprofit founded by former Trump appointee John R. Lott Jr., that claims “the U.S. is well below the world average in terms of the number of mass public shootings.”
“Contrary to a reporter’s assertion that suggested mass shootings are a uniquely American problem, the data shows that is not accurate,” Guest said. “In addition to not being true, making that false argument isn’t actually helpful.”
More recently, the tragic, preventable slaying of 17 students by accused gunman Nikolas Cruz elicited similar sentiments from Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, speaking in the Senate just last Thursday: “This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America.”
Powerful remarks, and no doubt heartfelt. But a study of global mass-shooting incidents from 2009 to 2015 by the Crime Prevention Research Center, headed by economist John Lott, shows the U.S. doesn’t lead the world in mass shootings. In fact, it doesn’t even make the top 10, when measured by death rate per million population from mass public shootings.
So who’s tops? Surprisingly, Norway is, with an outlier mass shooting death rate of 1.888 per million (high no doubt because of the rifle assault by political extremist Anders Brevik that claimed 77 lives in 2011). No. 2 is Serbia, at just 0.381, followed by France at 0.347, Macedonia at 0.337, and Albania at 0.206. Slovakia, Finland, Belgium, and Czech Republic all follow. Then comes the U.S., at No. 11, with a death rate of 0.089.
That’s not all. There were also 27% more casualties from 2009 to 2015 per mass shooting incident in the European Union than in the U.S.
“There were 16 cases where at least 15 people were killed,” the study said. “Out of those cases, four were in the United States, two in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.”
“But the U.S. has a population four times greater than Germany’s and five times the U.K.’s, so on a per-capita basis the U.S. ranks low in comparison — actually, those two countries would have had a frequency of attacks 1.96 (Germany) and 2.46 (UK) times higher.”
Yes, the U.S. rate is still high, and nothing to be proud of. But it’s not the highest in the developed world. Not by a long shot. . . .
When that study came out in 2014, it failed to impress John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Lott observed that while homicides increased in Missouri by 17 percent in the five years after the state rescinded purchase licensing, deliberate killings rose by nearly one-third before the policy got repealed.
“It’s just a very misleading claim” that ending permit-to-purchase drove murders up in the Show-Me State, he told The Pennsylvania Daily Star.
In an analysis of the Johns Hopkins study, Lott mentioned he examined numerous comparable state laws and their effects in the third edition of his famous book More Guns, Less Crime. Therein, he determined those statutes put no discernible downward pressure on homicide rates. . . .
New research from John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, reveals that a shockingly large percentage of Americans believe that most violent crimes involve a firearm. This is not true.
As Lott recently wrote “a new survey finds that people are badly misinformed about how much violent crime involves guns. The average likely voter is way off, thinking that over 46% of violent crimes involve guns. In fact, the true figure is less than 8%. Not surprisingly, those who believe that most violent crime involves guns are more likely to view gun control as the solution.”
Part of the reason for this view may be the result of President Joe Biden’s (D) continual misrepresentations about violent crime and firearms. As Lott noted, in four major speeches on violent crime and gun control since taking office, Biden mentioned “gun” or “firearm” 179 times, and “weapon” (sometimes connected with “assault weapon”) another 31 times.
In those same speeches, Biden refers to the words “crime,” “violence” or “violent” 94 times, with the words “murder” or “homicide” used seven times.
Biden’s overall message—shared without much of a critical view from the media—is that “guns” and “firearms” are the problem, not the criminals committing the crimes. The solution, according to Biden and fellow anti-gun activists, is ever-more gun control.
“But,” Lott noted, “this ‘guns first’ approach to reduce overall violent crime ignores a basic fact—over 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms. Although Biden blames guns for the increase in violent crime, the latest data show that gun crimes fell dramatically.”
That data came right from the federal government; specifically, it came the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey. In the latest year available, 2020, that survey indicated that just 7.9% of violent crimes, including aggravated assaults, murders, rapes and robberies, involved the use of a firearm. . . .
