CPRC in the News: Politifact, The Village Voice, Breitbart, and local newspapers across the country

Jan 1, 2017 | Featured

Idaho State Journal

Idaho State Journal (Pocatello, ID) Lead story, December 29, 2016

As of December 2016, 131,665 Idaho adults possessed such permits, according to the Idaho Bureau of Criminal Identification. That’s 8 percent of the state’s population and an increase of nearly 54 percent in just 4 years.

“These permits are definitely for handguns used for self-protection,” Nielsen said. “Even though people can carry without a permit, they want to make sure they are legally covered in other circumstances.”

The Crime Prevention Research Center also reported that during President Obama’s time in office, the number of concealed weapons permits issued nationally soared to over 14.5 million — a 215 percent increase since 2007. . . .

“In my last class, women outnumbered the men by a long shot,” Clark said. “Out of 12 people, 10 of them were women.”

According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, 33 percent of Idaho concealed weapons permits are held by women. . . .

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Politifact, December 28, 2016

Dan Patrick of Texas touched off our No. 5 most-clicked fact check from 2016 by lofting a historical claim about mass shootings.

The Republican lieutenant governor appeared on NBC’s Jan. 3 edition of Meet the Press as the Texas law permitting licensed individuals to openly carry holstered handguns took effect. Patrick told host Chuck Todd he wants to see a day “when every American citizen can simply have a gun, does not have to go through a long ordeal or pay a high price. We’re going to address that in Texas, as well. Because it’s the right of every individual under the Second Amendment.”

Then came the historical note: “Having law-abiding citizens having guns is a good thing,” Patrick said. “In fact, Chuck, every one of the mass shootings except two in America since 1950 have been” in “gun-free zones,” his implication being that wrongdoers don’t open fire in places where permitted citizens may have loaded handguns.

Research John Lott Jr. delivered a basis for Patrick’s statement. But Patrick’s all-but-two assessment also rested on how you define a mass shooting or gun-free zone. Change the definitions to take in more events and you end up with more shootings in places that weren’t otherwise free of guns. . . .

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Capital Journal (Pierre, SD), December 30, 2016

According to the Center’s website:

 During President Barack Obama’s administration, the number of concealed handgun permits has more than tripled, to more than 14.5 million – a 215% increase since 2007. And South Dakota is the second-leading state behind Indiana in the popularity of the permits.

From a 2016 CPRC report::

■ The increase in the number of concealed handgun permits last year set another record, increasing by 1.73 million. That is slightly greater than previous record of 1.69 million set the last year.

■ 6.06% of the total adult population has a permit.

■ In ten states, more than 10% of adults have concealed handgun permits. Indiana has the highest rate — 15%. South Dakota is close behind with 14.7%.

(More recent Census figures and permit numbers at the end of 2016 show it’s 14.9 percent now in South Dakota.)

■ Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas each have over a million residents who are active permit holders.

■ In another 11 states, a permit is no longer required to carry in all or virtually all of the state. Thus the growth in permits does not provide a full picture of the overall increase in concealed carry.

■ Between 2012 and 2016, in states that provide data by gender, the number of women with permits has increased twice as quickly as the number of men with permits.

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Snopes.com, December 28, 2016 (the entire piece is on the CPRC’s research); Inquisitr, December 29, 2016; Long Beach City College Viking, December 29, 2016

On 20 September 2016, researchers at the Crime Prevention Research Center releasedstudy in which they addressed the following question: Do white police officers disproportionately target black people? The study noted that very limited data is available about the race of officers who are involved in custody deaths. While one data set in which the race is known seemed to show black police officers are more likely to kill black people across the board, the study’s authors noted there could be a number of factors that skew that result. Most importantly, in the vast majority of cases, the race of the officer who caused the death was not known. . . .

One of the authors, John Lott Jr., said that researchers collected data on the officers’ race through media reports, by matching available names with police department photographs or through Freedom of Information Act requests. Lott told us:

The bottom line, at the very least is, white officers aren’t shooting black suspects at a higher rate than other officers are. . . .

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Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho), December 18, 2016; Bearing Arms, December 19, 2016

At the beginning of December, 131,665 Idaho adults possessed a concealed weapons permit, 8 percent of the state’s population, according to the Idaho State Police. Of those, 27,243, or 21 percent, were enhanced permits.

The total figure is up 54 percent from the beginning of 2013, when 85,535 adults had such a permit, according to statistics from the ISP and the Pennsylvania-based Crime Prevention Research Center. . . .

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Gainesville Times, December 27, 2016

The number of applications filed in Hall County to legally carry a firearm in public has grown significantly over the last five years, with more than 4,000 made in 2016 alone, a record high.

By comparison, there were just 2,359 applications filed in 2012.

It’s a trend seen across the nation, in nearly every state, county and local jurisdiction.

According to a 2015 study by the Crime Prevention Research Center, about 13 million concealed handgun permits had been issued in the United States, covering 5.2 percent of the adult population.  . . .

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Breitbart, December 21, 2016

The family of late pop singer Christina Grimmie has filed a lawsuit against the “gun-free” concert venue in which she was shot and killed on June 10, 2016.

A former contestant on reality singing competition The Voice, Grimmie was killed by Kevin James Loibl in the Plaza Live Theater as she signed autographs after performing. Loibl took his own life thereafter and two Glock 9mm handguns were found on his person.

According to ABC News, the Grimmie family’s suit alleges the theater had “negligent security.”

“The owners of the facility in which she performed and the outside security company hired to provide security for the concert … failed to take adequate security measures to ensure the safety of the performers and the attendees at the concert venue,” the suit alleges.

On June 11, the Crime Prevention Research Center reported that the theater was a designated “gun-free” zone. . . .

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The Village Voice, December 19. 2016

At Fox News, John R. Lott voiced another common complaint: “These fact checkers have their own biases — usually the same liberal biases that we see in the rest of the mainstream media.” For example, Lott wrote, fact-checker Politifact said Trump’s claims of “large scale voter fraud” were bullshit, but aha, “voter fraud in 2008 gave Al Franken the Senatorship in Minnesota.” That is, if you believe the evidence Lott was offering, namely another Fox News editorial written by…John R. Lott, containing rock-solid proof points like “undoubtedly other felons voted illegally in other counties.”

Lott therefore described the Facebook warnings as “attempts at censorship,” which conservatives could not escape by switching to other social media such as Gab and Freedombook because — well, who knows, but it probably has something to do with small government. . . .

PJ Media, December 31, 2016; Aces of Spades HQ, December 30, 2016

Really cratering in Miss Sloane’s case; two weeks after its American debut, and despite an extremely well-funded advertising budget, the film, starring Jessica Chastain, “has made only $3.2 million. During its second weekend, it averaged just $102 per movie theater per day. With a ticket price of $10.30 per adult, that comes to an average of only 9.9 people a day seeing the movie in any given theater. At least people had no problem finding a good seat,” John Lott deadpans at National Review. . . .

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Statement by Elkhart County (Indiana) Sheriff Brad Rogers, Goshen News, Friday, December 23, 2016

There is little evidence that safe storage laws will have much of an impact on safety or crime. According to Professor John Lott of Yale School of Law in his book, “Safe Storage Gun Laws,” “15 states that passed safe storage laws saw 300 more murders, 3,860 more rapes, 24,650 more robberies, and over 25,000 more aggravated assaults in the first five years.

“On average, the annual costs borne by victims averaged over $2.6 billion as a result of lost productivity, out-of-pocket expenses, medical bills and property losses. The problem is, you see no decrease in either juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides when such laws are enacted, but you do see an increase in crime rates.” . . .

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Western Journalism, December 28, 2016

According to the Washington Times, a study of almost 2,700 fatal shootings involving police between 2013 and 2015 found that a black suspect is much more likely to be shot to death by a black cop than by a white one.

The study by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) was originally released in mid-November and titled “Do White Police Officers Unfairly Target Black Suspects?”

The answer, according to researchers John R. Lott Jr. and Carlisle E. Moody, was a resounding “no,” which might have been why it never got the attention it deserved.

“When either the violent crime rate or the demographics of a city are accounted for, we find that white police officers are not significantly more likely to kill a black suspect,” co-authors Lott and Moody wrote, according to the newspaper.

“White officers are significantly less likely than black officers to kill black suspects, and they are not statistically significantly different from Hispanic, other race, and unknown race police officers,” the study concluded. . . .

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New American, December 27, 2016

Gun-free zones are just what unhinged criminals are looking for: places with lots of people present who are unable to defend themselves. John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) published a report two years ago showing that 94 percent of mass public shootings between January 2009 and 2014 took place in gun-free zones.

That report was followed by a similar study, this time from Stanford University, that confirmed the CPRC study: Going back to the beginning of 2002, of the 54 mass shootings (involving a shooter targeting people at random), the shooter chose gun-free zones 37 times. Of the 17 times a shooter choose a location where guns were legally allowed, a third of the attacks were ended when the shooter was confronted by an individual legally carrying a firearm. . . .

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Ammoland,  

Concealed carry permits have boomed nationally, with the number exceeding some 15 million [should read 14.5 million].  The growth in firearms ownership was particularly strong among women and minorities.  The Crime Prevention Research Center examined eight states that collect data on gun owners based on their sex.  Since 2012, the number of permits has increased by 161 percent for women and by 85 percent for men.  Looking back farther from 2007 through 2015, concealed-carry permits issued by state and local governments increased about 75 percent faster among nonwhites than whites.  Welcome to the gun culture. . . .

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Ammoland,  

In case you’re wondering, according to economist John Lott, 6.06% of the total adult population of the United States has a concealed carry permit. In 10 states, over 10% of the adult population does. Those are big numbers, folks. . . . .

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Ammoland,  

But as shown by the recent Crime Prevention Research Center study, black police officers are slightly more likely to shoot black suspects than are white police officers. . . .

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1 Comment

  1. Fred Miller

    As for the Politifact story: it’s going to be pretty difficult for us to educate people on firearms issues if the so-called “fact checkers” give a “half true” to a statement about gun-free zones. No wonder so many think things like “universal background checks” are a good idea …..

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