Personal crimes such as rape and sexual assault are three times higher in gun-controlled Australia than in the USA, a report in the Spectator/Australia on Wednesday details.
Written by Malcolm Roberts and John Lott, Jr., the report begins by explaining that the establishment media’s approach to coverage and the method of compiling crime stats leads many to believe Australia’s “crime rate is low compared with the countries like the United States.”
The media “reinforces the myth” of lower crime while less than 20 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to Australian police. However, in the U.S., 45 percent of such personal crimes are reported to police. This difference in the level of personal crime reporting skews the figures seen by the populations of both countries and feeds into the establishment media’s low-crime narrative.
After a hard look at the real numbers, Roberts and Lott wrote: “Australia’s rape and sexual assault rate is roughly three times higher than that of the United States. Australia’s assault rate is about twice as high, and its burglary rate is about 2.5 times higher. Robbery is the only category where the two countries report similar rates.”
They went back nearly a decade, to the year 2000, to contrast those findings with the numbers of today and found similar data:
The International Crime Victimization Survey used consistent definitions and methods across countries. Even in 2000, it found Australia’s violent crime rate (including robbery, sexual incidents, assaults, and threats) was 104 per cent higher than in the United States. Robbery was 150 per cent higher, sexual assaults 167.9 per cent higher, and assaults and threats 72.3 per cent higher.
Commenting on the higher level of personal crimes in Australia, Roberts and Lott remind readers: “In practice, Australians cannot use guns for self-defense.” But citizens of the U.S. can use guns for self-defense and do so at least “five times more frequently to stop crimes than criminals use guns to commit them.”
But Australia goes beyond virtually banning guns for self-defense. “Australian law [also] prohibits people from carrying pepper spray or mace for protection…[and] bars individuals from carrying knives for self-defense.”
Roberts and Lott posit the caveat that a knife is less likely than a gun to help to a woman, as she would have to let attacker get so close, in order to use the knife, that he would likely be able to overpower her.
Roberts and Lott conclude: “Australians cannot address crime effectively if they underestimate its scale or ignore how measurement differences distort comparisons. Policymakers should focus on raising the risks to criminals – through higher arrest and conviction rates – and on giving law-abiding citizens more ability to protect themselves.”
Now, research by the Crime Prevention Research Center suggests how overblown and tenuous these claims actually are.
The CPRC found “no evidence that law-abiding gun owners are converting their handguns,” as “even the advocates for these laws focus on only the threat by criminal gangs.” Criminals are clearly unfazed by the fact that conversion devices are already considered “machineguns” under federal law and are generally illegal to make, transfer or possess even without being affixed to a gun, or that many state laws also prohibit the manufacture and transfer of conversion devices enabling automatic firing.
Based on “an exhaustive search on cases where a GLOCK-style gun with a switch was used to murder people,” the CPRC tallied a total of 43 murders committed in 20 attacks (slightly more than two people murdered per case) over a five-year period starting in 2021. The researchers acknowledge the possibility that not all cases may have made it into their count, but even so, 43 murders represent only 0.05% of all murders committed in that period. The figure shrinks into further insignificance when compared to the 6,147 murders committed with knives or other cutting instruments in the same timeframe.
As Gottlieb pointed out, the Crime Prevention Research Center has monitored armed citizen intervention for several years and has done research on defensive gun uses. The CPRC issues annual reports on licensed concealed carry. . . .
Here is where the whole justification gets thin.
The Crime Prevention Research Center, the outfit run by economist John Lott, did what it called an exhaustive search for murders committed with switch-equipped Glock-style guns from 2021 through May 2026. Its verified count came to roughly 40 killings across about 20 separate incidents over five-plus years. CPRC is careful to say it may have missed cases, and that is fair. But even rounding generously, that is a rounding error against the roughly 80,000 murders the country saw over a comparable window. By CPRC’s math, it works out to about five hundredths of one percent of all murders.
For a sense of scale, the National Weather Service counted 81 fatal lightning strikes since the start of 2021. More Americans were killed by lightning than by a Glock switch over the same stretch.
It gets worse for the policy. More than half of those switch cases involved just one or two victims, which means the killing almost certainly would have happened with an ordinary handgun anyway. A switch makes a pistol harder to aim and control, not deadlier in a targeted shooting. Lott’s point is one most shooters already understand from the range: full-auto out of a handgun is a way to miss faster, not a way to kill more people. You are not banning a capability that drives the body count. You are banning a gun. . . .
Recommended Reading: . . . More Guns, Less Crime by John Lott: An academic but groundbreaking book that uses data to support the idea that more guns lead to less crime. . . .
“2A CULTURE WARS: WHY THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS WILL PREVAIL,” Western Sport, June 5, 2026.
John R. Lott Jr. reports for RealClearInvestigations that new data suggesting the rise in the number of Americans carrying concealed weapons is making the country safer. Drawing on a survey by the group he leads, the Crime Prevention Research Center, Lott reports about 30% of Americans say they carry a firearm at least some of the time. This rise in concealed carry– up 5.5 percent in December 2024 – coincides with what preliminary data indicating the nation had a record-low murder rate in 2025.
— The survey, commissioned by the Crime Prevention Research Center and conducted by McLaughlin & Associates, found that 13.2% of respondents carry a firearm all or most of the time; an additional 16.6% carry sometimes or rarely.
— 29 states now permit concealed carry without a permit; in states like New Jersey and Hawaii, where permit access was expanded after a 2022 Supreme Court ruling, violent crime has fallen sharply.
— Black and Hispanic voters carry at disproportionately high rates relative to their share of the electorate; over the past decade, permit growth among women outpaced men by 112%, while growth among Black Americans outpaced whites by 284%.
— Physically vulnerable groups – women, the elderly, and low-income residents of high-crime areas – benefit most from carrying, as a firearm offsets size and strength disadvantages
— Concealed carry permit holders are exceptionally law-abiding, convicted of firearm offenses at one-twelfth the rate of police officers. More than nine in 10 street police officers support concealed handgun laws.
— Over 91% of street police officers support concealed carry laws, recognizing that citizens often must defend themselves before law enforcement can arrive.
Of course, what all these anti-gunners don’t seem to get – or, perhaps, refuse to admit – is that more guns in the hands of lawful people do not equal more gun crime. Liberty Nation News Chief Political Correspondent Graham J Noble reported recently on the latest survey from the Crime Prevention Research Center, which shows that, over recent years, firearm ownership is up, but violent crime is down. . . .
James Fite, “Gun Rights Face a Coast-to-Coast Gauntlet,” Liberty Nation News, June 13, 2026.
Tucked a few paragraphs into a recent report from the Montana-based Crime Prevention Research Center regarding the number of homicides involving Glock pistols illegally altered with so-called “Glock switch” devices is a startling revelation the mainstream media has overlooked.
According to the report, during the period of 2021-2024, FBI data says there were 80,657 murders, producing an annual average of 20,164 slayings. Out of those, the CPRC says, only 43 were identified through research as having involved an illegally-converted Glock pistol. This amounts to 0.051% of all homicides during the study period.
“By comparison,” the CPRC report says, “the National Weather Service confirmed 81 fatal lightning strikes since the start of 2021. The NWS also confirmed 40 fatal lightning strikes in 2016 alone.”
Translation: A person may be nearly twice as likely to be killed by a lightning strike than by someone using a converted Glock or “Glock-type” pistol.
Writer Harold Hutchison, writing at The Daily Caller, discussed this late last month.
Dr.. John Lott, founder and head of the CPRC, wrote, “We have tried to do an exhaustive search on cases where a Glock-style gun with a switch was used to murder people, but it is quite possible that we have missed some cases.” . . . .
The arrest rate for the overall adult population in the USA is about 2,100 – 2,200 per 100k in recent years. The arrest rate for police officers has been about 170 per 100k. This may be low because no one officially tracks police arrests. Officials may be reluctant to charge police officers. The conviction rate for concealed permit holders is about 17.6 per 100k in Texas, according to an academic paper by John Lott, Moody, and Wang published in 2025. From the paper:
Of the 43,932 total convictions in the Texas DPS 2023 report, only 284 — or 0.6 percent — were convictions of LTC holders, a conviction rate of 17.6 per 100,000. . . .
Research from the Crime Prevention Research Center shows concealed carry permit holders remain among the most law-abiding groups in America.
In Florida and Texas, concealed carry permit holders are convicted of firearms-related violations at roughly one-twelfth the rate of police officers.
Police officers already commit crimes at far lower rates than the general public.
So when permit holders are convicted of firearms-related violations at an even lower rate than law enforcement, the gun confiscation lobby’s narrative collapses. . . .
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