This is a revised, updated version of a post originally written on April 21, 2015.
Columnist Eugene Volokh wrote in the Washington Post on April 20, 2015: “Have civilians with permitted concealed handguns stopped such mass shootings before?” We provided Volokh with a list of such cases, which he used.
Below, we have collected news stories on more cases of permit holders stopping mass public shootings with their handguns (we separately collect cases where concealed handguns are used to stop other crimes).…
Concealed Handguns Stopped Mass Public Shooting, CPRC original research, mass public shootings
The FBI claims that there were 27 active shooting cases in 2018 and 28 cases in 2019, but they have missed at least seven cases, with at least six cases where a concealed handgun permit holder stopped the attack. So there should be nine cases (14.52%) where people used permitted concealed handguns to stop 62 cases in 2018 and 2019.…
Concealed Handgun Permit Report
A copy of our newest report is available here (please download). Copies of our annual reports from 2014 through 2019 are available here.
Summary
During President Trump’s administration, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared to over 19.48 million – a 34% increase over 2016. However, while gun sales have set records in 2020, the growth in concealed handgun permits has slowed as many states shutdown their issuance of new permits.…
annual report on number of concealed handgun permits, concealed carry, CPRC original research
You can download a copy of our new research available here. Please download and read it.
Abstract
…The U.S. is well below the world average in terms of the number of mass public shootings, and the global increase over time has been much bigger than for the United States.
Over the 20 years from 1998 to 2017, our list contains 2,772 attacks and at least 5,764 shooters outside the United States and 62 attacks and 66 shooters within our country. By
Given all the concern about vote fraud, the CPRC investigated how other countries have handled the process. The paper is available for download here. Here is the abstract:
…Thirty-seven states have so far changed their mail-in voting procedures this year in response to the Coronavirus. Despite frequent claims that President Trump’s warning about vote fraud/voting buying with mail-in ballots is “baselessly” or “without evidence” about mail-in vote fraud, there are numerous examples of vote fraud and vote buying with mail-in ballots in the United States and across the world.
Here is another example where police have said that if it wasn’t for the presence of a legal concealed handgun permit holder many others could have been killed. Fortunately, one of the people wounded in the shooting had a permitted concealed handgun and was able to then get out of his car and shoot the attacker.…
Concealed Handguns Stopped Mass Public Shooting, CPRC original research, Defensive Gun Use, mass public shootings
The Social Science Research Network’s eLibrary provides 947,686 research papers from 498,760 researchers in more than 50 disciplines.
Dr. John Lott’s work was the 48th most downloaded researcher over the last 12 months, and he is the 24th most downloaded researcher ever.
No other researcher or university or center has a even a fraction as many top crime papers as does the Crime Prevention Research Center.…
Clearly neither the victims nor perpetrators of murders are “normal” people — both groups are overwhelmingly criminals. Sixty-five percent of murders occurred for unknown reasons, and there were only 86 suspects for these 348 murders. Fifty-nine percent of murders occurred on the street.
Homicides in Baltimore largely involve criminals killing criminals.…
characteristics of criminals, CPRC original research, who are the victims of murder, who commits murder
Dr. John R. Lott, Jr. and our research director, Professor Carlisle E. Moody, have published a new research paper at Econ Journal Watch.
…Abstract
Adam Lankford (2016) claims that the United States accounted for 31 percent of the world’s public mass shooters over the 47 years from 1966 to 2012. After four years of extensive worldwide media coverage, Lankford—in response to our paper (Lott and Moody 2019)—finally made one of his datasets available.
CPRC has found that there are at least 21 State Capitols in the U.S. which officially allow some form of legal firearm carry for either visitors, legislators, employees, or all of the above. Tennessee is the most recent state to allow carrying permitted concealed handguns into legislative buildings. Some states require the individual have a handgun carry permit before being allowed to enter the Capitol with a firearm.…
