John Lott Proves His Premise is Correct Once Again

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, May 5, 2017: 

The premise of John Lott’s book, More Guns, Less Crime, now in its 3^rd edition, is this: when a criminal doesn’t know if his potential target is armed, he reconsiders. When he is assured that his target is defenseless, he has much less reason to do so.

Lott puts it this way:

Criminals as a group tend to behave rationally – when crime becomes more [risky], less crime is committed.

That means that

Citizens can take private actions that … deter crime. Allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns reduces violent crimes, and the reductions coincide very closely with the number of concealed handgun permits issued.

His latest study, under the auspices of his Crime Prevention Research Center, proves the point once again. In 2014, the latest year for which sufficient data is available, half of all murders in the United States took place in just 63 US counties – two percent of the 3,144 counties in the country. Two-thirds of all murders that year happened in 157 counties – five percent. On the other hand, more than half had no murders at all.

World Atlas, looking at cities instead of counties, came up with the same conclusion: Cities that are run by anti-gun politicians have the highest murder rates. The homicide rate of St. Louis was 59 per 100,000 population, with Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, and Newark right behind (55, 44, 42 and 33 respectively). Each of these cities is run by anti-gun politicians with an anti-gun agenda that turns out to be pro-violent crime.

If those cities and counties are removed from the calculation, the nation’s overall violent crime rate – used so often by anti-gun politicians as an excuse to mandate more gun laws – falls nearly in half. For instance if the numbers from the five percent most violent counties are removed from the calculation, the United States’ murder rate per 100,000 population drops from 4.4 to 2.56.

Lott’s study puts the lie to those seeking to disarm innocents. First, violent crime is concentrated in fewer than 160 counties out of 3,177, which becomes a local law enforcement issue, not a national crisis calling for federal police to take over from local enforcement.

Second, it’s the anti-gun mentality that drives violent crime in those counties. As Lott toldAmerican Spectator following the release of his study: “The confusion is that they think that if they pass some gun control legislation, then they will take guns away from criminals. In fact,” said Lott, “the opposite is true. When you primarily disarm the most law-abiding citizens, you see increases in murder rates and the most violent crimes.”

To say that anti-gun politicians, most of them Democrats, promote violent crime, is to say too much. Some, perhaps many, really believe that guns are the problem, and that their attempts to remove them from the public square really will reduce violent crime. Some, on the other hand, know exactly what they are doing. A spike in the homicide rate merely proves their point: Guns are the problem and the solution is still more gun controls. Pushed to the logical end, the only people with guns will be criminals and law enforcement: the perfect recipe for totalitarianism.

Sources:

The Daily Wire: Who’s Doing The Killing In The U.S.? Scholar John Lott Pegs 51% of Murders To 2% Of Counties

Lott’s study: MURDERS IN US VERY CONCENTRATED: 54% OF US COUNTIES IN 2014 HAD ZERO MURDERS, 2% OF COUNTIES HAVE 51% OF THE MURDERS

American Spectator: Gun control increases murder rates, it would seem.

How many towns, counties, and cities are in the USA?  3,144

3rd Edition of More Guns Less Crime (2010)

Most Dangerous Cities In The United States