Shooting Straight with John Lott

The mainstream media likes to use federal statistics as hooks for their one-sided 'gun-control' narratives. The thing is, many of those statistics are suspect, even those from various federal agencies. The Crime Prevention Research Center's (CPRC) work goes deep into how factual this "official data" is. Indeed, when I reached out to John Lott, president and founder of the CPRC, he talked about his time working as a senior adviser for research and statistics at the Office of Justice Programs—a Department of Justice division that doles out about $5 billion in grants each year—during the Trump administration and about his research into crime and gun ownership. He has a lot to say about the statistics these agencies publish. As crime is an important topic in this upcoming election, we decided it was time to speak with Lott about how politically skewed these numbers from federal agencies can be.

A1F: Just hours after Hunter Biden was convicted of gun charges, his father, President Joe Biden (D), went to an Everytown for Gun Safety event to give a speech. He began the speech by saying that the year before he was president, the murder rate grew faster than it ever has in history, whereas, in this past year, it has fallen more than it ever has in history. Is this true?
Lott: This claim needs context. During the first year of COVID, there was a big increase in murder rates as many big-city mayors and other officials opted not to police the streets during unrest after the George Floyd incident. Many of those jurisdictions even cut police budgets and weakened criminal law. Also, many far-Left district attorneys saw the unrest as a mandate to refuse to prosecute many violent criminals; in fact, many progressive judges during 2020, 2021 and even 2022 released large percentages of inmates from local jails. In some urban areas, you had half, even two thirds of the inmates released. So, it's not too surprising that there were increases in crime rates.

Biden would like to blame this increase on Trump, but the policies from gun-control supporters in office are undoubtedly part of the reason for the increase in murder rates. .....