A new analysis by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) found that the FBI has understated the number of times armed civilians have stopped active shooter incidents in the United States.
According to the FBI, civilians stopped just 14 out of 374 active shooter cases between 2014 and 2024, which is a rate of 3.7%.
But the CPRC, a nonprofit data watchdog on crime issues, said it uncovered 561 incidents during the same period, with armed citizens stopping 202 of them, or 36%. CPRC said the percentage jumped to 52.5% when excluding shootings that occurred in “gun-free zones.”
According to the CPRC, the FBI’s data is off, in part, because in some cases civilians who intervened were listed as “security guards,” even when they were private citizens. The group also found that armed bystanders who thwarted attacks were not counted if the suspects fled.
The FBI had classified the 2019 church shooting in White Settlement, Texas, involving a parishioner who shot and killed the gunman as being thwarted by a security guard, even though the man was not a security professional.
The CPRC also noted that the FBI excluded some cases it labels “domestic disputes” or “retaliation murders” from its data about civilians stopping active shooters. . . .
The President of the Crime Prevention Research Center and former Senior Advisor for Research and Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice, John Lott, says he believes the media are missing the narrative because they focus on the sensational, not the tragedy that was avoided.
“There are many biases in how the media reports these cases. There are many cases where police will say that a concealed handgun permit holder has stopped what otherwise would have been a mass public shooting but that the incident only received local news,” Mr. Lott tells the Sun.
He also suggested an interest among the media in avoiding reporting key details, like where shootings occur and who ends up a victim because they lived in a state where they are prevented from obtaining a carry permit.
Twenty-nine states have Constitutional Carry, where it is no longer necessary for individuals to get a permit at all. Mr. Lott predicted that those states that make it expensive or difficult to obtain a permit are setting themselves up to report more victims of shootings, not survivors of deterrence.
“The media will cover and mention the shooters’ manifestos and diaries but will never mention that (shooters) will say they picked their target because they wanted to go to a place where guns are banned. The media also refuses to mention that these mass public shootings overwhelmingly keep occurring in gun-free zones,” he adds.
. . . John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, issued a report in 2020 that focused on mail-in balloting mostly on advanced democracies titled “Why Do Most Countries Ban Mail-In Ballots?: They Have Seen Massive Vote Fraud Problems.”
Lott told The Daily Signal that Europe falls into three categories. Thirty-five countries outright ban mail-in voting. Another 10 countries allow mail-in voting if the voter picks up a ballot and provides an ID. The third category is a subset of the 10: six require a person to prove he or she would be in the hospital, in military service, or otherwise unable to vote on Election Day to get a mail-in ballot.
“Before 1975, France was similar to how the United States is now. But on the island of Corsica, votes of the dead were counted, votes were being bought,” Lott said. “One big problem with vote-buying is that it’s in the interest of the buyer and seller to hide the transaction. This interestingly came to light in France when some people felt guilty and reported themselves and then reported others.”
The United Kingdom added ID requirements after a 2004 mail-in ballot fraud case, Lott noted, in what a British judge described as a “massive, systematic, and organised” postal voting fraud campaign that involved as many as 40,000 fraudulent ballots.
Most U.S. states join Canada, Germany, Iceland, South Korea, Liechtenstein, Luxenberg, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom as the only nations in the world that allow what is effectively no-excuse mail-in voting, according to International IDEA. This means voters are allowed to mail in their vote without providing a reason, such as being out of town on Election Day. . . .
According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, the worst 2% of counties account for half of all murders. So excluding the most violent cities would push national rates much lower. Our “national” rate is inflated by a handful of urban hot spots where local law enforcement systems have failed. . . .
Even with the cooked numbers, however, DC suffered a horrendous crime rate that far outstripped that of any state — even the worst of states in terms of criminal activity. John Lott ran down those numbers yesterday at The Federalist:
When measured against states, D.C.’s violent crime rate was 54 percent higher than New Mexico, the most dangerous state, and 220 percent higher than the national average. Against cities, D.C. outpaced every one of the 20 largest cities and ranked second highest among the 25 most populous.
The murder rate looks even worse. D.C.’s murder rate ran 169 percent higher than Louisiana’s, the deadliest state, and an astonishing 523 percent higher than that of the average state. No city in the top 20 came close. Philadelphia had the second-highest murder rate in that group, with 26 murders per 100,000 people, yet D.C.’s rate was 50 percent higher. Among the 25 largest cities, D.C. ranked second overall.
Robbery paints the bleakest picture. D.C.’s robbery rate was 370 percent higher than Maryland, the worst state, and a staggering 955 percent higher than that of the average state. Among the 25 most populous cities, D.C. ranked first in robberies. Across all 796 U.S. cities with more than 50,000 residents, D.C. still ranked third.
While D.C. isn’t setting record rape or aggravated assault rates, it is 191 percent and 140 percent above the average rate for states.
Washington, D.C.’s crime rate, including homicides and robberies, surpasses those of many U.S. cites and states, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Last week, John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), released an analysis of the most recent FBI crime statistics, revealing strikingly elevated figures.
The August 13th CPRC report highlights:
Violent Crime: D.C.’s violent crime rate is 54% higher than New Mexico’s, the highest state rate, and 220% higher than the national average.
Murder: The District’s murder rate is 169% higher than Louisiana’s, the highest state rate, and 523% higher than the national average.
Rape: While D.C.’s rape rate is 67% lower than Alaska’s, the highest state rate, it is 191% higher than the national average.
Robbery: D.C.’s robbery rate is 370% higher than Maryland’s, the highest state rate, and 955% higher than the national average.
Aggravated Assault: The aggravated assault rate in D.C. is 25% lower than New Mexico’s, the highest state rate, but 140% higher than the national average.
Property Crime: D.C.’s property crime rate is 49% higher than New Mexico’s, the highest state rate, and 134% higher than the national average.
However, Lott provided caveats to the reported data, stating that the reported numbers may be inaccurate, as he noted that crime is “severely underreported” in the nation’s capital.
Crime underreporting in Washington, D.C., happens for a combination of reasons. Some D.C. residents distrust the police due to their own perceived past experiences of misconduct, harassment, or bias. This distrust discourages victims from reporting crimes, especially for sensitive offenses like domestic violence or sexual assault. In neighborhoods with high levels of violent crime or gang activity, victims may also fear retaliation if they report crimes to authorities.
Violent crimes, particularly sexual assault and domestic violence, are the most underreported. Fear, distrust, and social stigma are consistent factors across crime types. Additionally, even when property crimes are formally reported more often, minor thefts and vandalism still go unreported if victims believe the effort outweighs the benefit.
The study author emphasized that national crime statistics only capture a fraction of wrongdoing since only around 40% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes are typically reported, and where there’s less confidence in law enforcement, including D.C., the percentage can be even lower.
A 2022 survey by the D.C. Policy Center and local universities found that less than half of residents in certain D.C. wards felt the police “can be trusted to protect them.”
However, even without the notion of underreported data, the comparisons made between D.C. and the states with the highest crime rates are still shocking in every category, the author notes.
Later in the piece, Lott highlights the hypocrisy of the left’s outrage in response to the Trump administration’s handling of the D.C. crime crisis. He specifically mentioned MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s admission that Democrats will privately discuss the crime problem in D.C., and that the president’s office should have acted years ago, while publicly attacking Trump.
“So many people have been calling me over the past couple days going, ‘You know Washington should have gotten involved years ago. This place is dangerous, it is a mess, it is a wreck,’ and whatever. But then they will go on Twitter and ‘this is the worst outrage of all time,’” Scarborough said on MSNBC.
The FBI has vastly undercounted cases of armed civilians thwarting mass shootings in the U.S. in its public crime data, according to new research.
Civilians with guns stopped at least 36% of active shooters from 2014 to 2024 despite the FBI recording the figure as 3.7%, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) said in a report released Friday. Legacy media and fact-checkers previously used the FBI’s data to drive the narrative that such cases are rare, minimizing the public benefits of legal gun access.
Armed civilians stopped at least 47.8% — nearly half — of reported active shooters in the U.S. in 2024, whereas the FBI recorded zero, the CPRC found, citing local news coverage for each case. Most of these incidents were overlooked by the FBI, while others were misclassified, the group reported. Some included cases in which civilians with firearms caused would-be active shooters to flee the scene, but the FBI only credited law enforcement for stopping the suspects because police later arrested them, according to the research, which was first reported by Just the News. . . .
According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, the worst 2% of counties account for half of all murders. So excluding the most violent cities would push national rates much lower. Our “national” rate is inflated by a handful of urban hot spots where local law enforcement systems have failed. . . .
The FBI has vastly undercounted cases of armed civilians thwarting mass shootings in the U.S. in its public crime data, according to new research.
Civilians with guns stopped at least 36% of active shooters from 2014 to 2024 despite the FBI recording the figure as 3.7%, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) said in a report released Friday. Legacy media and fact-checkers previously used the FBI’s data to drive the narrative that such cases are rare, minimizing the public benefits of legal gun access. . . .
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Author: johnrlott
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