Breitbart News previously reported that economist John Lott will establish the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), an initiative to produce studies focused on the relationship between firearms and crime. Lott is largely funding CPRC with donations from individuals who support his mission. Just one month after launching CPRC’s campaign on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo, Lott has already exceeded $30,000 in donations.
The financial success of Lott’s campaign suggests that Americans are hungry for accurate information regarding guns and crime, amid a mainstream media that often vilifies firearms and those who own them.
The CPRC is currently the most successful campaign in the education section on Indiegogo and has more than double the number of funders than the other trending education campaigns. Lott’s project is additionally the third trending campaign in the education section.
“You spend years trying to work through data to figure out what saves the most lives, and the support that we are receiving is very gratifying,” Lott told Breitbart News. “People care about having an objective source that they can trust. The notes that we have received in the mail have really been encouraging.”
According to Lott’s Indiegogo campaign page, the CPRC will be “a research and education organization dedicated to conducting academic quality research on the relationship between laws regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime, and public safety; educating the public on the results of such research; and supporting other organizations, projects, and initiatives that are organized and operated for similar purposes.”
The economist, whose teaching and research career has taken him to prestigious institutions like Yale Law School and Stanford, decided to create the CPRC after former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg funded several large-scale “studies,” which in Lott’s view are “poorly done and riddled with errors.” Critics of Bloomberg’s initiatives claim that they twist facts in order to support increased gun control.
Despite Bloomberg pumping significant funds into such studies, the efforts are not compelling Americans to support stricter gun laws.
“Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, and President Obama can see the polls with support for gun control continuing to fall over the last 25 years or so,” Lott said. “They know that their past effort to push more gun control hasn’t been working, and they hope that they control the gun debate by making up facts.
Our donors want to try to keep them honest.”
He continued, “The irony is that Bloomberg and the head of his one of the groups that he funds, Moms Demand Action, both have armed body guards walking around with them for protection. I can appreciate their desire for protection, but others, who don’t have billions of dollars to draw, also face real risks and want to defend themselves. Their concerns are no less legitimate than Bloomberg’s or the head of Moms Demand Action.”
Ultimately, Lott hopes that the CPRC will counter Bloomberg’s efforts by facilitating truthful reporting about guns and crime in society.
Lott said, “Nobody else is really doing this kind of research right now. You have places like the NRA and Gun Owners of America, and they can certainly be a useful thing – but none of them really deal with hard data.”
Follow Kristin Tate on Twitter @KristinBTate.
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