John Lott Destroys Left’s Go-To Gun Control Study

Crime Prevention Research Center’s (CPRC) John Lott took the left’s go-to gun control study for mass shootings apart on December 14.

The study, which claims the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings, was put together by University of Alabama’s Adam Lankford and released in 2013.

The study looked at 1966 through 2012, and Mother Jones summarized, “Over those five decades, the United States had 90 public mass shootings, defined as shootings that killed four or more victims. Of the 170 other countries examined in the study, only four even made it to double-digits: The Philippines had 18 public mass shootings, followed by Russia with 15, Yemen with 11, and France with 10.”

Lott asked to see the sources behind the study but Lankford demurred. So Lott set out to duplicate Lankford’s study via CPRC research and found that Lankford had missed, or completely ignored, thousands of mass shootings that occurred throughout the world during the time-frame in question.

Lankford’s study has been referenced extensively by the left to show that the U.S. has more mass shootings than other countries. But according to Lott, the problem with the study is that it simply is not accurate.

On December 4, Breitbart News reported that Lott’s CPRC found the U.S. is not even in the top 50 in the per capita frequency on the list of countries that witnessed mass shootings from 1998 to 2015. Lott’s sources are accessible to those disagree with his findings.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.