PA Bill Number: HB2311
Title: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program.
Description: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program. ...
Last Action: Laid on the table
Last Action Date: Sep 23, 2024
CPRC: The New York Times as a Fake News Site: Again cites false information from the Violence Policy Center :: 12/10/2016
Once again the New York Times is citing bogus data from the Violence Policy Center.
But since 2007, concealed-carry permit holders have been responsible for at least 898 deaths not involving self-defense, according to the Violence Policy Center, a gun safety group. This includes 29 mass shootings by permit holders who killed 139 people. Separate research has found that despite the overwhelming number of guns in America, they are very rarely used in self-defense or to stop crimes. The self-defense myth of concealed carry nevertheless carries on, at the expense of public safety.
Letter to the Editor that the CPRC sent to the New York Times:
Dear Editor:
The Times erroneously asserts that over nine-and-a-half years there were 898 non-self-defense gun deaths nationwide by concealed handgun permit holders (“The Threat to Public Safety if ‘Concealed Carry’ Goes National,” 12/1).
Suppose for the sake of argument that Violence Policy Center has accurately identified the cases you refer to, with over 14.5 million permit holders at the beginning of this year, the 19 pending homicide charges so far this year implies an annual rate of 0.14 homicides per 100,000 permit holders. And the vast majority of these will be found to be in self-defense.
Yet, these numbers are a mess. Take Michigan, which is identified as the worst state for permit holders with supposedly 72 homicides. Many non-cases are tripled or quadrupled counted. “Pending” and “conviction” numbers from the Michigan State Police reports are both counted, though cases might be listed as pending for years before they go to court and most never result in a conviction. News stories of these same events are also counted as separate cases.
Sincerely,
John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D.
President
Crime Prevention Research Center
Of these 898 deaths, 286 of them are just from Michigan. The points that we made in 2014 about the errors in using this data for Michigan still hold true now. As to the Violence Policy Center claim based on FBI UCR information on justifiable homicides to show that guns are rarely used for defensively, please see this previous post that we put up.
