“This past week, just in time for the NRA convention, gun-control advocates were at it again,” John Lott writes at nationalreview.com, “touting ridiculous charges that concealed-carry permits were responsible for 636 deaths nationwide over the seven years from May 2007 to March 2014. The Violence Policy Center regularly puts out these bogus charges in a report called “Concealed Carry Killers.” But how does it claim to arrive at these numbers?” Personally, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide. But John Lott does . . .
Assume, for the sake of argument, that the Violence Policy Center’s claim that concealed-handgun permits were responsible for 636 deaths in seven years is correct. One has to note that there are over 11 million concealed-handgun permits in the U.S. right now. With an annual number of deaths of 90, that means 0.00083 percent of concealed-carry permit holders were responsible for a shooting death each year. Removing suicides from the total reduces the rate even more, to 0.00058 percent.
I’m no math guy. I’d sooner read John Stuart Mill’s turgid prose than wade through Lott’s statistical analysis. But we want him on that wall. We need him on that wall. The antis want the truth? They can’t handle the truth. So click here to send Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center some money to help protect your gun rights from lies, damn lies and statistics.