John R. Lott Jr. at The Federalist: New Trump Admin Stats Prove Good Guys With Guns Save Lives
The federal government consistently downplays evidence that armed, law-abiding citizens can stop public mass-casualty attacks.
That would mostly be the FBI, The Bureau of Justice Statistics, the ATF, ... In other words, the Deep State that wants citizens disarmed.
Those who manipulate crime data can shape the political debate. The Trump administration has reversed some serious data manipulation that occurred during the Biden administration when it comes to crime.
He starts out the recent CDC decision to republish, and somewhat correct, data on armed self-defense. (See my post from Sunday.)
But the FBI is also part of the problem.
The FBI has also had its own data problems. The FBI defines an active shooter as someone actively killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. The category can include an incident in which a gunman shoots at a single person and misses, as well as a mass public shooting. But it excludes shootings tied to other crimes, such as robberies or fights over drug turf.
I have seen politicized data firsthand. Until January 2021, I served at the U.S. Department of Justice as senior adviser for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs, where part of my job involved evaluating the FBI’s active shooter reports. During my time at DOJ, I found that the FBI had missed or misidentified many cases in which armed civilians stopped attacks.
Click thru for the rest. (Hat tip to Crime Prevention Research Center)
The CDC has NO business commenting on crime stats. Their job is dealing with biological diseases.
ReplyDeleteCongress told the CDC exactly that. Gun crime is not in their area of expertise. But from the days before then, the CDC had data that the gun-controllers didn't like, because it says self-defense is much more common than the Left would like to admit. See The CDC Corrects Its Defensive Gun Use Data for how the Biden admin had the data pulled, and the Trump admin had it put back.
DeleteThe FBI has its own problems, and they do have a legitimate reason to collect crime data, the yearly FBI Crime Report (or whatever they calling it today).