John Lott Debunks New RTC “Study”

A new, widely published study that claims to prove that Right-to-Carry laws increase violent crime is nothing but smoke and mirrors, according to researcher and author John Lott.

Writing at Foxnews.com, Lott said lead author John Donohue’s claims go against existing national research. “This new study picks out just two to four states, and in many cases effectively just uses Hawaii to compare with right-to-carry states,” said Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Institute. “In the cases of Idaho and Minnesota, over 96 percent of the comparison is just with Hawaii. For Mississippi, Nebraska, and Utah, Hawaii counts for between 72 percent and 83 percent of the comparison.”

Lott said the “study” also contains numerous other faults. “The study claims that police simply ‘underestimate criminality by permit holders,’” Lott said. “But Donohue's only evidence is two news stories from 2000 and 2007 where permit holders committed crimes. For these results to be plausible, Michigan police departments would have to be missing 99.4 percent of cases where permit holders have committed violent crimes.”