By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Writing at The Federalist, noted researcher and author John Lott asserts that gun control advocates have strived for years to debunk what they believe is the “good guy with a gun myth” to make gun control more palatable.
In the process, he writes, “the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) under the Biden Administration has sought to suppress data proving that armed citizens help prevent crime by removing its estimates of defensive gun uses from its website.”
Supporting his argument, Lott refers readers to research published at the website of the Crime Prevention Research Center, the organization he founded and operates out of Missoula, Montana. He lists dozens of incidents involving armed and unarmed citizens intervening in criminal attacks. Lott’s group breaks down these incidents under the following headings:
- Likely mass public shootings averted by armed citizens
- Suspect with a gun fired first:
- Suspect with a gun, the victim shot first
- Suspect with a gun, but didn’t shoot (not included in our list)
- Cases where unarmed civilians stopped active shooter incidents
According to Lott’s Op-Ed, the federal government—at least in recent years—”in conjunction with legacy media has sought to suppress the abundant evidence in support of the truth that armed, law-abiding citizens are one of the most effective deterrents against public mass casualty attacks.” He offers several examples, including headlines in the Washington Post, Associated Press and Time Magazine which downplay armed citizen interventions as “rare” events.
He also asserts the CDC made its decision to remove data about armed citizen intervention after a leading gun control activist “lobbied the CDC to remove ‘misinformation’ regarding defensive gun use estimates because of they are cited by ‘gun rights folks’ to stop gun control legislation. Soon after, the CDC took down these estimates and now lists no numbers.”
Lott has been prominent in the gun rights movement since publication of his book More Guns, Less Crime. He has written about media bias against guns, appeared on television, testified about firearms and crime, and addressed various seminars including the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference.
Lott’s allegations are made more credible after the recent claim by social media pioneer Mark Zuckerberg that the Biden White House “pressured” Facebook to suppress COVID-19 content during the pandemic.
According to the New York Post, Zuckerberg also “separately added that suppressing The Post’s exclusive report on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop ahead of the 2020 election was a mistake.”
It all adds up to what appears to have been an effort to squelch anything which departed from what conservative critics of the progressive left have dubbed “the narrative.”
But that “narrative” has been losing steam since publication in 2007 of America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense In A Violent Age. The book, by veteran gun rights advocate Alan Gottlieb and career journalist Dave Workman, is still available.
Lott sums up his commentary by noting the FBI dataset on intervention by armed citizens “is missing so many defensive gun uses that it’s hard to believe it isn’t intentional.” He criticizes the news media for “unquestioningly” using the FBI data and “actively distorting the truth regarding the pivotal rule responsible gun owners have played in preventing crime and limiting casualties during mass public shootings.”
