Tag Archives: permits

“Not statistically significant”

Oh, look. Another Johns Hopkins study examining the effects of recognizing human/civil rights.

Changes in state policies impact fatal and non-fatal assaults of law enforcement officers
The researchers looked at the relationship between assault data involving law enforcement officers and changes in three policies at the state level: three-strikes laws, which impose mandatory decades-long sentences when a criminal is convicted of a third crime; right-to-carry or concealed-carry laws, which reduce restrictions for individuals to carry concealed firearms in public; and permit-to-purchase measures, which require prospective handgun purchasers to obtain a permit or license after passing a background check.

And what did they find?

The authors found that three-strikes laws were associated with a 33 percent increase in the risk of fatal assaults of law enforcement officers and a 62 percent increase in fatal non-handgun assaults.
[…]
“In the case of three-strikes laws, it appears that chronic offenders may be killing officers to evade capture and possible life imprisonment,” Crifasi says.

Surprise, surprise. Back when I was a peace officer, we predicted exactly that.

What about right to carry/concealed carry?

Previous research has examined the link between right-to-carry or concealed-carry gun laws on fatal assaults in the general population. The Bloomberg School study is believed to be the first to examine the effects of these laws on both fatal and non-fatal assaults of law enforcement officers and found no associations between the laws and either type of assault against officers.

Probably because lawful carriers are usually the type…

Oh. Wait.

“Many of those most likely to commit firearm violence are prohibited from possessing firearms and therefore unable to obtain a permit to carry a concealed handgun.”

Who’d a thunk it? People who go to all the trouble of background checks and licenses don’t attack cops.

And permits to purchase?

The number of officers who died in Missouri is too small to make any conclusions about fatal assaults.
[…]
[Connecticut’s] association was also not statistically significant due to the rarity of these deaths.

Again, the folks prone to shooting cops (see above re:three strikes) don’t bother with permits they couldn’t get anyway. Now, if they’d been honest and tried to correlate straw purchase prosecutions with officer attacks, they might’ve seen something. But probably “not statistically significant.”

For the anti-gun Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, even allowing for the spin, that’s an amazing admission. They can’t possibly leave it at that, right?

Right.

Although the rates of fatal assaults on law enforcement officers have declined over the past several decades, their homicide rates are consistently higher than that of the general population and higher compared with other public service occupations. Most of the fatal assaults against law enforcement officers are committed by firearm.

In fact, the civilian homicide rate for 2013 was 4.6 per 100K. The cops? 5.3 per 100K. As Reason notes, 3.3/100K if you exclude two accidental shootings. For 2014, the CDC says the overall homicide rate in the US was 5.19 per 100K. Frankly, any difference between civilian and LEO homicide rates is “not statistically significant.”

If Johns Hopkins was honest, that press release would have been titled,“Most changes in state policies DON’T impact fatal and non-fatal assaults of law enforcement officers.” But being Johns Hopkins, they had to lump in restrictions on honest folk to demonize gun owners by association.

Your tax dollars at work.

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