September 23, 2025 • 45 mins
On this episode of The Truth with Lisa Boothe, Lisa sits down with John Lott, President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, to examine the surge of political violence in America. From the assassination of Charlie Kirk to the broader debate over mass shootings, they break down how media coverage often skews the narrative toward right-wing extremism while ignoring left-wing attacks. Lott critiques gun-free zones, advocates for arming school staff, and shares data-driven insights on how to keep Americans safe. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get
to the heart of the issues that matter to you. Today,
we're joined by John Lott, President of the Crime Prevention
Research Center, to tackle the rising concerns about political violence
and assassinations in America.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Are we entering a dangerous new era?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Is one political side more prone to violence than the other.
We'll also dive into the data and mass shooters, their
mental health, and why experts often miss the warning signs
despite many already being under psychiatric care. Plus, we'll explore
the role of gun free zones and mass shootings, and
whether transgender related violence is on the rise. Stay tuned
(00:37):
for a really jam packed interview with tons of research
and facts with John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Well, John Lott, it's great to have you on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You know, obviously, particularly in your area of expertise, there's
so much disinformation and intention and misinformation.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
That's out there. I think you know one thing, and you.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Know, we were talking about this before we got started.
Obviously we're all just like extremely heavy hearted with what
happened to Charlie and just really saying that there's so
much evil in the world. And you know, we always
knew it was there, but just to have it be
that profound, you know, to lose a really good man
who uh, you know, we were lucky enough to know
(01:26):
who loved this country.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Loved his wife, loved his kids, loved God, and yet
they killed him, you know. But it really.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Has led to this conversation that people are having about
concerns of just like assassination culture and political violence in
the country.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Do you see things heading.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
In a direction where that's more commonplace or or kind
of like what are you sing and what are your
takeaways and thoughts and just this really heavy hearted few
days that we've had here as a country.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Right, I guess kind of the response to Charlie's assassination
has made me very concerned. From the left, you know,
you have somebody like Obama, you know, who made comments
a few days after the assassination where you start off
(02:21):
by saying, you know, we should all have sympathy for,
you know, a young man who has a family who's
been murdered. But then he goes on and he just
repeats these horrible lies about Charlie, just basically you know,
saying that Charlie was saying that Michelle Obama and Justice
(02:42):
Jackson don't have the brain processing power.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
What he was talking about was that if you have
affirmative action and don't judge people on the merits, and
you judge them on their skin color, you're going to
have some people who are going to get through that
aren't going to be the brightest people. I don't know
how you can argue with that. And it's either true
or it's not true. He's not saying everybody who's black
(03:10):
or a black woman is stupid. He's not saying anything
even remotely similar to that. He's saying that, are we
going to have a society based on merit where we're
going to be sure we're going to get the best
people to go and do the jobs or whatever. In fact,
you go and you listen to some of his discussions,
(03:31):
he says, look, seventy five percent of the NBA is black.
Do you think we should limit it to thirteen percent
because that's black's share of the population. Do you think
the quality of a basketball play would improve if we
limited blacks to thirteen percent? There obviously not. So he
(03:52):
was just saying, you're going to when you base decisions
on people's skin color rather than their quality there. You're
gonna end up making mistakes in terms of not getting
the best people there, you know, And there are other comments.
I mean, it's just despicable, you know, referring to Charlie
(04:18):
as being sexist and what have you. You know, I
don't you figure somebody like Obama must understand the false
claims that were being made by him there, but yet
it didn't stop him from from making him and I
(04:38):
it's you know, and it's not just him. I mean
you have Jimmy Kimmel who ended up saying, you know
that this was some right winger that was doing it.
I mean, this is Monday, the Monday after the Wednesday assassination.
You just had, you know, the governor for Utah was
(05:00):
on all the Sunday talk shows talking about the evidence
that was there. You'd had news media and other reports
that have come out describing the individual's views as being
leftists and being you know, being in a relationship with
a trans individual and himself being gay. You know, I
(05:21):
don't know what the deal is there, but you know,
it's not just them. I mean you look at kind
of the Anti Defamation League report that's come out basically just.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
To ask you about that, because the left sort of
seizes on this report like where they say, you know,
the majority of right winging extremists were responsible for a
right winging extreme as responsible for the majority of extreme
as related even more less that gay.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, they're saying, they're saying that over the three years.
They make a big deal about this in the report.
They say, over the three years from twenty twenty two
to twenty twenty four, all all of the extremist murders
in the United States were done by right wingers, all
(06:07):
of them. And you know, it's just crazy. You know.
The thing is, does the media I know I've dealt
with reporters over the years, ninety eight percent of them
or ninety nine percent just look at the you know,
the press release this associated They don't actually look at
the data. So you have individuals that they don't classify
(06:31):
as having any type of political views or as being
right wingers.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You have.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
People like the Nashville school shooter. I don't know how
anybody can read the Nashville school shooter and not classify
her as a left winger. You know, she go first
of all, she's trans Okay, she hates Catholics, she hates whites,
(07:02):
she hates wealthy people, she hate capitalists. Okay, and you know,
I don't know, you know, it's just and or you
have somebody like the Colorado Springs mass murderer. Now he
shot up a gay nightclub, all right, which is true.
(07:25):
But and so therefore they say he's anti gay, so
that automatically makes him right winger. Well, the thing is
when you actually go and look at this guy. First
of all, he was trans. Okay, his pronouns were they
and them. Obviously he didn't feel that the gays were
properly you know, giving you know, trans their due that
(07:48):
was there. He apparently may have actually had some personal
conflict with a gay who was there. But you know,
I look at this guy and it's like, are we serious?
We're gonna really classify this guy as a right winger.
I mean, I don't know. Maybe there's a lot of
trans individuals out there who are right wingers, but I
(08:08):
guess I just haven't noticed them too much. It's just,
you know, when you look at other ones that are there, Basically,
if you're a white supremacist, they assume that you're a
right winger. Well, you know, there's a number of white
supremacists in their data set there that the reason why
(08:30):
the right supremacists is because they're environmentalists. So the Buffalo
mass murderer at the supermarket in twenty twenty two, they
classify him as a right winger. The guy hated blacks
because they were having too many kids, and he was
upset that people who were having kids were damaging the environment.
(08:54):
You didn't think anybody should have kids, but he was
particularly upset that blacks were having it. He hated capitalists.
He blamed capitalists for all the destruction in the environment.
You know, you have other ones that are there, like
the Apasso mass murderer. This guy, it's just amazing. This
(09:15):
guy says that he agreed completely with the New Zealand
mass murderer. Basically just said you could copy the New
Zealand mass murderers manifesto and he agreed with it. I
know the media wanted to classify the New Zealand mosque
shooter who killed like forty nine people as a right winger.
(09:37):
I got censored on Twitter and Facebook, got my accounts
close because I tried to point out you know, if
you actually read the guy's manifesto. His ideal former government
was communist China. The guy called himself a socialist. He
was an environmentalist. Also, he was upset that minorities were
(09:59):
having too much any kids and damaging the environment. Now,
maybe you know a lot, maybe I'm just very isolated,
but I don't know a lot of conservatives that are
upset about people having too many kids, right, and so.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
You know it just h well, I mean you had
the same week that you know, you had the in
the same week period of time, you had, like on
September sixteenth, you had Tyler Robinson in his first court
appearance in Utah's fourth District Court for where obviously he
(10:35):
was charged for the assassination of Charlie Kirk and his
you know facing uh you know, we'll face a hearing
in a court date for that.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And then Luigi Mangioni on.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
The same day appeared in the New York State Court
in Manhattan. And then ongoing you had the Ryan Ruth
trial for trying to assassinate Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I mean that's three left.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Wingers who do not share or views on the world,
you know, all with court activity around the same exact
time period. Yet you know they'd try to say that
it's the right that you know are committing violence.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Right, Well, we just this last weekend we had this
guy in Sacramento shoot up the ABC station there, and
the guy, you know, hated Trump. You know, you look
at these things. You know, the big thing the left
wants to say is on both sides or it's all
the right, and they'll point to things like the impact.
(11:31):
The only ones they can point to is like this
state legislator who was murdered in Minnesota Wells. As Greg
Guttfeld has correctly pointed out, there was no demonization of
this woman or her husband by people on the right beforehand.
(11:52):
You know, nobody knew who she was. This guy who
murdered her was a complete kook. I mean, but if
you're going to take him at all seriously in this
he had No King's flyers, had hundreds of No King
flyers in his car, because you know, he was the
left's protest at that time against Trump. He says, you know,
(12:18):
in his writings that he was murdering her because he
had a list of other people, but he was doing
this to help Tim Waltz. Now, I'm not going to
go and classify this guy because he wants to go
and help Tim's Waltz as a Democrat. But it's hard
for me to look at those things and say, yeah, no,
it was somebody on the right trying to kill somebody
(12:41):
on the left. I want examples, hey, you know, and
the thing is just in general, as Erica Kirk was
pointing out in her talk, where was the violence on
the right after Charlie was killed? You know, after George
Floyd or others that you have there. We have these
(13:02):
riots that occur all the time, and it just you know,
I suppose what people point to is like January sixth
as examples of that. But you know, first of all,
everybody who did any type of violence there spent long
(13:23):
periods of times, at least forty two months in prison,
so they were all punished. But you and anybody who
did violence should have been punished forty two months though,
I mean that seems like a pretty substantial prison term
to begin with for that they didn't kill anybody, you know,
But compared to something like the Lafayette Square riot that
(13:47):
had occurred in the summer of twenty twenty there where
you had like one hundred and fifty law enforcement officers
who were injured, You had people scaling the White House.
That's the reason why they had to take Trump into
a secure area because people were trying. You know, they
talk about insurrections. I don't know, trying to storm the
(14:10):
White House seems like something of an insurrection. How many
prosecutions did they have for people that did that? Zero?
How many people went to prison for that? Zero? And
you know, you have things going back to the twenty
seventeen inauguration or the Republican National Convention in twenty twenty
(14:32):
when they had the thing at the White House there
and you had people being you had like fifty Trump
supporters who had to be hospitalized in the twenty seventeen
inauguration thing. How many prosecutions did you have for that zero?
How many prosecutions did you have for the people that
(14:52):
were attacked for the Republican Convention type thing when Trump
did the talk at the White House? Zero? So it
just but nobody brings up those types of things. It
seems to me that there's a real imbalance there.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Well, yeah, and you know, you had this shooter recently
at the sky Meadow Country Club in New Hampshire yelling,
you know, free Palestine. Right, Like, that's not something that
we subscribe to on the right. You know, I wanted
to ask you, you know, it seems like there is
a trend at least you know, maybe it's doesn't you know,
(15:28):
hold up with the statistics of just transgender related violence. Obviously,
Tyler Robinson, or at least for knowledge, was not trans,
but his roommate and you know reported Lever was transgender.
What do we know about transgender violence in this country?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Right? So, if you look at all the mass public
shootings in the United States from twenty eighteen on, about
five percent of those mass public shootings, So mass public
shooting is four more people killed in a public place,
not part of some other type of crime like a
(16:13):
gang fight over drug turf or a robbery, they make
about they make up five percent. The thing is you
have to compare it to their share of the population.
If you take kind of the average of several polls
from the government and the Gallop and whatever, you get
about seven point three percent of the population. And that's
(16:36):
probably a high because that's kind of more of that
is kind of weighted towards more recently that they've been
asking whole questions on that, and so you know, you're
talking about their share of these attacks. It's about seven
times their share of the population. You know, that's pretty
(16:59):
far out there. Now, you know, we're not talking about
a huge number of cases, but there's a number of
other cases where they weren't as successful fortunately, you know,
like the Minneapolis case that we just had where the
person succeeded in murdering two people wounding seventeen others that
(17:21):
were there. But look, to me, it's not particularly surprising
that they're involved in these cases at high rates because
one thing, if anybody, if you read the diaries of
manifestos for these murderers, what you see is a very
consistent pattern. You find people who are suicidal, who feel unappreciated,
(17:46):
who feel put upon in some way. Those are if
you read the diaries of manifestos for the Nashville school shooter,
or the or the Colorado's Spring shooter, or the guy
in Minneapolis or some of these others of Maryland and
other places, they all fit that they're all depressed, they're
(18:10):
very suicidal. They feel, you know, either that there's some
genocide against trans individuals that are there, or that they
feel that they've been put upon in some way, and
they want to get attention. These guys check all those boxes.
And what you find is with these guys, these mass
(18:34):
public shooters generally is they're suicidal. They want to get attention.
They know the more people they kill, the more media
attention that they're going to get, and so they go
to places where they know their victims aren't going to
be able to go and defend themselves. Gun free zones,
and they explicitly state that they're going to these gun
free zones because they may be crazy, but they're not stupid.
(18:58):
They know if they go to a place like that,
they're going to be able to kill more people and
get more media attention. The Minneapolis mass murder fit all
those boxes, the Nashville shooter fit all those boxes, and
the you know, you look at these individuals and where
(19:20):
they pick it. I have to tell you it's one
of my biggest pet peeves with media bias because the
media will go and talk about the diaries of manifestos
for these individuals, but they just always completely refuse to
go and talk about why these guys pick the targets
(19:42):
that they do. I would think that would be newsworthy.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
One percentage of these shootings take place in gunfree zones.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Well, you find about ninety two percent of them do.
And on our website we have literally statements from dozens
of these mass public shooters where they explicitly explain why
they picked the target. The guy in Minneapolis, for example,
(20:10):
he had a long discussion about it. He basically said
two things. One is, they'll go and they'll say the
media will go and say this individual was lionizing and
talking a lot about other school shooters that were there,
and that's true. But his whole discussion about them was
(20:31):
what he could learn from them in terms of how
to do these attacks. You know, So I'll give you
one of his quotes. He says, quote, I recently heard
rumors that James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter, may have
chosen venues that were quote gun free zones end quote.
I would probably aim the same way. Holmes wanted to
make sure his victims would be unarmed. That's why I
(20:55):
and many others like schools so much. At least for me,
I am focused on them. Milanza is my reason. End quote.
And then he also he has a discussion there about
the time of day he didn't want to do it,
in the morning when people were dropping off their kids
at school, and he didn't want to do it in
the afternoon when they're picking them up. You know why,
(21:16):
because he was worried that maybe one of the parents
might have a permanent, concealed handgun and might use it
to stop them. He explicitly talks about that. And you know,
you look at the Nashville school shooter. Even the day
of the murders that occurred there, where she murdered six people,
(21:38):
the Nashville police chief held a press conference where he
said he had read her diary and that she had
talked about going after other targets but had decided not
to because there are people with guns, like the Green
Hilled malls allow people to carry concealed handguns that might
stop her and prevent her from killing as many people
(21:58):
as she wanted to kill, and so she picked the
school that was there. But even though the police chief
went through that in his press conference, you will look
in vain for any media coverage on that. Instead, you
have things like after the Minneapolis case, where you know,
(22:20):
this killer explicitly talks about why he did it, they'll go,
you know, media discussions that will say, well, maybe he
did it because his mom used to work at the school.
Possible could be. I don't know, but he doesn't say that.
But what he does so they're guessing. They put in
the fact that he may have done it because his
(22:40):
mom worked there, but the stuff that he says for
the actual reason that he doesn't they ignore. And I
don't you know, I don't know how they can do
that because, as I say, it seems to me that
that would be very newsworthy to go and do it.
But you know, even going back to Columbine, it wasn't
(23:01):
as clear cut there, but you still had information, you know,
Dylan Cleebold. The New York Times had a story on
their front page where they mentioned that Dylan Cleebold and
his dad were very strongly against the concealed carry law
that was going through the Colorado state legislature at the time.
(23:24):
Doug Dean, who was the majority leader for the state House.
And it actually I was actually in Colorado the morning
of the shooting because the Colorado Legislature had asked me
to go and talk to legislators there. Doug had invited
me out, and the concealed carry bill there would have
(23:48):
allowed teachers and staff people with concealed carry permits to
carry on school property, and according to Doug, I was
told that the that Cleebold had written both his state
house member and state senator strongly opposing the bill, and
(24:10):
particularly was upset about the fact that teachers and staff
would be able to go and carry. Now when almost
nobody brings up, is he the attack at Columbine occurred
literally just a few hours before the UH before the
final vote was scheduled in the state legislature. You know,
(24:32):
you know, is it just a coincidence? I you know,
I don't have the explicit statement from them that I
have for others, but you know, it surely is interesting,
and you know we have, you know, the same time,
we have this Charlie Kirk thing. We had this attack
at this school in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
People ignore the fact that this person, uh, there was
one school resource officer that was divided between different schools there.
The killer there waited until the school resource officer left.
He literally saw the school resource officer leaving the one
(25:18):
school to go to another school. He was waiting outside
the school until the school resource officer left, and then
he went in and did his shooting.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
You've got to take a quick commercial break.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
More at John Lott.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
On the other side, he wrote in one of your
columns that more than half of mass public shooters over
the last twenty five years were already under the care
of mental health professionals. Right, so why are they still
able to get you know, weapons?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
And you know, you don't because none.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Of these right, you know, because none of these mental
health care professionals identified any of these mass murders as
a danger to themselves or others prior to their attack.
And in fact, there's a whole academic literature out there
that explains why they're unable to identify these individuals. And
(26:11):
basically it comes down to the fact that this is
so rare that on average, people with mental health care
problems are less violent on average than the general population.
They're more likely to be victims. But there are other problems,
you know, so you have something like schizophrenia, for example,
is one of the examples that are given in the literature.
And as I say, there's a lot of academic papers
(26:35):
by psychologists and psychiatrists explaining why they fail to identify
these individuals. And you know, if you look at it,
they'll say something like schizophrenia there's at least three point
five million people in the United States with schizophrenia. Since
twenty eighteen, there's been one mass public shooter that has
(26:56):
had schizophrenia. You know, the type of example they'll give
us this. Let's say you were to go to a
mental health care expert and say, identify the thousand people
out of these three point five million plus that are
most likely to engage in one of these types of attacks.
Even if one of the one thousand is the guy
(27:17):
that did it, you'd still be wrong nine hundred and
ninety nine times out of that, and you may not
even get the one guy that's there. And so that's
what makes them Madison. But I think there's a more
basic problem there, and that is mental health is based
on the idea that people who have problems voluntarily come
(27:39):
forward seeking help, and so they assume that the people
who they're talking to are being honest with them about
what their feelings are. And you see this time after
time after time when you read the records on these things,
or read the diaries and manifestos. So, for example, the
Buffalo super market shooter, that individual had been in high school.
(28:06):
He was asked by the teacher what he was going
to be doing over the summer after graduation, and he said,
you know, I'm going to find a school that has
summer school and shoot it up and kill as many
people as I can, and then I'm going to commit suicide. Well,
obviously the teacher was very concerned, and so she flagged
(28:29):
him and he was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation,
held there for twenty hours at the hospital, and had
to go and see two mental health care professionals, and
when he was asked about his comment, he said, look,
it was a stupid joke. I shouldn't up said it.
I'm sorry. I won't make jokes like that again. And
(28:50):
both the mental health care professionals concluded that he was
just joking and that he was sorry for doing it,
and there's no problem, and so he was released. And
you look at somebody like the Santa Barbara mass murderer.
He was actually seeing the head of child psychiatric services
(29:11):
at Los Angeles Children's Hospital, somebody who's an internationally recognized
expert on youth violence, as god knows how many dozens
of peer reviewed papers that he's published on this issue.
And yet the problem is is that this guy, if
you read his manifesto, he says he would have to
(29:34):
be an idiot to go and answer honestly the questions
that this mental health care professional was asking. When the
mental health care professional asked, are you suicidal? He said,
of course, I said no. He said, do you have
any thoughts of violence? And he says of course. The
guy says no. He says, if you want to go
and commit this crime, why are you going to go
(29:56):
and tell one of these mental health care professionals who
will then st you from doing that? If that's really
what you want to do. That's what he says in
his manifesto. That's there, and you see that time after
time and these other ones. These guys, these guys may
be stupid, you know, I'm sorry, they may be crazy,
but they're not stupid. And so, I mean, I can't
(30:20):
tell you the number of times I've read in these
diaries of manifestos where they take delight it just fooling
these mental health care professionals that they have.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You know, there's been a lot of talk about SSR
or SSRIs, right, is there evidence to back up that
you know these mass murders or you know are on
them or what do you think about that line of argument, right.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
And I mean, this is something that people made for years.
I know Robert Kennedy's saying that he's going to look
into this. I have to tell you, I can't tell
tell you that when I've heard people say, well, seventy
five percent of these mass public shooters were on these
drugs or ninety percent or whatever, and I'll go and
I'll reach out to them. I say, can you give
(31:13):
me the data on this? I'd love to look at
the data. And I never have gotten any data from
these people. Now, I'm not too surprised because the fact
that you're talking about privacy type of rules, so we are,
you know, I don't know how they would find out
whether somebody was on these drugs or not. But there's
(31:36):
other problems there with this. I mean, as you mentioned,
about half of these mass murderers were actually seeing mental
health care professionals, So it's been very possible even though
the even though the mental health professionals did not identify
these individuals as a danger themselves or others, and often
didn't even identify them as being suicidal, you know, which
(31:58):
would have been a danger to themselves. They never did.
But you know, there's an issue with this. And I
know Robert Kennedy's put out an exam you know several
examples of people that were on those types of drugs
before they committed it. But if you read the discussion
(32:20):
that he put out, first of all, one of them
wasn't a mass murderer, which just the guy killed his
wife a couple of days after he started the drugs.
But all the three cases that are there are ones
who had either just started using the drug or had
just switched the dosage. And here's the problem with that,
(32:43):
and that is if you talk to people in the
mental health care community, they'll say, yeah, you know, it's
possible that these drugs can create psychiatric breaks, but they're
short lived. You know, you're talking about something that's days,
maybe a week or something like that. And these guys
(33:03):
are planning these attacks at least six months in advance.
You know, the Sandy Hook murder was planning his attack
for over two and a half years prior to the attack.
So something that you know, maybe it might trigger the
timing that they do it, but doesn't trigger whether or
not they were interested in doing these types of attacks
(33:23):
to begin with. And I have to tell you. I've
I can't tell you how much time I've spent trying
to go and look through the diaries and manifestos for
these mass murderers, which are obviously written over a long
period of time. And I don't see a change in
these guys' behavior or thought processes. You know, they're from
(33:47):
day one. They're planning on doing these attacks. They're focused
on it. They's just like the Minneapolis one or these others.
They're focused on trying to who you know, you know,
learn from these other attacks that are there, you know,
the Sandy Hook mass murder, he did what the police
(34:10):
described as a doctoral dissertation where he had looked at
mass public shootings over the previous forty years, and, according
to one police report, in order to prove to himself
that he could get more media coverage by killing more people.
He had apparently graft out the relationship between the number
(34:33):
of people killed and attacks the amount of media coverage
that they had gotten. His goal was, apparently to go
and kill more people than the Norway killer, who had
killed more shot to death more people than any mass
public shooter in the United States. He had shot to
death sixty seven people, ignoring the bombing deaths that were there,
(34:56):
and because he wanted to get more media attention. Now,
one thing I'll mention that I have no proof for,
but I'm just an educated guess on my part, is
that the reason why he picked the school also fit
in with the media stuff. That killing elementary school kids
he probably thought would get you know, more horror on
(35:17):
the part of people and get him more attention than
going and and shooting up some other type of venue.
And I've seen that in other places. Though I can't
say for sure that the Sandy Hook killer picked the
elementary school because of that, but it surely fits in
with the focus that you just see over and over again.
(35:39):
I mean, I can't tell you how many times when
you read these diaries and manifestos these people will explicitly
say things like, if I can only kill more people
than such and such, did I can get even more
media attention. Just one thing I want to make clear here,
and that since it kind of fits in with something
that you brought up earlier, and that is these gun
(36:00):
free zones. We have to be clear looking at people
mental problems, We're not going to be able to identify
these individuals beforehand, and so the question is what's the
backup plan? Okay? And you know, and in order to
figure out what the backup plan is, we because we're
(36:22):
not going to mental health professionals themselves say they're not
going to be able to identify these individuals. So and
in order to figure out what the backup plan is,
you have to go and look to see what these
guys are trying to accomplish. And what they're trying to
accomplish is media attention. Now, I'm not going to argue
(36:42):
we should get rid of the First Amendment. I would
have no idea how to even rewrite it. I have
no desire to try to do that, okay, But there
are other things that we can do that can go
and reduce the media coverage. And what you know is
that these individuals, time after time after time, believe that
(37:03):
there's a link between the number of people they kill
and the amount of media coverage that they're going to get.
So you have to reduce the number of people where
they're going to kill. And when you're talking about the
gun free zone stuff, these guys pick gun free zones
because they know they're going to be able to go
and kill more people there. And so What you need
(37:26):
to do is is rether than having a sign and
from the school that says the school is a gun
free zone. Have a sign in front of the school
that says warning, select teachers and staff at the school
are carrying concealed and will use their guns to go
and protect students and others that are there. You know,
we have well over ten thousand schools in the United
(37:48):
States that have armed teachers and staff. Okay, over twenty
states allow them to do it. They're different rules, you know,
some make it easier, you know Texas. You know about
forty percent of the schools in Utah and New Hampshire,
any teacher that has a concealed carry permits allowed to carry.
You know, Utah and New Hampshire basically had this for
(38:11):
many decades.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
You Know.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
The thing is, there has never been a school shooting
an attack where anybody's been killed or wounded inside any
of these schools that have armed teachers and staff. All
the attacks have occurred at places where teachers and staff
aren't allowed to carry. Now, one debate that I have
(38:38):
with conservatives, and I disagree with them a lot on this,
and that is a lot of and even friends like
Ted Cruz and stuff like that. They want to go
and put one uniform school resource officer in each school,
And my plea to them is, if you're going to
(38:59):
do that, please don't put the person in uniform. Have
them be the pe coach or blended as a staff
member so they're not identified. The problem because we've had
plenty of shootings where there's been an officer. We've just
finished a big study on this type of thing. They
can go into. But the thing is, these attackers have
(39:22):
real tactical advantages when you're talking about somebody in uniform.
If there's one person there in uniform and he's the
only person with a gun, then the attackers can wait
until the person leaves the area, you know, like the
example with the Colorado shooting that I talked about earlier,
or they can move on to another target themselves. Or
(39:45):
if they're going to insist on doing that particular target,
who do you think they shoot first? They're going to
shoot the guy in uniform, the one guy that they
know has a gun. The one question I often ask people,
I said, look, we have air marshals on planes. Do
you think an air marshal on a plane ought to
be in uniform. Does anybody think that. I haven't met
(40:08):
anybody who thinks that. And it's pretty obvious why you
would never put an air marshal in the uniform. And
the reason is is that if you put the air
marshal in the uniform and you do happen to have
a terrorist on the plane, there, who do you think
the terrorist is gonna take out first? He's going to
take out the air marshal. So you don't want to
give the terrast that tactical advantage that's there. And the
(40:32):
same thing is true with putting somebody in a school,
and the advantage that you have with teachers carrying concealed
is that the attacker has no clue who it is
that they have to worry about. That's there. I mean
a nationwide outside of California and New York, you have
about ten percent of the adult population with the concealed
(40:52):
carry permit. But you go to a restaurant, you go
to a movie theater, you go to a grocery store,
you go to at any place, and there's a very
high probability that somebody nearby you is carrying. You have
no idea who it is. If you were to go
into a restaurant and start shooting people. And they allow
people to carry. You have to worry that there's somebody
(41:14):
behind you or to the side, or somebody who's walking
in right behind you that is a concealed carry permit,
and they're going to be able to stop you before
you do.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Very much, quick break, stay with us.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
If you like what you're hearing, please share on social
media or maybe send it to a friend or a
family member.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Do we have a.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Gun problem as a country, as the left likes to say.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
I think we have a problem with gun control laws
that make it so that victims aren't able to go
and defend themselves. You know, so much with government regulations.
You have a government regulation that gets passed that causes
a problem, and that rather than going and fixing the
original gun control legislator regulation that caused the problem, people
(41:59):
pass even regulations. And the same thing is true here.
We pass these gun free zones, and then people target
those gun free zones, and then rather than going back
and trying to get rid of the gun free zones,
they want to go and pass other types of gun
control rules. Look, we've done research looking at mass public
(42:20):
shootings across the world. People don't adjust these numbers for population.
So you know, you have a country like Germany, which
has had since two thousand, has had three big mass
public school shootings, well we've had nine. In the United States,
we've had more. But Germany is like eighty three million people.
(42:42):
We have three hundred and forty million people, so they
have like less than one fourth the number of people
we have. You adjust their three, that's the equivalent of
us having twelve. You look at Finland, Finland's had two
mass public school shootings. They have a population of five
point five million people, like one sixtieth what we have
(43:03):
here in the United States. That'd be the equivalent of
US having one hundred and twenty. You know, nobody goes no,
no media Outlet's going to compare the number of murders
in California with Rhode Island, right, They're going to look
at the per capita rates that are there between them,
but for some reason they refuse to do that. If
(43:23):
you look at per capital rates for mass public shootings
just in general, the United States over a twenty year
period of time ranks something like sixty fifth in per
capita rates that are there. And it's just you know,
I can understand why the media covers attacks in the
(43:43):
United States. It's in the United States. But the bizarre
thing is a mass public shooting in the United States
gets more attention than mass public shootings that occur in
other countries. So if I just were to ask you
just compare only Western Europe versus the United States. Let's say,
since twenty ten, can you give me the two worst
(44:07):
mass public shootings where have they occurred? They both occurred
in Western Europe. You have the Norway killing where sixty
seven people were killed, and in twenty fifteen, you have
the concert shooting in Paris, France in November twenty fifteen,
where one hundred and thirty people were killed.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Thanks so much for coming on the show, John, because
I feel like, you know, very often a lot of
these conversations, you know, the data is not reflected in
the media coverage or the discussion surrounding it. So we
appreciate the fact that you can bring us the details
and also what the statistics actually show us.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
I appreciate you having me on, and you know, I
just I appreciate you letting me go on at length
on this stuff. So unfortunately I get a little bit
rapped up on it.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I understand it's frustrating when you know you hear a
bunch of eyes.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Sure, people can find more on all these statistics on
our website at crimeresearch dot org. Crimeresearch dot org.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
That was John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Appreciate him for making the time to come on the show.
Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday,
but you can listen throughout the week. I also want
to thank John Cassio and my producer for putting the
show together.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Until next time.
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get
to the heart of the issues that matter to you. Today,
we're joined by John Lott, President of the Crime Prevention
Research Center, to tackle the rising concerns about political violence
and assassinations in America.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Are we entering a dangerous new era?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Is one political side more prone to violence than the other.
We'll also dive into the data and mass shooters, their
mental health, and why experts often miss the warning signs
despite many already being under psychiatric care. Plus, we'll explore
the role of gun free zones and mass shootings, and
whether transgender related violence is on the rise. Stay tuned
(00:37):
for a really jam packed interview with tons of research
and facts with John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Well, John Lott, it's great to have you on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You know, obviously, particularly in your area of expertise, there's
so much disinformation and intention and misinformation.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
That's out there. I think you know one thing, and you.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Know, we were talking about this before we got started.
Obviously we're all just like extremely heavy hearted with what
happened to Charlie and just really saying that there's so
much evil in the world. And you know, we always
knew it was there, but just to have it be
that profound, you know, to lose a really good man
who uh, you know, we were lucky enough to know
(01:26):
who loved this country.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Loved his wife, loved his kids, loved God, and yet
they killed him, you know. But it really.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Has led to this conversation that people are having about
concerns of just like assassination culture and political violence in
the country.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Do you see things heading.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
In a direction where that's more commonplace or or kind
of like what are you sing and what are your
takeaways and thoughts and just this really heavy hearted few
days that we've had here as a country.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Right, I guess kind of the response to Charlie's assassination
has made me very concerned. From the left, you know,
you have somebody like Obama, you know, who made comments
a few days after the assassination where you start off
(02:21):
by saying, you know, we should all have sympathy for,
you know, a young man who has a family who's
been murdered. But then he goes on and he just
repeats these horrible lies about Charlie, just basically you know,
saying that Charlie was saying that Michelle Obama and Justice
(02:42):
Jackson don't have the brain processing power.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
What he was talking about was that if you have
affirmative action and don't judge people on the merits, and
you judge them on their skin color, you're going to
have some people who are going to get through that
aren't going to be the brightest people. I don't know
how you can argue with that. And it's either true
or it's not true. He's not saying everybody who's black
(03:10):
or a black woman is stupid. He's not saying anything
even remotely similar to that. He's saying that, are we
going to have a society based on merit where we're
going to be sure we're going to get the best
people to go and do the jobs or whatever. In fact,
you go and you listen to some of his discussions,
(03:31):
he says, look, seventy five percent of the NBA is black.
Do you think we should limit it to thirteen percent
because that's black's share of the population. Do you think
the quality of a basketball play would improve if we
limited blacks to thirteen percent? There obviously not. So he
(03:52):
was just saying, you're going to when you base decisions
on people's skin color rather than their quality there. You're
gonna end up making mistakes in terms of not getting
the best people there, you know, And there are other comments.
I mean, it's just despicable, you know, referring to Charlie
(04:18):
as being sexist and what have you. You know, I
don't you figure somebody like Obama must understand the false
claims that were being made by him there, but yet
it didn't stop him from from making him and I
(04:38):
it's you know, and it's not just him. I mean
you have Jimmy Kimmel who ended up saying, you know
that this was some right winger that was doing it.
I mean, this is Monday, the Monday after the Wednesday assassination.
You just had, you know, the governor for Utah was
(05:00):
on all the Sunday talk shows talking about the evidence
that was there. You'd had news media and other reports
that have come out describing the individual's views as being
leftists and being you know, being in a relationship with
a trans individual and himself being gay. You know, I
(05:21):
don't know what the deal is there, but you know,
it's not just them. I mean you look at kind
of the Anti Defamation League report that's come out basically just.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
To ask you about that, because the left sort of
seizes on this report like where they say, you know,
the majority of right winging extremists were responsible for a
right winging extreme as responsible for the majority of extreme
as related even more less that gay.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, they're saying, they're saying that over the three years.
They make a big deal about this in the report.
They say, over the three years from twenty twenty two
to twenty twenty four, all all of the extremist murders
in the United States were done by right wingers, all
(06:07):
of them. And you know, it's just crazy. You know.
The thing is, does the media I know I've dealt
with reporters over the years, ninety eight percent of them
or ninety nine percent just look at the you know,
the press release this associated They don't actually look at
the data. So you have individuals that they don't classify
(06:31):
as having any type of political views or as being
right wingers.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You have.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
People like the Nashville school shooter. I don't know how
anybody can read the Nashville school shooter and not classify
her as a left winger. You know, she go first
of all, she's trans Okay, she hates Catholics, she hates whites,
(07:02):
she hates wealthy people, she hate capitalists. Okay, and you know,
I don't know, you know, it's just and or you
have somebody like the Colorado Springs mass murderer. Now he
shot up a gay nightclub, all right, which is true.
(07:25):
But and so therefore they say he's anti gay, so
that automatically makes him right winger. Well, the thing is
when you actually go and look at this guy. First
of all, he was trans. Okay, his pronouns were they
and them. Obviously he didn't feel that the gays were
properly you know, giving you know, trans their due that
(07:48):
was there. He apparently may have actually had some personal
conflict with a gay who was there. But you know,
I look at this guy and it's like, are we serious?
We're gonna really classify this guy as a right winger.
I mean, I don't know. Maybe there's a lot of
trans individuals out there who are right wingers, but I
(08:08):
guess I just haven't noticed them too much. It's just,
you know, when you look at other ones that are there, Basically,
if you're a white supremacist, they assume that you're a
right winger. Well, you know, there's a number of white
supremacists in their data set there that the reason why
(08:30):
the right supremacists is because they're environmentalists. So the Buffalo
mass murderer at the supermarket in twenty twenty two, they
classify him as a right winger. The guy hated blacks
because they were having too many kids, and he was
upset that people who were having kids were damaging the environment.
(08:54):
You didn't think anybody should have kids, but he was
particularly upset that blacks were having it. He hated capitalists.
He blamed capitalists for all the destruction in the environment.
You know, you have other ones that are there, like
the Apasso mass murderer. This guy, it's just amazing. This
(09:15):
guy says that he agreed completely with the New Zealand
mass murderer. Basically just said you could copy the New
Zealand mass murderers manifesto and he agreed with it. I
know the media wanted to classify the New Zealand mosque
shooter who killed like forty nine people as a right winger.
(09:37):
I got censored on Twitter and Facebook, got my accounts
close because I tried to point out you know, if
you actually read the guy's manifesto. His ideal former government
was communist China. The guy called himself a socialist. He
was an environmentalist. Also, he was upset that minorities were
(09:59):
having too much any kids and damaging the environment. Now,
maybe you know a lot, maybe I'm just very isolated,
but I don't know a lot of conservatives that are
upset about people having too many kids, right, and so.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
You know it just h well, I mean you had
the same week that you know, you had the in
the same week period of time, you had, like on
September sixteenth, you had Tyler Robinson in his first court
appearance in Utah's fourth District Court for where obviously he
(10:35):
was charged for the assassination of Charlie Kirk and his
you know facing uh you know, we'll face a hearing
in a court date for that.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And then Luigi Mangioni on.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
The same day appeared in the New York State Court
in Manhattan. And then ongoing you had the Ryan Ruth
trial for trying to assassinate Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I mean that's three left.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Wingers who do not share or views on the world,
you know, all with court activity around the same exact
time period. Yet you know they'd try to say that
it's the right that you know are committing violence.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Right, Well, we just this last weekend we had this
guy in Sacramento shoot up the ABC station there, and
the guy, you know, hated Trump. You know, you look
at these things. You know, the big thing the left
wants to say is on both sides or it's all
the right, and they'll point to things like the impact.
(11:31):
The only ones they can point to is like this
state legislator who was murdered in Minnesota Wells. As Greg
Guttfeld has correctly pointed out, there was no demonization of
this woman or her husband by people on the right beforehand.
(11:52):
You know, nobody knew who she was. This guy who
murdered her was a complete kook. I mean, but if
you're going to take him at all seriously in this
he had No King's flyers, had hundreds of No King
flyers in his car, because you know, he was the
left's protest at that time against Trump. He says, you know,
(12:18):
in his writings that he was murdering her because he
had a list of other people, but he was doing
this to help Tim Waltz. Now, I'm not going to
go and classify this guy because he wants to go
and help Tim's Waltz as a Democrat. But it's hard
for me to look at those things and say, yeah, no,
it was somebody on the right trying to kill somebody
(12:41):
on the left. I want examples, hey, you know, and
the thing is just in general, as Erica Kirk was
pointing out in her talk, where was the violence on
the right after Charlie was killed? You know, after George
Floyd or others that you have there. We have these
(13:02):
riots that occur all the time, and it just you know,
I suppose what people point to is like January sixth
as examples of that. But you know, first of all,
everybody who did any type of violence there spent long
(13:23):
periods of times, at least forty two months in prison,
so they were all punished. But you and anybody who
did violence should have been punished forty two months though,
I mean that seems like a pretty substantial prison term
to begin with for that they didn't kill anybody, you know,
But compared to something like the Lafayette Square riot that
(13:47):
had occurred in the summer of twenty twenty there where
you had like one hundred and fifty law enforcement officers
who were injured, You had people scaling the White House.
That's the reason why they had to take Trump into
a secure area because people were trying. You know, they
talk about insurrections. I don't know, trying to storm the
(14:10):
White House seems like something of an insurrection. How many
prosecutions did they have for people that did that? Zero?
How many people went to prison for that? Zero? And
you know, you have things going back to the twenty
seventeen inauguration or the Republican National Convention in twenty twenty
(14:32):
when they had the thing at the White House there
and you had people being you had like fifty Trump
supporters who had to be hospitalized in the twenty seventeen
inauguration thing. How many prosecutions did you have for that zero?
How many prosecutions did you have for the people that
(14:52):
were attacked for the Republican Convention type thing when Trump
did the talk at the White House? Zero? So it
just but nobody brings up those types of things. It
seems to me that there's a real imbalance there.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Well, yeah, and you know, you had this shooter recently
at the sky Meadow Country Club in New Hampshire yelling,
you know, free Palestine. Right, Like, that's not something that
we subscribe to on the right. You know, I wanted
to ask you, you know, it seems like there is
a trend at least you know, maybe it's doesn't you know,
(15:28):
hold up with the statistics of just transgender related violence. Obviously,
Tyler Robinson, or at least for knowledge, was not trans,
but his roommate and you know reported Lever was transgender.
What do we know about transgender violence in this country?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Right? So, if you look at all the mass public
shootings in the United States from twenty eighteen on, about
five percent of those mass public shootings, So mass public
shooting is four more people killed in a public place,
not part of some other type of crime like a
(16:13):
gang fight over drug turf or a robbery, they make
about they make up five percent. The thing is you
have to compare it to their share of the population.
If you take kind of the average of several polls
from the government and the Gallop and whatever, you get
about seven point three percent of the population. And that's
(16:36):
probably a high because that's kind of more of that
is kind of weighted towards more recently that they've been
asking whole questions on that, and so you know, you're
talking about their share of these attacks. It's about seven
times their share of the population. You know, that's pretty
(16:59):
far out there. Now, you know, we're not talking about
a huge number of cases, but there's a number of
other cases where they weren't as successful fortunately, you know,
like the Minneapolis case that we just had where the
person succeeded in murdering two people wounding seventeen others that
(17:21):
were there. But look, to me, it's not particularly surprising
that they're involved in these cases at high rates because
one thing, if anybody, if you read the diaries of
manifestos for these murderers, what you see is a very
consistent pattern. You find people who are suicidal, who feel unappreciated,
(17:46):
who feel put upon in some way. Those are if
you read the diaries of manifestos for the Nashville school shooter,
or the or the Colorado's Spring shooter, or the guy
in Minneapolis or some of these others of Maryland and
other places, they all fit that they're all depressed, they're
(18:10):
very suicidal. They feel, you know, either that there's some
genocide against trans individuals that are there, or that they
feel that they've been put upon in some way, and
they want to get attention. These guys check all those boxes.
And what you find is with these guys, these mass
(18:34):
public shooters generally is they're suicidal. They want to get attention.
They know the more people they kill, the more media
attention that they're going to get, and so they go
to places where they know their victims aren't going to
be able to go and defend themselves. Gun free zones,
and they explicitly state that they're going to these gun
free zones because they may be crazy, but they're not stupid.
(18:58):
They know if they go to a place like that,
they're going to be able to kill more people and
get more media attention. The Minneapolis mass murder fit all
those boxes, the Nashville shooter fit all those boxes, and
the you know, you look at these individuals and where
(19:20):
they pick it. I have to tell you it's one
of my biggest pet peeves with media bias because the
media will go and talk about the diaries of manifestos
for these individuals, but they just always completely refuse to
go and talk about why these guys pick the targets
(19:42):
that they do. I would think that would be newsworthy.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
One percentage of these shootings take place in gunfree zones.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Well, you find about ninety two percent of them do.
And on our website we have literally statements from dozens
of these mass public shooters where they explicitly explain why
they picked the target. The guy in Minneapolis, for example,
(20:10):
he had a long discussion about it. He basically said
two things. One is, they'll go and they'll say the
media will go and say this individual was lionizing and
talking a lot about other school shooters that were there,
and that's true. But his whole discussion about them was
(20:31):
what he could learn from them in terms of how
to do these attacks. You know, So I'll give you
one of his quotes. He says, quote, I recently heard
rumors that James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter, may have
chosen venues that were quote gun free zones end quote.
I would probably aim the same way. Holmes wanted to
make sure his victims would be unarmed. That's why I
(20:55):
and many others like schools so much. At least for me,
I am focused on them. Milanza is my reason. End quote.
And then he also he has a discussion there about
the time of day he didn't want to do it,
in the morning when people were dropping off their kids
at school, and he didn't want to do it in
the afternoon when they're picking them up. You know why,
(21:16):
because he was worried that maybe one of the parents
might have a permanent, concealed handgun and might use it
to stop them. He explicitly talks about that. And you know,
you look at the Nashville school shooter. Even the day
of the murders that occurred there, where she murdered six people,
(21:38):
the Nashville police chief held a press conference where he
said he had read her diary and that she had
talked about going after other targets but had decided not
to because there are people with guns, like the Green
Hilled malls allow people to carry concealed handguns that might
stop her and prevent her from killing as many people
(21:58):
as she wanted to kill, and so she picked the
school that was there. But even though the police chief
went through that in his press conference, you will look
in vain for any media coverage on that. Instead, you
have things like after the Minneapolis case, where you know,
(22:20):
this killer explicitly talks about why he did it, they'll go,
you know, media discussions that will say, well, maybe he
did it because his mom used to work at the school.
Possible could be. I don't know, but he doesn't say that.
But what he does so they're guessing. They put in
the fact that he may have done it because his
(22:40):
mom worked there, but the stuff that he says for
the actual reason that he doesn't they ignore. And I
don't you know, I don't know how they can do
that because, as I say, it seems to me that
that would be very newsworthy to go and do it.
But you know, even going back to Columbine, it wasn't
(23:01):
as clear cut there, but you still had information, you know,
Dylan Cleebold. The New York Times had a story on
their front page where they mentioned that Dylan Cleebold and
his dad were very strongly against the concealed carry law
that was going through the Colorado state legislature at the time.
(23:24):
Doug Dean, who was the majority leader for the state House.
And it actually I was actually in Colorado the morning
of the shooting because the Colorado Legislature had asked me
to go and talk to legislators there. Doug had invited
me out, and the concealed carry bill there would have
(23:48):
allowed teachers and staff people with concealed carry permits to
carry on school property, and according to Doug, I was
told that the that Cleebold had written both his state
house member and state senator strongly opposing the bill, and
(24:10):
particularly was upset about the fact that teachers and staff
would be able to go and carry. Now when almost
nobody brings up, is he the attack at Columbine occurred
literally just a few hours before the UH before the
final vote was scheduled in the state legislature. You know,
(24:32):
you know, is it just a coincidence? I you know,
I don't have the explicit statement from them that I
have for others, but you know, it surely is interesting,
and you know we have, you know, the same time,
we have this Charlie Kirk thing. We had this attack
at this school in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
People ignore the fact that this person, uh, there was
one school resource officer that was divided between different schools there.
The killer there waited until the school resource officer left.
He literally saw the school resource officer leaving the one
(25:18):
school to go to another school. He was waiting outside
the school until the school resource officer left, and then
he went in and did his shooting.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
You've got to take a quick commercial break.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
More at John Lott.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
On the other side, he wrote in one of your
columns that more than half of mass public shooters over
the last twenty five years were already under the care
of mental health professionals. Right, so why are they still
able to get you know, weapons?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
And you know, you don't because none.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Of these right, you know, because none of these mental
health care professionals identified any of these mass murders as
a danger to themselves or others prior to their attack.
And in fact, there's a whole academic literature out there
that explains why they're unable to identify these individuals. And
(26:11):
basically it comes down to the fact that this is
so rare that on average, people with mental health care
problems are less violent on average than the general population.
They're more likely to be victims. But there are other problems,
you know, so you have something like schizophrenia, for example,
is one of the examples that are given in the literature.
And as I say, there's a lot of academic papers
(26:35):
by psychologists and psychiatrists explaining why they fail to identify
these individuals. And you know, if you look at it,
they'll say something like schizophrenia there's at least three point
five million people in the United States with schizophrenia. Since
twenty eighteen, there's been one mass public shooter that has
(26:56):
had schizophrenia. You know, the type of example they'll give
us this. Let's say you were to go to a
mental health care expert and say, identify the thousand people
out of these three point five million plus that are
most likely to engage in one of these types of attacks.
Even if one of the one thousand is the guy
(27:17):
that did it, you'd still be wrong nine hundred and
ninety nine times out of that, and you may not
even get the one guy that's there. And so that's
what makes them Madison. But I think there's a more
basic problem there, and that is mental health is based
on the idea that people who have problems voluntarily come
(27:39):
forward seeking help, and so they assume that the people
who they're talking to are being honest with them about
what their feelings are. And you see this time after
time after time when you read the records on these things,
or read the diaries and manifestos. So, for example, the
Buffalo super market shooter, that individual had been in high school.
(28:06):
He was asked by the teacher what he was going
to be doing over the summer after graduation, and he said,
you know, I'm going to find a school that has
summer school and shoot it up and kill as many
people as I can, and then I'm going to commit suicide. Well,
obviously the teacher was very concerned, and so she flagged
(28:29):
him and he was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation,
held there for twenty hours at the hospital, and had
to go and see two mental health care professionals, and
when he was asked about his comment, he said, look,
it was a stupid joke. I shouldn't up said it.
I'm sorry. I won't make jokes like that again. And
(28:50):
both the mental health care professionals concluded that he was
just joking and that he was sorry for doing it,
and there's no problem, and so he was released. And
you look at somebody like the Santa Barbara mass murderer.
He was actually seeing the head of child psychiatric services
(29:11):
at Los Angeles Children's Hospital, somebody who's an internationally recognized
expert on youth violence, as god knows how many dozens
of peer reviewed papers that he's published on this issue.
And yet the problem is is that this guy, if
you read his manifesto, he says he would have to
(29:34):
be an idiot to go and answer honestly the questions
that this mental health care professional was asking. When the
mental health care professional asked, are you suicidal? He said,
of course, I said no. He said, do you have
any thoughts of violence? And he says of course. The
guy says no. He says, if you want to go
and commit this crime, why are you going to go
(29:56):
and tell one of these mental health care professionals who
will then st you from doing that? If that's really
what you want to do. That's what he says in
his manifesto. That's there, and you see that time after
time and these other ones. These guys, these guys may
be stupid, you know, I'm sorry, they may be crazy,
but they're not stupid. And so, I mean, I can't
(30:20):
tell you the number of times I've read in these
diaries of manifestos where they take delight it just fooling
these mental health care professionals that they have.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You know, there's been a lot of talk about SSR
or SSRIs, right, is there evidence to back up that
you know these mass murders or you know are on
them or what do you think about that line of argument, right.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
And I mean, this is something that people made for years.
I know Robert Kennedy's saying that he's going to look
into this. I have to tell you, I can't tell
tell you that when I've heard people say, well, seventy
five percent of these mass public shooters were on these
drugs or ninety percent or whatever, and I'll go and
I'll reach out to them. I say, can you give
(31:13):
me the data on this? I'd love to look at
the data. And I never have gotten any data from
these people. Now, I'm not too surprised because the fact
that you're talking about privacy type of rules, so we are,
you know, I don't know how they would find out
whether somebody was on these drugs or not. But there's
(31:36):
other problems there with this. I mean, as you mentioned,
about half of these mass murderers were actually seeing mental
health care professionals, So it's been very possible even though
the even though the mental health professionals did not identify
these individuals as a danger themselves or others, and often
didn't even identify them as being suicidal, you know, which
(31:58):
would have been a danger to themselves. They never did.
But you know, there's an issue with this. And I
know Robert Kennedy's put out an exam you know several
examples of people that were on those types of drugs
before they committed it. But if you read the discussion
(32:20):
that he put out, first of all, one of them
wasn't a mass murderer, which just the guy killed his
wife a couple of days after he started the drugs.
But all the three cases that are there are ones
who had either just started using the drug or had
just switched the dosage. And here's the problem with that,
(32:43):
and that is if you talk to people in the
mental health care community, they'll say, yeah, you know, it's
possible that these drugs can create psychiatric breaks, but they're
short lived. You know, you're talking about something that's days,
maybe a week or something like that. And these guys
(33:03):
are planning these attacks at least six months in advance.
You know, the Sandy Hook murder was planning his attack
for over two and a half years prior to the attack.
So something that you know, maybe it might trigger the
timing that they do it, but doesn't trigger whether or
not they were interested in doing these types of attacks
(33:23):
to begin with. And I have to tell you. I've
I can't tell you how much time I've spent trying
to go and look through the diaries and manifestos for
these mass murderers, which are obviously written over a long
period of time. And I don't see a change in
these guys' behavior or thought processes. You know, they're from
(33:47):
day one. They're planning on doing these attacks. They're focused
on it. They's just like the Minneapolis one or these others.
They're focused on trying to who you know, you know,
learn from these other attacks that are there, you know,
the Sandy Hook mass murder, he did what the police
(34:10):
described as a doctoral dissertation where he had looked at
mass public shootings over the previous forty years, and, according
to one police report, in order to prove to himself
that he could get more media coverage by killing more people.
He had apparently graft out the relationship between the number
(34:33):
of people killed and attacks the amount of media coverage
that they had gotten. His goal was, apparently to go
and kill more people than the Norway killer, who had
killed more shot to death more people than any mass
public shooter in the United States. He had shot to
death sixty seven people, ignoring the bombing deaths that were there,
(34:56):
and because he wanted to get more media attention. Now,
one thing I'll mention that I have no proof for,
but I'm just an educated guess on my part, is
that the reason why he picked the school also fit
in with the media stuff. That killing elementary school kids
he probably thought would get you know, more horror on
(35:17):
the part of people and get him more attention than
going and and shooting up some other type of venue.
And I've seen that in other places. Though I can't
say for sure that the Sandy Hook killer picked the
elementary school because of that, but it surely fits in
with the focus that you just see over and over again.
(35:39):
I mean, I can't tell you how many times when
you read these diaries and manifestos these people will explicitly
say things like, if I can only kill more people
than such and such, did I can get even more
media attention. Just one thing I want to make clear here,
and that since it kind of fits in with something
that you brought up earlier, and that is these gun
(36:00):
free zones. We have to be clear looking at people
mental problems, We're not going to be able to identify
these individuals beforehand, and so the question is what's the
backup plan? Okay? And you know, and in order to
figure out what the backup plan is, we because we're
(36:22):
not going to mental health professionals themselves say they're not
going to be able to identify these individuals. So and
in order to figure out what the backup plan is,
you have to go and look to see what these
guys are trying to accomplish. And what they're trying to
accomplish is media attention. Now, I'm not going to argue
(36:42):
we should get rid of the First Amendment. I would
have no idea how to even rewrite it. I have
no desire to try to do that, okay, But there
are other things that we can do that can go
and reduce the media coverage. And what you know is
that these individuals, time after time after time, believe that
(37:03):
there's a link between the number of people they kill
and the amount of media coverage that they're going to get.
So you have to reduce the number of people where
they're going to kill. And when you're talking about the
gun free zone stuff, these guys pick gun free zones
because they know they're going to be able to go
and kill more people there. And so What you need
(37:26):
to do is is rether than having a sign and
from the school that says the school is a gun
free zone. Have a sign in front of the school
that says warning, select teachers and staff at the school
are carrying concealed and will use their guns to go
and protect students and others that are there. You know,
we have well over ten thousand schools in the United
(37:48):
States that have armed teachers and staff. Okay, over twenty
states allow them to do it. They're different rules, you know,
some make it easier, you know Texas. You know about
forty percent of the schools in Utah and New Hampshire,
any teacher that has a concealed carry permits allowed to carry.
You know, Utah and New Hampshire basically had this for
(38:11):
many decades.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
You Know.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
The thing is, there has never been a school shooting
an attack where anybody's been killed or wounded inside any
of these schools that have armed teachers and staff. All
the attacks have occurred at places where teachers and staff
aren't allowed to carry. Now, one debate that I have
(38:38):
with conservatives, and I disagree with them a lot on this,
and that is a lot of and even friends like
Ted Cruz and stuff like that. They want to go
and put one uniform school resource officer in each school,
And my plea to them is, if you're going to
(38:59):
do that, please don't put the person in uniform. Have
them be the pe coach or blended as a staff
member so they're not identified. The problem because we've had
plenty of shootings where there's been an officer. We've just
finished a big study on this type of thing. They
can go into. But the thing is, these attackers have
(39:22):
real tactical advantages when you're talking about somebody in uniform.
If there's one person there in uniform and he's the
only person with a gun, then the attackers can wait
until the person leaves the area, you know, like the
example with the Colorado shooting that I talked about earlier,
or they can move on to another target themselves. Or
(39:45):
if they're going to insist on doing that particular target,
who do you think they shoot first? They're going to
shoot the guy in uniform, the one guy that they
know has a gun. The one question I often ask people,
I said, look, we have air marshals on planes. Do
you think an air marshal on a plane ought to
be in uniform. Does anybody think that. I haven't met
(40:08):
anybody who thinks that. And it's pretty obvious why you
would never put an air marshal in the uniform. And
the reason is is that if you put the air
marshal in the uniform and you do happen to have
a terrorist on the plane, there, who do you think
the terrorist is gonna take out first? He's going to
take out the air marshal. So you don't want to
give the terrast that tactical advantage that's there. And the
(40:32):
same thing is true with putting somebody in a school,
and the advantage that you have with teachers carrying concealed
is that the attacker has no clue who it is
that they have to worry about. That's there. I mean
a nationwide outside of California and New York, you have
about ten percent of the adult population with the concealed
(40:52):
carry permit. But you go to a restaurant, you go
to a movie theater, you go to a grocery store,
you go to at any place, and there's a very
high probability that somebody nearby you is carrying. You have
no idea who it is. If you were to go
into a restaurant and start shooting people. And they allow
people to carry. You have to worry that there's somebody
(41:14):
behind you or to the side, or somebody who's walking
in right behind you that is a concealed carry permit,
and they're going to be able to stop you before
you do.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Very much, quick break, stay with us.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
If you like what you're hearing, please share on social
media or maybe send it to a friend or a
family member.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Do we have a.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Gun problem as a country, as the left likes to say.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
I think we have a problem with gun control laws
that make it so that victims aren't able to go
and defend themselves. You know, so much with government regulations.
You have a government regulation that gets passed that causes
a problem, and that rather than going and fixing the
original gun control legislator regulation that caused the problem, people
(41:59):
pass even regulations. And the same thing is true here.
We pass these gun free zones, and then people target
those gun free zones, and then rather than going back
and trying to get rid of the gun free zones,
they want to go and pass other types of gun
control rules. Look, we've done research looking at mass public
(42:20):
shootings across the world. People don't adjust these numbers for population.
So you know, you have a country like Germany, which
has had since two thousand, has had three big mass
public school shootings, well we've had nine. In the United States,
we've had more. But Germany is like eighty three million people.
(42:42):
We have three hundred and forty million people, so they
have like less than one fourth the number of people
we have. You adjust their three, that's the equivalent of
us having twelve. You look at Finland, Finland's had two
mass public school shootings. They have a population of five
point five million people, like one sixtieth what we have
(43:03):
here in the United States. That'd be the equivalent of
US having one hundred and twenty. You know, nobody goes no,
no media Outlet's going to compare the number of murders
in California with Rhode Island, right, They're going to look
at the per capita rates that are there between them,
but for some reason they refuse to do that. If
(43:23):
you look at per capital rates for mass public shootings
just in general, the United States over a twenty year
period of time ranks something like sixty fifth in per
capita rates that are there. And it's just you know,
I can understand why the media covers attacks in the
(43:43):
United States. It's in the United States. But the bizarre
thing is a mass public shooting in the United States
gets more attention than mass public shootings that occur in
other countries. So if I just were to ask you
just compare only Western Europe versus the United States. Let's say,
since twenty ten, can you give me the two worst
(44:07):
mass public shootings where have they occurred? They both occurred
in Western Europe. You have the Norway killing where sixty
seven people were killed, and in twenty fifteen, you have
the concert shooting in Paris, France in November twenty fifteen,
where one hundred and thirty people were killed.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Thanks so much for coming on the show, John, because
I feel like, you know, very often a lot of
these conversations, you know, the data is not reflected in
the media coverage or the discussion surrounding it. So we
appreciate the fact that you can bring us the details
and also what the statistics actually show us.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
I appreciate you having me on, and you know, I
just I appreciate you letting me go on at length
on this stuff. So unfortunately I get a little bit
rapped up on it.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I understand it's frustrating when you know you hear a
bunch of eyes.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Sure, people can find more on all these statistics on
our website at crimeresearch dot org. Crimeresearch dot org.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
That was John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Appreciate him for making the time to come on the show.
Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday,
but you can listen throughout the week. I also want
to thank John Cassio and my producer for putting the
show together.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Until next time.
Host
Lisa Boothe
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