John Lott Expounds on FBI Politicized
Resistance to Data Sharing (corruption?)

At the NRA Annual Meeting in Atlanta during 2025, noted researcher and author, John Lott, gave several seminars. They included three seminars on "Gun Control Myths", a seminar on "Hollywood's Bias Against Guns", and two seminars on "The FBI Crime Data is Politicized and a Mess". This correspondent considers John a colleague and a friend, and has read and studied John's academic work for decades.

When attending the seminar on The FBI Crime Data is Politicized and a Mess on Sunday, April 27th, much of the material was familiar. Some material was unfamiliar. This correspondent accepted the FBI had refused to cooperate by withholding data when John was part of the first Trump administration in 2020. The resistance was much more extensive than previously understood. A voice recording of John's presentation is available at the Crimeresearch.org.

John Lott found significant anomalies in the way the FBI handles "active shooter" data. John and the Crime Reduction Research Center has shown many "active shooter" incidents are missing or mischaracterized in FBI data. In the National Instant background Check System (NICS) data, it appears most of the denials are false positives. Hard data on the errors found in the NICS system are not available. John has pointed out there are very few prosecutions of people who have been denied by the NICS system compared to the number of those denied. John stated NICS denials are often based on the phonetic spelling of the last name. The denials are not done with high levels of certainty. Because many people in the same ethnic group have similar sounding names, and because Blacks and Hispanics have much higher rates of felony convictions than Whites or Asians, it is likely Black and Hispanic people are denied from purchasing firearms in the NICS system at a much higher rates than people who are not Black or Hispanic. . . . .