Why anti gun people are so angry.....

[saintmichaeldefendthem]

Lott has addressed all of his critics and explained his mistakes and the fact that he is still the most respected gun researcher...as well as an economist, shows that whatever they try to say, his explanations were solid.....and they can't stand that...and they really hate him because his work, which examined crime statistics in every county in the United States was the most detailed work on the subject of gun self defense and crime rates.....

He showed that as concealed carry laws went into effect...violent crime rates dropped...

How do we know his research was accurate........right now...with more guns in private hands, our gun crime rate is going down, not up, overall crime rate is going down, not up...and as a side benefit to all the new gun owners learning about guns....our gun accident rate and our gun accident death rate are going down, not up....

And we didn't ban guns to achieve those results.....in fact...we own and carry more guns than before....


The anti-gun nuts will never forgive him for showing that....

The crime rates have been on a steady decline for a very long time now. Even when gun ownership was clearly declining. I think the gun ownership rate is still declining based on the evidence I have seen. I don't really think gun ownership rates effect crime rates. If it were the case we would have far fewer crimes than any other country or the most.

You're full of shit. Lying Leftists like you cite the fact that the percent of households owning guns has been on the decline to create the impression that gun ownership is falling into disfavor when in fact gun sales are exploding with the expansion of CCW rights.

Stop lying, Leftists!

That is sales, not ownership. Every gun owner I know has quite a few. Gun ranges are going down:
Shooting Ranges in the US Market Research IBISWorld
Each gun owner can only take up one lane regardless of how many guns he has. Also several polls support ownership being down.

I wouldn't trust the polls. People are getting a little paranoid, with all the govenment spying going on.

The decline in gun ranges however is quite undeniable.

Because they're harder to insure. Your simplistic reasoning leaves me appalled anew at our education system. Most people don't pay to shoot their guns, they go out to public lands and shoot for free.

 

[saintmichaeldefendthem]

You're full of shit. Lying Leftists like you cite the fact that the percent of households owning guns has been on the decline to create the impression that gun ownership is falling into disfavor when in fact gun sales are exploding with the expansion of CCW rights.

Stop lying, Leftists!

That is sales, not ownership. Every gun owner I know has quite a few. Gun ranges are going down:
Shooting Ranges in the US Market Research IBISWorld
Each gun owner can only take up one lane regardless of how many guns he has. Also several polls support ownership being down.

Wrong again. The number of people purchasing and carrying guns, as indicated by the skyrocketing CCW issue rate, tells the real stories. It isn't the same people buying more guns, it's more people buying guns to carry, which is why in the chart I provided, the rate of handgun manufacture tripled.

Wrong. Concealed carry is becoming legal in more states. Those are people who have always been gun owners, just now they can carry.

Handgun manufacture tripled! Are you stupid or just a little slow? More people are deciding to buy and carry guns, why are you threatened by the facts?

Again everyone I know has a lot of guns. Sales do not show ownership.

^^^^ Voted STUPIDEST statement made in this entire thread. Your award certificate is in the mail.

 

[jillian]

Whoa! Amazing quote from that bitch Shiva. I am very female and trust me I never have needed a penis extender in my life. Unreal. But obviously I must be a mutant according to her because I love guns.

yes... you always use very feminie language.

 

[ChrisL]

Yes they should...if you can't violate civil rights in other areas in a work place you shouldn't violate the right to self defense....however...you don't have a right to freedom of speech at work...so you could make an argument that you wouldn't have a right to 2nd amendment protection either.......

Well obviously I think employers have the right to have no firearms. But you guys really should be going after them.

As I pointed out, the First Amendment has no guarantee at your place of work...so that would likely be the outcome at the Supreme court for the 2nd at work.......and again...that would be because it is private, not public property...

However, public buildings should be required to respect the 2nd amendment....

So if gun free zones are killing zones why are there not more work related shootings?

Neither happen frequently. School shootings and the like, and work place shootings are relatively rare. Like I told you, these types of mass shootings make up less than 1% of ALL homicides.

This is how we KNOW you are full of it. IF you people cared about "deaths" then you would be outraged by the number of drownings every year and demand that swimming be banned, or demand that all people have a special license in order to swim, or some such bullshit.

If you really cared about peoples right to defend themselves you would be demanding corporations allow employees to carry.

No, self defense is a CHOICE. Unlike people like you gun banners, us libertarians don't like to force people to do things they don't want to do.

 

[jillian]

You're full of shit. Lying Leftists like you cite the fact that the percent of households owning guns has been on the decline to create the impression that gun ownership is falling into disfavor when in fact gun sales are exploding with the expansion of CCW rights.

Stop lying, Leftists!

That is sales, not ownership. Every gun owner I know has quite a few. Gun ranges are going down:
Shooting Ranges in the US Market Research IBISWorld
Each gun owner can only take up one lane regardless of how many guns he has. Also several polls support ownership being down.

Wrong again. The number of people purchasing and carrying guns, as indicated by the skyrocketing CCW issue rate, tells the real stories. It isn't the same people buying more guns, it's more people buying guns to carry, which is why in the chart I provided, the rate of handgun manufacture tripled.

Wrong. Concealed carry is becoming legal in more states. Those are people who have always been gun owners, just now they can carry.

Handgun manufacture tripled! Are you stupid or just a little slow? More people are deciding to buy and carry guns, why are you threatened by the facts?

Again everyone I know has a lot of guns. Sales do not show ownership.

maybe you know only a narrow group of people.

yea... i think that's probably it.

 

[ChrisL]

That is sales, not ownership. Every gun owner I know has quite a few. Gun ranges are going down:
Shooting Ranges in the US Market Research IBISWorld
Each gun owner can only take up one lane regardless of how many guns he has. Also several polls support ownership being down.

Wrong again. The number of people purchasing and carrying guns, as indicated by the skyrocketing CCW issue rate, tells the real stories. It isn't the same people buying more guns, it's more people buying guns to carry, which is why in the chart I provided, the rate of handgun manufacture tripled.

Wrong. Concealed carry is becoming legal in more states. Those are people who have always been gun owners, just now they can carry.

Handgun manufacture tripled! Are you stupid or just a little slow? More people are deciding to buy and carry guns, why are you threatened by the facts?

Again everyone I know has a lot of guns. Sales do not show ownership.

^^^^ Voted STUPIDEST statement made in this entire thread. Your award certificate is in the mail.

Get used to this kind of stupidity if you are going to converse with brainless.

 

[Missourian]

That is sales, not ownership. Every gun owner I know has quite a few. Gun ranges are going down:
Shooting Ranges in the US Market Research IBISWorld
Each gun owner can only take up one lane regardless of how many guns he has. Also several polls support ownership being down.

Wrong again. The number of people purchasing and carrying guns, as indicated by the skyrocketing CCW issue rate, tells the real stories. It isn't the same people buying more guns, it's more people buying guns to carry, which is why in the chart I provided, the rate of handgun manufacture tripled.

Wrong. Concealed carry is becoming legal in more states. Those are people who have always been gun owners, just now they can carry.

Handgun manufacture tripled! Are you stupid or just a little slow? More people are deciding to buy and carry guns, why are you threatened by the facts?

Again everyone I know has a lot of guns. Sales do not show ownership.

maybe you know only a narrow group of people.

yea... i think that's probably it.

Hello Miss Jillian, good to see you.

 

[jillian]

Hello Miss Jillian, good to see you.

Hi Missourian. Always good to see you.

 

[Vandalshandle]

The crime rates have been on a steady decline for a very long time now. Even when gun ownership was clearly declining. I think the gun ownership rate is still declining based on the evidence I have seen. I don't really think gun ownership rates effect crime rates. If it were the case we would have far fewer crimes than any other country or the most.

You're full of shit. Lying Leftists like you cite the fact that the percent of households owning guns has been on the decline to create the impression that gun ownership is falling into disfavor when in fact gun sales are exploding with the expansion of CCW rights.

Stop lying, Leftists!

That is sales, not ownership. Every gun owner I know has quite a few. Gun ranges are going down:
Shooting Ranges in the US Market Research IBISWorld
Each gun owner can only take up one lane regardless of how many guns he has. Also several polls support ownership being down.

I wouldn't trust the polls. People are getting a little paranoid, with all the govenment spying going on.

The decline in gun ranges however is quite undeniable.

Because they're harder to insure. Your simplistic reasoning leaves me appalled anew at our education system. Most people don't pay to shoot their guns, they go out to public lands and shoot for free.

This would explain why Central Park in NYC can be such a dangerous place....

 

[ChrisL]

You're full of shit. Lying Leftists like you cite the fact that the percent of households owning guns has been on the decline to create the impression that gun ownership is falling into disfavor when in fact gun sales are exploding with the expansion of CCW rights.

Stop lying, Leftists!

That is sales, not ownership. Every gun owner I know has quite a few. Gun ranges are going down:
Shooting Ranges in the US Market Research IBISWorld
Each gun owner can only take up one lane regardless of how many guns he has. Also several polls support ownership being down.

I wouldn't trust the polls. People are getting a little paranoid, with all the govenment spying going on.

The decline in gun ranges however is quite undeniable.

Because they're harder to insure. Your simplistic reasoning leaves me appalled anew at our education system. Most people don't pay to shoot their guns, they go out to public lands and shoot for free.

This would explain why Central Park in NYC can be such a dangerous place....

Yeah, because of a crime and criminal problem.

 

[ChrisL]

You're full of shit. Lying Leftists like you cite the fact that the percent of households owning guns has been on the decline to create the impression that gun ownership is falling into disfavor when in fact gun sales are exploding with the expansion of CCW rights.

Stop lying, Leftists!

That is sales, not ownership. Every gun owner I know has quite a few. Gun ranges are going down:
Shooting Ranges in the US Market Research IBISWorld
Each gun owner can only take up one lane regardless of how many guns he has. Also several polls support ownership being down.

I wouldn't trust the polls. People are getting a little paranoid, with all the govenment spying going on.

The decline in gun ranges however is quite undeniable.

Because they're harder to insure. Your simplistic reasoning leaves me appalled anew at our education system. Most people don't pay to shoot their guns, they go out to public lands and shoot for free.

This would explain why Central Park in NYC can be such a dangerous place....

I suppose you think that laws restricting honest citizens would have an effect on crime, eh? That's real smart. I can see you've given this some thought . . . Lol. That was sarcasm, of course.

 

[Bfgrn]

Without a cartoon to depend on some people wouldn't have an opinion.

Without reading this thread and others, ignorance is the escape...

 

[Bfgrn]

Here is the chart FROM YOUR SITE:

Looks like the murder rate shot up from 1.1 to 1.2.

Time to rethink this!

Yea, 17% which even the liar John Lott doesn't dispute. Cherry picker extraordinaire

Shooting Down the Gun Lobby s Favorite Academic A Lott of Lies Armed With Reason

A Lott of lies. Whoa, clever! Tell us how the genius supports this:

Lott replied to this accusation by arguing that, even if there weren’t more households owning guns, there were still more people carrying guns in public after the passage of shall-issue laws. However, we know this assertion is factually untenable, based on surveys showing that 5-11% of US adults already carried guns for self-protection before the implementation of concealed carry laws.


....so, he believes Lott lied because he believes just as many carried weapons after permits were issued more liberally by shall issue than prior to the laws? He supports this...how? With a poll on people who admit to their previous felonies by carrying a hand gun illegally? And you bought that? I read on a bit more and it's obvious he's a cvnt trying to impose his will on a target audience by a series of condescending remarks, rather than statistical facts.

The fact is that shall issue permits have been on the increase and crime has gone down. And the author didn't understand that Lott didn't make the claim that shall issue was reponsible for all crime going down but that it flies in the face of the liberal fear mongers that claim more guns mean more crime. It doesn't.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke

Lott replied with an ever-weakening series of explanations, suggesting that the 1% of people who obtained permits likely had a higher risk of being involved in crime, and thus disproportionately accounted for the crime decrease. Except, yet again, this statement does not comport with reality. One study by Hood and Neeley analyzed permit data in Dallas and showed the opposite of Lott’s predictions: zip codes with the highest violent crime before Texas passed its concealed carry law had the smallest number of new permits issued per capita.

Empirical data from Dade county police records, which cataloged arrest and non-arrests incidents for permit holders in a five-year period, also disproves Lott’s point. This data showed unequivocally that defensive gun use by permit holders is extremely rare. In Dade county, for example, there were only 12 incidents of a concealed carry permit owner encountering a criminal, compared with 100,000 violent crimes occurring in that period. That means, at most, getting a permit increases the risk of an armed civilian meeting a criminal by .012 percentage points. This is essentially a round-off error. What’s particularly revealing about this episode is that Lott had to have known about Dade county police records because he cited the exact same study in his book when the records supported a separate position of his. In other words, Lott simply cherry-picked the evidence that supported his conclusion and disregarded the rest. Even academics on Lott’s side of the argument strongly doubt that concealed carry laws could have such profound effects on crime. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, for example, writes:

 

[Bfgrn]

Counting on people being able to stop an assailant between reloads is a cynical ploy, and typical of the Left.

Really?

Woman Wrestled Fresh Ammo Clip From Tucson Shooter as He Tried to Reload

Patricia Maisch looks like a grandmother, but she is being hailed as a hero today for helping to stop alleged Tucson shooter Jared Loughner by wrestling away a fresh magazine of bullets as he tried to reload.

Maisch, 61, effectively disarmed the shooter as several men pounced on him and threw him to ground. As they struggled to hold him down, Maisch joined the scrum on the ground, clinging to the gunman's ankles.

Maisch and her fellow heroes -- identified as Bill Badger, Roger Sulzgeber and Joseph Zamudio -- stopped the carnage after 20 people were shot, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

ABC News



And here is the rest of the story the gun clingers don't want you to know...


Armed Giffords hero nearly shot wrong man
Joe Zamudio rushed to the scene and saw a man with a gun — but he wasn't the shooter


Does the Tucson massacre justify tighter gun control? Don't be silly. Second-Amendment advocates never look at mass shootings that way. For every nut job wreaking mayhem with a semiautomatic weapon, there's a citizen with a firearm who could have stopped him.

Now comes the tragedy in Tucson. And what do gun advocates propose? More guns. Arizona already lets people carry concealed weapons without requiring permits.

The new poster boy for this agenda is Joe Zamudio, a hero in the Tucson incident. Zamudio was in a nearby drug store when the shooting began, and he was armed. He ran to the scene and helped subdue the killer. Television interviewers are celebrating his courage, and pro-gun blogs are touting his equipment. "Bystander Says Carrying Gun Prompted Him to Help," says the headline in the Wall Street Journal.

But before we embrace Zamudio's brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let's hear the whole story. "I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready," he explained on Fox and Friends. "I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. "And that's who I at first thought was the shooter," Zamudio recalled. "I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!'"

But the man with the gun wasn't the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. "Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess," the interviewer pointed out.

Zamudio agreed:

"I was very lucky. Honestly, it was a matter of seconds. Two, maybe three seconds between when I came through the doorway and when I was laying on top of [the real shooter], holding him down. So, I mean, in that short amount of time I made a lot of really big decisions really fast. … I was really lucky."

The Arizona Daily Star, based on its interview with Zamudio, adds two details to the story. First, upon seeing the man with the gun, Zamudio "grabbed his arm and shoved him into a wall" before realizing he wasn't the shooter. And second, one reason why Zamudio didn't pull out his own weapon was that "he didn't want to be confused as a second gunman."

This is a much more dangerous picture than has generally been reported. Zamudio had released his safety and was poised to fire when he saw what he thought was the killer still holding his weapon. Zamudio had a split second to decide whether to shoot. He was sufficiently convinced of the killer's identity to shove the man into a wall. But Zamudio didn't use his gun. That's how close he came to killing an innocent man. He was, as he acknowledges, "very lucky."

That's what happens when you run with a firearm to a scene of bloody havoc. In the chaos and pressure of the moment, you can shoot the wrong person. Or, by drawing your weapon, you can become the wrong person—a hero mistaken for a second gunman by another would-be hero with a gun. Bang, you're dead. Or worse, bang bang bang bang bang: a firefight among several armed, confused, and innocent people in a crowd. It happens even among trained soldiers. Among civilians, the risk is that much greater.

We're enormously lucky that Zamudio, without formal training, made the right split-second decisions. We can't count on that the next time some nut job starts shooting. I hope Arizona does train lawmakers and their aides in the proper use of firearms. I hope they remember this training if they bring guns to constituent meetings. But mostly, I hope they don't bring them.

NBC News

 

[Bfgrn]

Lott has addressed all of his critics and explained his mistakes and the fact that he is still the most respected gun researcher

Respect is EARNED.

Lott's book received glowing praise from one Mary Rosh...who is Mary Rosh?

Why it is none other than JOHN LOTT impersonating one Mary Rosh...

A most respectable thing to do, don't you THINK 2aguy?

John R. Lott Can’t Defend Himself

You probably don’t know who John Lott is, but he has been written about a lot recently. To make a long story short, John R. Lott Jr. is an unabashed gun advocate, best known for his book “More Guns, Less Crime” wherein the data he uses has been long disputed. For extra fun? John Lott is also completely incapable of defending himself against his own history.

Lott’s excuses are that the original figures he used were lost in a computer crash; there are no financial records of the study, even though he personally funded it; he did a similar smaller study which he says vindicates the non-existent one, regardless that there’s no way to compare the originals; and that anyone who wants to prove him wrong can just go ahead and do the survey themselves, never mind that the very methodology of same is a major issue in question.

It has even long been illustrated how Lott has falsified his data. So Lott’s excuses are empty and meaningless. He has never been able to dismiss his past, but can only attempt to obfuscate it. Additionally, John Lott invented a sock puppet persona, “Mary Rosh,” which he used to praise his own work effusively and attack other scholars and critics. This is something Lott has admitted to doing, this is not an allegation.

John Lott’s fall from grace was seemingly complete in 2003-2004. His data was revealed as unprovable and he was outed as Mary Rosh. But here he is, ten years later, making regular television appearances as an NRA mouthpiece, downplaying the dangers of unfettered availability of firearms every time there is a mass shooting. As a bonus, he advances conservative talking points on other issues as well, attacking the ACA regularly.

Meanwhile, figures cited from “More Guns, Less Crime” have become the cornerstone of gun lobby arguments. Think about that. The statistics used for NRA talking points cannot be proven as true. John R. Lott is the chink in the armor of the gun lobbies. Were this story to get picked up by bigger media, it would end him.

John Lott reacts quickly to challenges regarding his troubled history and has standard responses at the ready. Most, if not all, of Lott’s links posted as a defense lead back to his own site or his organization’s site, Crime Prevention Research Center, which he is president of. He is also quick to link to those with whom he has worked in collusion. Simply put, John Lott’s responses boil down to that his data is true because he says so. Or, “Nuh-UH!”

This writer has had several interactions with him, and Lott has proven to be an evasive and underwhelming debate opponent. Each time, he links to his own site to counter questions about his history, or pivots, or employs accusatory rhetoric, or all of the above.

more

 

[Iceweasel]

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

I only read the beginning because I'm not going to spend the day reading an article simply because you lazily threw the link out there. Only a dishonest asshole like you thinks that's a reasonable thing to do. You pick the portion you feel supports you case the best and post that with the link if you are wanting to discuss the matter.

It's retarded to think someone is going to spend their energy reading every page of every link someone posts. The only other possibility is that they think they have overwhelmed them with "evidence" and shuts them down. So you're a dishonest idiot.

Lott replied with an ever-weakening series of explanations

That's exactly what I was referring to. A scholarly approach would have cited what he felt was in error while this cvnt tries to use emotion to buttress his case. That only works on the weak minded.

, suggesting that the 1% of people who obtained permits likely had a higher risk of being involved in crime, and thus disproportionately accounted for the crime decrease. Except, yet again, this statement does not comport with reality. One study by Hood and Neeley analyzed permit data in Dallas and showed the opposite of Lott’s predictions: zip codes with the highest violent crime before Texas passed its concealed carry law had the smallest number of new permits issued per capita.

Where specifically does Lott "suggest" that 1% of new permit holders were at a higher risk of crimes? That's an assertion he didn't support. First, you cite the specifics, then you show specifically where it's wrong. Suggestion, implication, etc. are conclusions. So he's arguing with conclusions, not statements. Honest people call that a strawman argument and only a weak position needs to utilize it.

What exactly does it prove with lower permits issued in a zip code? That doesn't mean anything in particular to Lott's argument.

Empirical data

from Dade county police records, which cataloged arrest and non-arrests incidents for permit holders in a five-year period, also disproves Lott’s point. This data showed unequivocally that defensive gun use by permit holders is extremely rare. In Dade county, for example, there were only 12 incidents of a concealed carry permit owner encountering a criminal, compared with 100,000 violent crimes occurring in that period. That means, at most, getting a permit increases the risk of an armed civilian meeting a criminal by .012 percentage points. This is essentially a round-off error. What’s particularly revealing about this episode is that Lott had to have known about Dade county police records because he cited the exact same study in his book when the records supported a separate position of his. In other words, Lott simply cherry-picked the evidence that supported his conclusion and disregarded the rest. Even academics on Lott’s side of the argument strongly doubt that concealed carry laws could have such profound effects on crime. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, for example, writes

Getting a concealed permit doesn't increase or decrease your odds of meeting a criminal and only a fucking retard would think so. Looking at stats before and after don't make the case, correlation is not causation. We learn this as children.

You are one dumb sucker. Hook, line, sinker.

 

[Iceweasel]

John R. Lott Can’t Defend Himself

You probably don’t know who John Lott is, but he has been written about a lot recently. To make a long story short, John R. Lott Jr. is an unabashed gun advocate...

blah blah blah...

I guess he should be bashed instead of unabashed to the fair minded reader? He doesn't need to defend himself from hate filled agenda driven morons.

Survey on gun ownership Archives - Crime Prevention Research Center
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that, for the first time in their surveys, the majority of Americans oppose more gun control. Gallup and CNN polls tell a similar story. Opposition to gun control has been increasing over at least the last couple of decades.

Gun control groups have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try to convince Americans that gun control is the answer. In 2013, gun owners’ groups — including the NRA — spent less than one seventh as much on television advertisements. This year looks to be even more lopsided, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of individuals such as Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and Gabriel Giffords.

Perceptions have changed dramatically, with most people now believing the “More Guns, Less Crime” hypothesis. Gallup recently asked Americans if they thought residents are safer with a gun in the home. People answered “Yes” by a margin of 63 to 30 percent. In 2000, Americans gave just the opposite answer by a margin of 51 to 35 percent. In 2013,Sixty percent of gun owners listed “Personal Safety/Protection” as the reason for owning a gun.

Academic research aligns with current public opinion. If you have a gun in the home, that gun is far more likely to prevent murder than it is to be used in an accidental shooting or to kill a loved one. . . .

 

[2aguy]

Here is the chart FROM YOUR SITE:

Looks like the murder rate shot up from 1.1 to 1.2.

Time to rethink this!

Yea, 17% which even the liar John Lott doesn't dispute. Cherry picker extraordinaire

Shooting Down the Gun Lobby s Favorite Academic A Lott of Lies Armed With Reason

A Lott of lies. Whoa, clever! Tell us how the genius supports this:

Lott replied to this accusation by arguing that, even if there weren’t more households owning guns, there were still more people carrying guns in public after the passage of shall-issue laws. However, we know this assertion is factually untenable, based on surveys showing that 5-11% of US adults already carried guns for self-protection before the implementation of concealed carry laws.


....so, he believes Lott lied because he believes just as many carried weapons after permits were issued more liberally by shall issue than prior to the laws? He supports this...how? With a poll on people who admit to their previous felonies by carrying a hand gun illegally? And you bought that? I read on a bit more and it's obvious he's a cvnt trying to impose his will on a target audience by a series of condescending remarks, rather than statistical facts.

The fact is that shall issue permits have been on the increase and crime has gone down. And the author didn't understand that Lott didn't make the claim that shall issue was reponsible for all crime going down but that it flies in the face of the liberal fear mongers that claim more guns mean more crime. It doesn't.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke

Lott replied with an ever-weakening series of explanations, suggesting that the 1% of people who obtained permits likely had a higher risk of being involved in crime, and thus disproportionately accounted for the crime decrease. Except, yet again, this statement does not comport with reality. One study by Hood and Neeley analyzed permit data in Dallas and showed the opposite of Lott’s predictions: zip codes with the highest violent crime before Texas passed its concealed carry law had the smallest number of new permits issued per capita.

Empirical data from Dade county police records, which cataloged arrest and non-arrests incidents for permit holders in a five-year period, also disproves Lott’s point. This data showed unequivocally that defensive gun use by permit holders is extremely rare. In Dade county, for example, there were only 12 incidents of a concealed carry permit owner encountering a criminal, compared with 100,000 violent crimes occurring in that period. That means, at most, getting a permit increases the risk of an armed civilian meeting a criminal by .012 percentage points. This is essentially a round-off error. What’s particularly revealing about this episode is that Lott had to have known about Dade county police records because he cited the exact same study in his book when the records supported a separate position of his. In other words, Lott simply cherry-picked the evidence that supported his conclusion and disregarded the rest. Even academics on Lott’s side of the argument strongly doubt that concealed carry laws could have such profound effects on crime. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, for example, writes:

Lott studied every county in the United States leading up to concealed carry then after implementation.....he didn't cherry pick the ones that supported his case.....

 

[2aguy]

Lott has addressed all of his critics and explained his mistakes and the fact that he is still the most respected gun researcher

Respect is EARNED.

Lott's book received glowing praise from one Mary Rosh...who is Mary Rosh?

Why it is none other than JOHN LOTT impersonating one Mary Rosh...

A most respectable thing to do, don't you THINK 2aguy?

John R. Lott Can’t Defend Himself

You probably don’t know who John Lott is, but he has been written about a lot recently. To make a long story short, John R. Lott Jr. is an unabashed gun advocate, best known for his book “More Guns, Less Crime” wherein the data he uses has been long disputed. For extra fun? John Lott is also completely incapable of defending himself against his own history.

Lott’s excuses are that the original figures he used were lost in a computer crash; there are no financial records of the study, even though he personally funded it; he did a similar smaller study which he says vindicates the non-existent one, regardless that there’s no way to compare the originals; and that anyone who wants to prove him wrong can just go ahead and do the survey themselves, never mind that the very methodology of same is a major issue in question.

It has even long been illustrated how Lott has falsified his data. So Lott’s excuses are empty and meaningless. He has never been able to dismiss his past, but can only attempt to obfuscate it. Additionally, John Lott invented a sock puppet persona, “Mary Rosh,” which he used to praise his own work effusively and attack other scholars and critics. This is something Lott has admitted to doing, this is not an allegation.

John Lott’s fall from grace was seemingly complete in 2003-2004. His data was revealed as unprovable and he was outed as Mary Rosh. But here he is, ten years later, making regular television appearances as an NRA mouthpiece, downplaying the dangers of unfettered availability of firearms every time there is a mass shooting. As a bonus, he advances conservative talking points on other issues as well, attacking the ACA regularly.

Meanwhile, figures cited from “More Guns, Less Crime” have become the cornerstone of gun lobby arguments. Think about that. The statistics used for NRA talking points cannot be proven as true. John R. Lott is the chink in the armor of the gun lobbies. Were this story to get picked up by bigger media, it would end him.

John Lott reacts quickly to challenges regarding his troubled history and has standard responses at the ready. Most, if not all, of Lott’s links posted as a defense lead back to his own site or his organization’s site, Crime Prevention Research Center, which he is president of. He is also quick to link to those with whom he has worked in collusion. Simply put, John Lott’s responses boil down to that his data is true because he says so. Or, “Nuh-UH!”

This writer has had several interactions with him, and Lott has proven to be an evasive and underwhelming debate opponent. Each time, he links to his own site to counter questions about his history, or pivots, or employs accusatory rhetoric, or all of the above.

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More anti Lott hate because he proved people carrying guns reduces the crime rate....and you know how we know.....as more Americans have bought guns.....the crime rate has gone down, not up...nationally......same with gun accidents.....

And he has answered each of those attacks......it would be good to here what Lott....and people who know him, say about the computer crash ....and when he used Mary Rosh to go on line to discuss his work......seems that when he went on as Dr. John Lott, the anti gunners just spent their time calling him names.......

 

[Bfgrn]

John R. Lott Can’t Defend Himself

You probably don’t know who John Lott is, but he has been written about a lot recently. To make a long story short, John R. Lott Jr. is an unabashed gun advocate...

blah blah blah...

I guess he should be bashed instead of unabashed to the fair minded reader? He doesn't need to defend himself from hate filled agenda driven morons.

Survey on gun ownership Archives - Crime Prevention Research Center
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that, for the first time in their surveys, the majority of Americans oppose more gun control. Gallup and CNN polls tell a similar story. Opposition to gun control has been increasing over at least the last couple of decades.

Gun control groups have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try to convince Americans that gun control is the answer. In 2013, gun owners’ groups — including the NRA — spent less than one seventh as much on television advertisements. This year looks to be even more lopsided, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of individuals such as Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and Gabriel Giffords.

Perceptions have changed dramatically, with most people now believing the “More Guns, Less Crime” hypothesis. Gallup recently asked Americans if they thought residents are safer with a gun in the home. People answered “Yes” by a margin of 63 to 30 percent. In 2000, Americans gave just the opposite answer by a margin of 51 to 35 percent. In 2013,Sixty percent of gun owners listed “Personal Safety/Protection” as the reason for owning a gun.

Academic research aligns with current public opinion. If you have a gun in the home, that gun is far more likely to prevent murder than it is to be used in an accidental shooting or to kill a loved one. . . .

Blah, blah, blah...the man you vehemently defend already revealed his character...

Lott's book received glowing praise from one Mary Rosh...who is Mary Rosh?

Why it is none other than JOHN LOTT impersonating one Mary Rosh...

A most respectable thing to do, don't you THINK Weasel brain??

But now you have also revealed YOUR character... something we are taught, or NOT taught as children...

YES, JOHN LOTT AGAIN....If you are an econometrician — a person who evaluates the real world using complex statistical models — there are two basic ways you can go about your job:

• You can do your best to figure out which statistical model does the best job of mirroring the real world, and then plug in your data and see what pops out. We will call this methodology tolerably honest.
  
  
• You can plug in your data first, and then tweak your model until it provides the results you want. We will call this methodology dishonest bullshit.
  

The alert reader has probably guessed that I am talking here about the latest sad chapter in the John Lott saga, and indeed I am. The indefatigable Tim Lambert is on the case, and assuming I have been able to put the timeline together correctly, here's what's happened:

1. Lott and two coauthors produced a statistical model ("Model 1") that showed significant crime decreases when states passed concealed carry gun laws.
   
   
2. Back in April, two critics discovered that there were errors in the data Lott used. When the correct data was plugged into Lott's model, his results went away.
   
   
3. After a long silence, Lott admitted the data errors and posted a table with new results. Oddly, though, his new results were similar to his old ones and continued to show significant drops in crime. So who's right, Lott or his critics?
   
   
4. Answer: his critics. It turns out that since he really had no choice but to use the corrected data, and the corrected data erased his results, he decided to invent a different model ("Model 2") for use in this new table — but without disclosing the fact that he had switched to a new model specifically constructed to keep his results intact. Note: In less refined circles this would be called "lying."
   
   
5. When Tim discovered that Lott had surreptitiously changed his model, he emailed Lott. No response.
   
   
6. It turns out Lott was busy covering his tracks. How? By quietly removing the corrected table from his website and replacing it with a new corrected table. This one uses Model 2 but has the old, incorrect data.
   
   
7. Here's where you have to pay attention. Why would Lott do this?
   
   Answer: this new table claims to be "corrected: April 18, 2003," and it turns out that Lott is trying to pretend that this was the original table he had posted all those months ago. That way, he could claim that he had never changed his model at all. Model 2 is the one he's been using all along!
   
   
8. Unfortunately, when Lott changed the revision date on the document to make it look like it had been created on 4/18/03, he changed it to 1/18/04 instead. What's more, Lott apparently doesn't know that you can check the create date of PDF documents anyway, and this one was created on 9/2/03. That is, it was created in September, not April.
   

Basically, Lott wants to pretend that Model 2 is the one he's always used. That way, when he corrects the data errors, his results still hold up. Unfortunately for Lott, his attempts to rewrite history were as clumsy as they were dishonest. His original table did use Model 1, his results do go away when the corrected data is plugged in, and he did respond to this by furtively devising a new model that would continue to give him the results he wanted.

If you're not sure you understand what's going on here, reread the timeline. Reread it five or six times. Eventually it will all become clear.

And a note to Glenn Reynolds, who has said he is "not sufficiently knowledgeable to opine on the statistical questions": my timeline deliberately avoids discussing the validity of the competing econometric models, which I'm not competent to judge either. Rather, it simply shows how Lott works, something that anyone is competent to judge. He's a liar and a cheat, and merely being "quite reluctant" to rely on him is far too weak a response.

The evidence is clear. John Lott should be fired from the American Enterprise Institute forthwith and banned from polite society.