Gun Control & RKBA

Researchers pressed Lott, then a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, to release the data behind his claim that 98 percent of defensive gun uses in the United States involved a would-be victim merely brandishing a gun. Lott claimed that it was based on a data from a survey he had conducted—but that the data had been lost in a computer crash. Lott redid the survey in 2002; of more than 1,000 people surveyed, seven said they'd used a gun to defend themselves. Of those seven, six merely flashed a firearm in self-defense. Based on these responses, plus the lost data, Lott still asserts that more than 90 percent of defensive gun uses involve brandishing a gun.

As criticism of Lott mounted, an online commenter, who identified herself as a former student of Lott's at Penn named Mary Rosh, lavishly praised her former professor and attacked his critics. "He was the best professor that I ever had," she wrote. After it came out in 2003 that Rosh and Lott shared an internet address, Lott admitted to the sock puppetry, saying that he had been receiving obnoxious phone calls when using his real name, and some of Rosh's comments were possibly written by his family members on a shared email account. "In most circles, this goes down as fraud," wrote Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy in the magazine. And yet, he observed in a blistering op-ed, "Legislators in a number of states are still considering liberalizing concealed-weapon laws, and Lott's book plays a continuing role in the debate. That moves this story from high comedy to a troubling challenge in social policy that isn't funny at all."

Lott is no longer affiliated with any university. Now when he appears, he's introduced as the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, a nonprofit he founded in 2013 to study the relationship between gun laws and crime. The organization, headquartered at his home in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, produces and publishes "academic quality" reports that have yet to be published in peer-reviewed journals, but are, according to Lott, informally reviewed by the organization's academic board. "If they have comments, while there is no formal review by them, they let us know," he explains in an email. The center's reports have been cited by the New York Times, the Boston Globe and other major publications.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/john-lott-guns-crime-data

What is striking about this collection of individuals is not only the extremists like Nugent and Clarke, but also that there is not a criminologist to be found among CPRC’s academic advisers. Many of these advisers have produced no research on gun violence whatsoever. Others have published in this area only as co-authors with Lott.

Why has Lott found it so hard to recruit peers to his latest pro-gun initiative? A recent survey from a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, David Hemenway, provides the answer. Hemenway surveyed 300 academics who had conducted research on gun violence and found that an overwhelming majority believed that strong gun laws reduce such violence. For example, 64% stated they believe a gun in the home makes it a more dangerous place, compared to only 5% who said a safer place.

Of course, Lott is also followed by his reputation, which continues to take hits. And now that his latest “pseudonym” has been exposed, it will be interesting to see how many of his current friends want to continue to put their name behind his latest enterprise.

http://csgv.org/blog/2015/whos-backing-last-pro-gun-academic/

P.S. - I have no blog. I receive no funds from Mayor Bloomberg or any other organization.