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John Lott is kind of a flake with several credibility problems: allegations of academic fraud in his studies and of not actually conducting a survey he claimed

by dreyfiz 15y ago

John Lott is kind of a flake with several credibility problems: allegations of academic fraud in his studies and of not actually conducting a survey he claimed to have done, proven allegations of sockpuppeting ("Mary Rosh"), lack of corroboration of his claims by any other academics... More Guns Less Crime is a snappy title, but mostly seems like a work of ideological pro-firearm propaganda in light of its author's many documented ethical issues.

vacri 15y ago
Lott is also the guy who predicted that Australia would become a lawless wild west with stricter gun laws in place after the Port Arthur massacre. He overlooked the point that we never really had guns anyway, and the laws were only restricting automatic rifles and requiring guns safes at home, and that after a one year slight rise in crime (crime is cyclic), crime has dropped markedly since that point (for reasons entirely unrelated to guns, because guns don't really factor into our society). This wouldn't be so much of a big point, except that he did spend a lot of time trumpeting about this single year of slight rise in crime. If you read his studies at the time, he also grossly misrepresents things like doing that trick where you report going from 4 to 5 incidents a year as "OMG! 25% increase!" (can't remember the exact number) Kleck is another guy with crazy stats. In one report he mentioned that concealed handguns saved 230k lives per year in the US. I crunched the numbers to see how that would translate to our 'lawless', 'gunless' country, where criminals 'have free reign', and it would mean we would have 15k deaths because we don't do concealed gun laws. Turned out that our annual murder rate from all sources combined is about 300. Part of the pro-gun propaganda is the implicit assumption that every crime involves death or rape. I've spent a lot of time looking at gun issues over the years and started out from a total anti-gun perspective, with the exception of farmers and security. As I've examined it, the problem really seems to be handguns. Rifles don't seem to be so much of an issue - anecdotally at least, it's hard to conceal a rifle. The armed Swiss that's so often reported are armed with rifles, too (interestingly the 'armed society is a polite society' people always seem to leave out west Africa...). When you start looking at the statistics in the US, it really jumps out at you how bad handguns are there. I've also never, ever, seen any pro-gun argument make note of the role of the startling increase in US incarceration have an affect on crime rates. It's an interesting topic and blinkered passion rise on all sides, that's for sure.
- djmdjm 15y ago
  OTOH rifles are the weapon of choice for spree-killers. Australia had a surprising number of these for such a small country (my father narrowly missed driving through the Hoddle St massacre). I don't think we have had a spree killing of any significant scale since the gun bans passed following the Port Arthur killings.
  - vacri 15y ago
    Spree killers were part of my original total anti-gun position, but the more I looked, the more I realised they are an outlier. Port Arthur was a very large massacre with ~35 dead and made up about 10% of our annual murders, but usually spree killers comprise a much lower percentage. Legislation shouldn't be made based on the outlier case. It's even worse in the US - the high visibility spree killers would only total 100-200 per year, but there are about ~17k murders annually in the US (11k of those are with handguns). The spree killers that make the headlines are a drop in the bucket in the US, and in Australia they're actually pretty rare - separated by years, not to mention that we haven't had much in the way of such things this millenium. In short, focusing on spree killers misses the bigger picture. The sheer number of spree killers is immense in the US as compared per capita to its contemporaries, but even there it's still a drop in the bucket. --- six degrees of separation: one of my teachers at high school taught Julian Knight (Hoddle St bloke) how to shoot, in the school's army cadet programme... six degrees of embarrassment: I had been seeing a lass from Tasmania for a month or two and was making a short series of dark jokes (my MO) about the Port Arthur massacre. She waited patiently to the end of it, then let me know her aunt died there. She said it was worth waiting to see my suitably embarrassed expression...

by dreyfiz 15y ago

vacri 15y ago

Lott is also the guy who predicted that Australia would become a lawless wild west with stricter gun laws in place after the Port Arthur massacre. He overlooked the point that we never really had guns anyway, and the laws were only restricting automatic rifles and requiring guns safes at home, and that after a one year slight rise in crime (crime is cyclic), crime has dropped markedly since that point (for reasons entirely unrelated to guns, because guns don't really factor into our society). This wouldn't be so much of a big point, except that he did spend a lot of time trumpeting about this single year of slight rise in crime. If you read his studies at the time, he also grossly misrepresents things like doing that trick where you report going from 4 to 5 incidents a year as "OMG! 25% increase!" (can't remember the exact number) Kleck is another guy with crazy stats. In one report he mentioned that concealed handguns saved 230k lives per year in the US. I crunched the numbers to see how that would translate to our 'lawless', 'gunless' country, where criminals 'have free reign', and it would mean we would have 15k deaths because we don't do concealed gun laws. Turned out that our annual murder rate from all sources combined is about 300. Part of the pro-gun propaganda is the implicit assumption that every crime involves death or rape. I've spent a lot of time looking at gun issues over the years and started out from a total anti-gun perspective, with the exception of farmers and security. As I've examined it, the problem really seems to be handguns. Rifles don't seem to be so much of an issue - anecdotally at least, it's hard to conceal a rifle. The armed Swiss that's so often reported are armed with rifles, too (interestingly the 'armed society is a polite society' people always seem to leave out west Africa...). When you start looking at the statistics in the US, it really jumps out at you how bad handguns are there. I've also never, ever, seen any pro-gun argument make note of the role of the startling increase in US incarceration have an affect on crime rates. It's an interesting topic and blinkered passion rise on all sides, that's for sure.

djmdjm 15y ago
OTOH rifles are the weapon of choice for spree-killers. Australia had a surprising number of these for such a small country (my father narrowly missed driving through the Hoddle St massacre). I don't think we have had a spree killing of any significant scale since the gun bans passed following the Port Arthur killings.
- vacri 15y ago
  Spree killers were part of my original total anti-gun position, but the more I looked, the more I realised they are an outlier. Port Arthur was a very large massacre with ~35 dead and made up about 10% of our annual murders, but usually spree killers comprise a much lower percentage. Legislation shouldn't be made based on the outlier case. It's even worse in the US - the high visibility spree killers would only total 100-200 per year, but there are about ~17k murders annually in the US (11k of those are with handguns). The spree killers that make the headlines are a drop in the bucket in the US, and in Australia they're actually pretty rare - separated by years, not to mention that we haven't had much in the way of such things this millenium. In short, focusing on spree killers misses the bigger picture. The sheer number of spree killers is immense in the US as compared per capita to its contemporaries, but even there it's still a drop in the bucket. --- six degrees of separation: one of my teachers at high school taught Julian Knight (Hoddle St bloke) how to shoot, in the school's army cadet programme... six degrees of embarrassment: I had been seeing a lass from Tasmania for a month or two and was making a short series of dark jokes (my MO) about the Port Arthur massacre. She waited patiently to the end of it, then let me know her aunt died there. She said it was worth waiting to see my suitably embarrassed expression...