Agreed. I'm not a Lott fan, and many critiques of the man himself are valid (especially the sock-puppeting fiasco), but the most damning critique of his work I

Agreed. I'm not a Lott fan, and many critiques of the man himself are valid (especially the sock-puppeting fiasco), but the most damning critique of his work I've seen is the NAS study which agreed with his conclusions, but found some of them to be statistically irrelevant. That said, I've had to play something of the foil to my gun-friendly friends, pointing out inaccuracies of memes and such, and cautioning against leaping to too many conclusions. For every example of gun control failing, there seems to be a counter-example elsewhere. I think it's fair to say that gun control laws, strict or lax, have very little effect on crime rates altogether, and in my own studies, have found that gun violence is most prevalent wherever there is greater economic disparity or distress. That isn't particularly great knowledge to either party's agenda, but makes me really wish that our nation would get over its fetish against "assault weapons" and start working on the real causes of violence.