More Guns Less Crime by John Jr (ebook reader macos .txt) 📗

They failed to quote some other sentences in this same piece, such as "Not all black officers nor all white officers nor all officers of any other race are of the same quality. Some black officers are undoubtedly better at reducing crime than most potential white officers, and some white officers are probably better than most potential black officers. The question is how to select those officers who will do the best job. There is the possibility that choosing applicants by race or sex could work against hiring the best officers available.... One must be very clear about what is happening, however. The large impact of more black officers indicates that more than just the quality of new minority recruits or new minority promotions are affected. Indeed, changing tests to employ a greater percentage of blacks appears to make it more difficult to screen out lower-quality candidates generally, including whites and other racial groups" (John R. Lott, Jr., "Who Is Really Hurt by Affirmative Action?" Subject to Debate, May 1998, pp. 1, 3).

57. William F. Shughart II, "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws: Review," Southern Economic Journal 65, no. 4 (Apr. 1, 1999): 978.

58. Bruce L. Benson, "Review of More Guns, Less Crime," Public Choice 100 (Sept. 1999), nos. 3-4: 309.

59. Stan Liebowitz, "Handgun Argument Is Loaded," Dallas Morning News, June 21, 1998.

60. Nelson Lund, "Gunning Down Crime: The Statistics of Concealed Weapons," Weekly Standard, June 1, 1998.

61. Joanne Eisen and Paul Gallant, "Scientific Proof That Gun Control Increases the Cost of Crime," Shield, Summer 1998, p. 42.

62. I really don't take most threats very seriously, and I believe that it is just people blowing off steam. The worst threats usually come over the telephone, though I did have some regular writers from Canada who would express the hope that someone would get a gun and kill either me or my family members. The one E-mail threat that was forwarded to me by one of the editors at the University of Chicago Press gives some idea of the types of comments I received:

Pass along the word, to that soulless weasel and absolutely irresponsible chickenshit John M. Lott that he better change his name and get some plastic surgery because his days of [obscenities deleted] of the NRA's [obscenities deleted] will be quickly coming to a crashing close if he keeps trying to pass off unethical, and second rate statistics with his pseudoscience rhetorical sylogisms.

My point—someone is going to become very angered by the view of this imbecile, and is going to get a concealed hand-gun permit and find where he lives and make a point. I won't lose sleep knowing that one more moron is dead, but I feel that he should be warned none-the-less. Also, if John Lott had any integrity he'd make it possible to reach him. Since the little scatmuncher is playing hide and seek by having no-available e-mail adress, whoever reads this please forward this too him. This is not a threat, just a warning.

Sometimes when views of cretins like this are expressed I think "love it or leave it," and man, if our scholars get any stupider and any more immoral than Mr. Lott I'm out of this shit house. I nearly packed my bags.

63. Matt Bai, "Is He the Smoking Gun?" Newsweek, Jan. 25, 1999, Business section.

64. "According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report, from 1992 to 1997, states which made it easier for citizens to carry concealed handguns had a significantly smaller drop in their crime rates than states which chose not to loosen their conealed weapons laws" (Brian Morton [associate director of communications for Hand-

300 / NOTES TO PAGES 205-206

gun Control and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence], "John Lott's Gun Research Doesn't Hold Up to Review," Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Aug. 15, 1999, p. 3C).

Even when others would state that the FBI indeed did not produce these claims, Handgun Control's press release was put on the same footing as my research. Consider the following: "The Center to Prevent Handgun Violence did a 1999 analysis of crime statistics that came to a conclusion opposite of Mr. Lott's, and their study (like his) is open to review by experts in many fields" (Molly Ivins, "More Guns, Less Crime? Are You Sure?" Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Aug. 15, 1999). For clarification, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence is part of Handgun Control, and Sarah Brady serves as the head of both organizations. Many similar statements were made by the media in Missouri during the debate over the concealed-handgun law.

65. For example, a December 1998 press release on children and gun violence had South Carolina and Colorado ranking similarly in terms of how liberal their right-to-carry laws were, but by January 1999, in a press release examining the change between 1992 and 1997, Colorado was listed as having a more restrictive law than South Carolina. The only motivation that I can conjecture for the change was that it helped get them the different results that they wanted.

66. "In stark contrast, a review of the national Uniformed Crime Reporting data, which is compiled by the FBI each year from state and local law enforcement agencies, indicates that the violent crime rate has fallen in all states by an average of 19 percent from 1992-97" (Richard Cook, "Don't Buy the Pro-Gun Arguments," Kansas City Star, Mar. 11, 1999, p. B7).

67. Peter Squires, "Review of More Guns, Less Crime," British Journal ofCriminology 39, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 318-20.

68. My book does not even cite this quotation, though I mentioned it in an