John Lott's "The Bias Against Guns"
Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2014 10:09 pm
I received John Lott's "The Bias Against Guns" today and immediately started reading it. I've only begun, but I've already learned a great deal that is very beneficial. For example, Lott writes,
Lott also cites a New York Times study of "rampage killings", which they defined as killing two or more people in a public place, and the times claimed a dramatic recent increase in those killings, then demanded that gun control legislation be passed. When Lott examined the study he found that the times had undercounted older killings by a factor of six. In fact that was NO increase in killings.
This is astounding information. As Lott points out, some people are afraid to use guns against attackers because they don't want to kill anyone. The truth is that fewer than one in a thousand attackers dies in a defensive gun use. If people were aware of that, they might be more likely to use a gun to defend themselves.The fact is that most defensive gun use appears to occur in high crime areas, and that attackers are killed in fewer than one out of every thousand defensive uses. Woundings are more common than killings (probably six or seven times more common) but they are still extremely rare.
Lott also cites a New York Times study of "rampage killings", which they defined as killing two or more people in a public place, and the times claimed a dramatic recent increase in those killings, then demanded that gun control legislation be passed. When Lott examined the study he found that the times had undercounted older killings by a factor of six. In fact that was NO increase in killings.