Gun Control: A Survey of the Police.

[impertinence]

Kasz216 said:

impertinence said:

 

Yeah, John Lott being accepted science... If you have no idea what you are talking about just don't bother. John Lott's research is widely discredited and he has been and continous to be under heavy critisism for massaging data, not being able to provide raw data cited in his research, cherry picking and a number of other transgressions. To claim that John Lott is considered the best research available on gun crime is plain false.

I am sure he is universally lauded as a beautiful mind on Fox News where he is a frequent contributor, but do yourself a favor and check the facts a little better. John Lott is a scientist who sold out to the gun lobby, and has pretty much no credibility left. He is not above cooking his numbers, as he has done in the list of mass shootings in non gun free zones that started this whole debacle.

Here's a qustion.

Have you read any gun research recently?

If you had, you'll note Lott's research is pretty much always the very first thing mentioned in the literature review.

The can't provide raw data complaint, is the only thing you mentioned that was a true complaint against him... yet you conviently left out the fact that that's a complaint with basically every professor at his school because they all lost their data after a hardware crash.

Hell the biggest counterpoint to him has been Levitt.  Who actually is against gun control now, suggests RTC pretty much has no effect on anything, gun control doesn't have any effect on anything and suggesting it also doesn't work.  Instead he suggests mandatory enhancements for crimes committed with guns.

Academic reality can, and often does, vary from random stuff you might find on internet article comment sections or silly biased websites.

Again, I recommend looking into John Lott a little closer. I have seen enough here to know that I am engaged with a nitpicker who'll keep coming back until the end of time with new tidbits of knowledge freshly harvested from the internet and present it as common knowledge that you've done extensive research about. I have no interest in stroking your ego so you can pretend that you know this soooo much better than anyone else. So far you've displayed a lack of understanding of the critisism against Lott, misrepresented the 'facts' around those critisisms, completely missed the stance of his critics and dismissed several of the issues people have with his research.

I know what you will be coming back with here, so I will direct this to other people who might read this reply and have an actual interest in finding out something about this issue rather than a pathological need to be right and have the last word: Do yourselfs a favor and look into the many questionmarks that are associated with John Lott's integrity as a reasearcher and what his agenda could possibly be. Then keep in mind that with the highly polarized gun debate that any critisism against Lott will also most likely carry a certain level of bias itself. Then, armed with that knowledge look at the lists and research quoted from John Lott and decide for yourself if you should take his findings at face value, or if it's better to double check his claims for yourself. My personal preference is to always double check claims that seem to be overwhelmingly obvious, and that strategy has served me well so far, but as always; to each his own.