Widely known gun-rights researcher John R. Lott Jr. has responded in a Chicago Sun-Times editorial to the 328-page report on gun control laws released by the National Academy of Sciences.
The big news is that the academy's panel couldn't identify any benefits of the decades-long effort to reduce crime and injury by restricting gun ownership. The only conclusion it could draw was: Let's study the question some more (presumably, until we find the results we want).
Lott emphasized that the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents; from the assault weapons ban to the one-gun-a-month limitation. Waiting periods. Required gun locks. Nothing proved effective.
Interestingly enough, the study was not conducted by gun-control opponents but members who -- all but one -- favored gun control and was set up during the Clinton administration to study the effectiveness of gun control laws.
Lott complains that the panel is ignoring its own findings because the results turned out to be unexpected…and possibly unwanted. Instead of calling for more research, Lott believes the panel should have looked objectively at all the evidence. Doing so would have led them to find that gun control is unhelpful at solving crime, suicide and gun accidents. And finally, which is the icing on the cake, the panel should believe its own research that turns out to be closer to suggesting that gun control is more counterproductive than practical.
In addition to other circumstances, the study found a benefit in crime reduction from right-to-carry laws, but according to Lott, the panel members casually skipped over it in their conclusions, which are not completely optimistic due to results that might suggest right-to-carry laws aren't as beneficial as pro-rights people believe them to believe.
Only James Q. Wilson, professor of public policy at UCLA, was absolutely positive that right-to-carry laws reduce crime. While the panel in general couldn't be sure if this was absolutely positive, Wilson believes such uncertainty is due to results that could not withstand peer-reviewed studies, and yet was used when determining whether right-to-carry laws had for sure a positive effect.
Wilson emphasized, despite an unsure conclusion from the panel, that ''virtually every reanalysis done by the committee'' confirmed right-to-carry laws reduced crime. Results that didn't confirm the drop in crime, according to Wilson, accounted for no control variables and "wouldn't get published in a peer-reviewed journal," even though it was given considerable weight by the panel.
Lott rebuked the panel for being hesitant in saying that gun control doesn't work and for saying more research is needed because not enough has been learned. Is more research really needed or do more studies have to be conducted just until a conclusion supporting gun control is found?
Lott believes that either "tens of millions of dollars" has been wasted in addition to "countless man-hours on useless research," or the National Academy is too ideologically driven to accept conclusions that go against their own personal politics.
Regardless, Lott can't be mad about the outcome of the study. The statistics don't need the backup or support from the panel members who found them. They speak for themselves.
