Freedomnomics

Article published Tuesday, August 19, 2014, at Indianapolis Star.

Studies show right-to-carry laws reduce crime

By John R. Lott, Jr.

Stephen Dunlop, with Hoosiers Concerned about Gun Violence, makes a number of mistakes in his Aug. 15 letter, “Gun violence remains a public health issue.” In talking about the risks of guns in the home, Dunlop ignored that the research he cited assumes that if a person was killed and a gun was owned in the home, it was the gun in the home that was responsible for the death. In fact, virtually all of those deaths were due to guns being brought in by criminals getting into the home. For one of the papers in the meta-analysis, in only eight of the 444 homicide cases was a “gun involved (that) had been kept in the home.” Nor do the studies separate homes of gang members from those of law-abiding citizens.

As to Dunlop’s claim that my research is “discredited,” if he had looked at the literature, he would have discovered that about two-thirds of peer-reviewed research by economists and criminologists find that right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime. And no one finds higher murder, rape or robbery from concealed handgun laws.

John R. Lott Jr.

President

Crime Prevention Research Center

Alexandria, Va.

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Cold Comfort, Economist John Lott discusses the benefits of guns--and the hazards of pointing them out.

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Some data not found at www.johnlott.org:

Updated Media Analysis of Appalachian Law School Attack

Since the first news search was done additional news stories have been added to Nexis:

There are thus now 218 unique stories, and a total of 294 stories counting duplicates (the stories in yellow were duplicates): Excel file for general overview and specific stories. Explicit mentions of defensive gun use increase from 2 to 3 now.

Journal of Legal Studies paper on spoiled ballots during the 2000 Presidential Election

Data set from USA Today, STATA 7.0 data set

"Do" File for some of the basic regressions from the paper