Editor’s note: This story was originally posted Saturday evening, September 27th. John Lott called and asked us to suspend this blog story for a couple of days. So we’re re-publishing it today.
John Lott appeared Saturday afternoon at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Chicago. He detailed some of the problems with anti-gun studies touted by Bloomberg’s groups and others in recent weeks. “They can’t even get the ages of the people in these studies right!” he noted. “It’s amazing to me how much they get wrong in these studies… These errors are just egregious!”
He cited the recent FBI study claiming that mass shootings are increasing.
WASHINGTON (NY Times) — A report released by the F.B.I. on Wednesday confirmed what many Americans had feared but law enforcement officials had never documented: Mass shootings have risen drastically in the past half-dozen years.
There were, on average, 16.4 such shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, compared with an average of 6.4 shootings annually from 2000 to 2006. In the past 13 years, 486 people have been killed in such shootings, with 366 of the deaths in the past seven years. In all, the study looked at 160 shootings since 2000. (Shootings tied to domestic violence and gangs were not included.)
Mass public shootings aren’t increasing, the professor said. “If anything, it’s just the opposite,” he added.
“Most of their samples are residential shootings.” Notably, he said that 40% of the cases had nobody shot or wounded in the FBI “study”. Even more incidents had only one person killed or wounded.
Even worse, they missed 33 cases entirely that more than two people were killed.
Contrary to the FBI’s report, there’s no trend according to Lott. The change is “statistically insignificant”.
He asked how the media can take these anti-gun studies and not seek a critical comment to their so-called “study”.
Lott noted that Bloomberg’s people repeatedly have avoided debating him, knowing that Lott will point out the problems in their studies.
Lott also pointed out that women who behave passively when under attack are 2.4 times more likely to be injured or killed than a woman who is armed.
“The odds of a child in a law-abiding household being injured by guns is about as high as a child being struck by lightning,” he added. Locking up your guns from your kids actually increases the likelihood of injury or death, not because of accidents, but because of victimization by violent criminals.
Lott said he will release his findings in a formal press release this coming week.
He refers to these egregious errors as an opportunity for the pro-gun side to urge the media to do even a modicum of research before taking these “studies” as gospel. These errors also are embarrassing for the reporters who repeat them without asking for a critical opinion.
Can it get any clearer ? The victim disarmament control freaks help crime happen. no matter if it’s the ” moms”, Brady, liars like Phleger, or the gun grabbing politicians and the media, the blood is on their hands because they make it easier for criminals by keeping victims unable to or brainwashed into not having the means to defend themselves and those people end up dead. everyone of them is sick in the head and a danger to everyone.