Charles Blow in the New York Times last year made the very common argument: “America has the highest gun homicide rate, the highest number of guns per capita . . . .” In another story, the New York Times quotes researcher David Hemenway as claiming: “Generally, if you live in a civilized society, more guns mean more death.” CNN’s Piers Morgan believes: “America has the worst incidents of gun murders of any of what they call the civilized world.” Bloomberg’s Businessweek also made similar claims this spring. …
CPRC original research, International Comparisons, More Guns Less Crime
Below is the relevant text of Piers Morgan’s comments. Here a few comments.
1) Doesn’t Piers recognize the irony that the Aurora movie theater and Newtown shootings both occurred where guns are banned? That the movie theater shooting occurred in the one movie theater out of seven showing the Batman movie near where the killer lived?…
Assault Weapons Ban, gun free zones, media bias on guns, Newtown massacre
Despite the constant onslaught exaggerating the risks of guns in the home (see also here), YouGov has a new survey finding that “42% of Americans would feel safer with a gun in the house, while 20% would feel less safe.” And it turns out that they have good reason for feeling that way (see here and here).…
CPRC’s John Lott was interviewed on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America show to discuss the ban on soldiers being able to carry guns on military bases and police officers being able to at NFL games. The audio of the interview is available here (March 28, 2014 from 7:06 to 7:15 AM EDT).…
On the eve of Piers’ last show, here are some videos and commentary that will give people a flavor of the type of show that he had. It is too bad that his show has been canceled. In many ways, Piers unintentionally helped out those who opposed gun control.
Piers’ reliance on Mother Jones as a source for statistics in this second video is discussed here.…
The audio of John Lott’s interview with Ben Ball’s Coastal Daybreak on WTKF 107.1 (46,000 watts) is available here (March 25, 2014 from 8:45 to 9 AM).
For people’s interest, here is an interview that John Lott did with Mark Reardon on KMOX on September 11th, 2012.
…Idaho now joins seven other states that to varying degrees allow permitted concealed handguns on college campuses. As I note below, if you include Pennsylvania, it is probably more correct to say that Idaho becomes the ninth state. On March 12th, Idaho governor Butch Otter signed a bill that will allow those with an enhanced concealed handgun permits to carry guns on college campuses after July 1st this year.…
John Lott’s newest piece was the featured commentary in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review’s Sunday opinion section and it starts this way:
…Can mass shootings be stopped or prevented? The Obama administration’s political views prevent it from even considering certain obvious solutions.
On Tuesday the Department of Defense released its report on the Sept.
gun free zones, mass public shootings, mental illness and guns, op-ed
The Berkeley Forum debate entitled “Guns, Crime and Freedom” included: CPRC president and economist John Lott, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Stanford professor Jack Rakove and Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The debate took place on October 25th, 2013, but the video of the debate has only just now been released.…
The audio of John Lott’s appearance is available here (March 21, 2014, 5:21 to 5:26 PM). This audio contains the five minutes before John Lott is interviewed as Dana is interviewing the Ares shop owner who was dealing with the BATF.
