Glenn Kessler had this Fact-check article on Obama’s statements on guns last week:
Gun rights advocates have disputed some of National Journal’s criteria as arbitrary and haphazard. John R. Lott Jr., a gun rights analyst, noted that California, Illinois, and Washington are coded by National Journal as states without “stand your ground” laws — which permit the use of deadly force in self-defense in public. A footnote says that court decisions in those states have in effect permitted “stand your ground” actions with no requirement to retreat. Lott asks: “Who cares whether you have ‘stand your ground’ provisions because of a law or court precedents?” . . .
By contrast, Lott says that it is wrong to assume correlation equals causation. Fleeger’s paper acknowledged that it “could not determine cause-and-effect relationship.”
“States such as Hawaii have had low firearm homicide rates as far back as we have data, long before they have the gun laws that are on the books,” Lott said. “The issue here should really be whether gun control laws caused crime rates to fall relative to other states after they have been implemented.” He says his own research suggests there is little difference. . . . .
Eugene Volokh on the Volokh Conspiracy portion of the Washington Post had a list of cases where civilians have stopped mass public shootings. He relied on our work at the Crime Prevention Research Center for his list.
Some of these incidents are drawn from a list on the Crime Prevention Research Center site, though I have independently read the media reports to which I linked (as well as some other media reports on the incidents, for background). . . .
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