Tim Groseclose reviews Lott’s book The War on Guns.
John Lott, Jr., a PhD economist who has published scores of peer-reviewed articles in top journals, has written an outstanding and important new book, The War on Guns. It is, I believe, the most important document ever written about guns.
The book has many outstanding aspects. One is Lott’s careful review of many studies that the media often cite in order to bolster arguments in favor of additional restrictions on guns. Often, Lott uses his exceptional training in statistics to expose major flaws in these studies. A second outstanding aspect of the book is Lott’s documentation of several cases where anti-gun advocates have been dishonest or deceptive in presenting their evidence.
For this review, however, I focus on a third outstanding aspect of the book. This is the many powerful and interesting facts and anecdotes that fill the book. Like many Ricochet readers, I consider myself a news junkie; e.g., I probably consult the Drudge Report at least a dozen times a day and I probably listen to or watch a couple hours of talk radio or cable news each day. As a consequence, when I read a book on politics or current events, I’m often already familiar with many of the book’s anecdotes. Not so with Lott’s book. I’d estimate that approximately every fifth page or so I learned a new fact or anecdote that I now consider very important.
You might think that I’d be very pleased when learning these facts or anecdotes. However, my reaction was usually the opposite. Instead, I’d often think, “Why haven’t the media — not even the conservative media — reported these facts? What is wrong with our system of government and media, when most people have no knowledge of these facts?”
The following is a partial list of such important facts and anecdotes that I learned from Lott’s book: . . .
The rest of the review is available here.
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