Much of this media coverage over the last week has been critical and distorted what Dr. Lott actually said during his testimony before President’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (a video of the testimony is available here and a discussion of some of the false claims is available here). We have also submitted letters to the editor for many publications and will put those notes up after the media makes decisions on those them. If we print the letters here, the newspapers will not print them. That is one reason why for the time being the most critical news stories are listed in the last half of this page. Finally, note that this is not all the media coverage that we have received as some of these publications were reprinted many times. At the current time, it looks as if there were over a hundred more publications that reprinted these various articles.
CBS News, September 12, 2017
Meanwhile, John Lott, President of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a member of the commission’s expert panel on Monday, suggested that the FBI-crafted National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, which is primarily used as a means for background checks for acquiring a gun, could be implemented to determine if a citizen was able to vote or not.
“It’s the same things that disqualify you from owning a gun that disqualify you from voting,” said Lott.
But commission member Gardner was quick to challenge Lott’s idea. “NICS was never established to be used as an election tool,” he responded.
Lott went on to advocate for the idea of NICS being implemented for providing checks against voter fraud, calling it a “one stop shop” for covering vital information like citizenship and criminal records.
“If this is a system they [states] have honestly believed over time is a fair and accurate way of determining whether or not you’re legally able to own a gun, presumably it’s not going to supress voter turnout,” added Lott. . . .
NBC News, September 12, 2017; Euronews, September 12, 2017
Union Leader (NH), September 12, 2017
“This has become a very partisan issue,” he told the commission. “You have Republicans worried about ineligible people voting, and Democrats thinking Republicans are just imagining things.”
The NICS system, which Democrats support as a way of verifying someone’s Second Amendment rights, should be widely accepted as a way to verify voting rights, he said.
“Democrats have long been concerned about voter suppression, but they have long lauded the background check system on guns,” Lott said. “The NICS system is close to what we care about when deciding if people can vote.”
That suggestion generated some tough questioning from commission members, including Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.
“We’d witness a sterling example of the law of unintended consequences,” he said. “The NICS system wasn’t designed for elections.” . . .
Chicago Tribune, September 12, 2017
Lott said that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) flags many of the same concerns that could disqualify voters. Democrats have praised the system, he said, and Republicans are eager to have tighter controls against voter fraud.
“It might be a solution that might please both sides,” Lott said. . . .
The Daily Signal, September 12, 2017
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, also known as NICS, is used to check the background of gun buyers. Among other things, it includes information on felony convictions, or if someone is in the country illegally. Citizenship is a requirement to vote, while states have varying rules on voting rights for felons.
However, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap objected to the idea.
“This would be a sterling example of the law of unintended consequences,” Dunlap said. “NICS wasn’t intended for elections.”
Lott said he saw no reason NICS could not be used for background checks to ensure voter eligibility at no cost to the voter, and would be a “trivial cost” to states. He noted that Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had praised the NICS system.
“This would be one-stop shopping,” Lott said. “This has been hashed out in political debates. If this is a system people honestly believe over time … doesn’t suppress a person’s right legally own a gun, presumably these same people believe it will not suppress voter turnout.” . . .
Washington Times, September 12, 2013
He said the system has most of the information registrars are interested in — chiefly citizenship status and criminal history — when they sign up voters.
Since liberal-leaning politicians generally support the background check system, Mr. Lott said, there is already a political consensus that could help tamp down objections Democrats might raise.
“It seems like it would solve a lot of the politician divisions that are there, and it has in the database the types of things you’d want to look at to determine if somebody is qualified for voting,” he told the commission.
The idea didn’t impress Mr. Dunlap, who said harnessing the gun system to handle voter checks would be “a sterling example of the laws of unintended consequences.” . . .
Concord Monitor (Concord, New Hampshire), September 12, 2017
Courthouse News Service, September 12, 2017
Early during the hearing, panel members considered the proposal of Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center that all voters be forced to undergo the same federal background check as those seeking to buy guns. His presentation, which is available on the commission’s website, argues that local government should foot the bill to run its voters through the federal background check system as a deterrent to voter fraud. He cites Mexico’s success after passing strict voter requirements as an example. . . .
Capital-Journal (Topeka, Kansas), September 12, 2017
John Lott, president of the crime prevention research center, proposed requiring background checks for voter registrants. He proposed using the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which checks whether a prospective gun buyer can own a firearm, and said Democrats claim the program works well for gun purchases.
“It might be a way that Democrats can use a system which they claim works very well to go and essentially prove to Republicans in a sense that there is not fraud,” Lott said. . . .
Kansas City Star, September 11, 2017
Lott’s PowerPoint, which was posted on the White House’s website in advance of the meeting, includes a slide titled “How to check if the right people are voting.”
NPR, September 12, 2017
“The NICS system wasn’t designed for elections,” Dunlap said. . . .
MSNBC, September 12, 2017
Yesterday, at the commission’s public event in the Granite State, members of the panel clashed with Kobach over his attempts at public deception, and heard from a witness who’s “proposing that voters literally undergo the same background check as those who are purchasing firearms.”
The witness, John Lott, a controversial researcher and Fox News commentator, stressed yesterday that he wasn’t kidding. . . .
The Hill, September 12, 2017
Lott argued that Democratic concerns that the commission will be used to disenfranchise voters would be satisfied by his proposal, since most Democrats are on the record supporting the background check system for guns.
“You have Republicans generally worrying about ineligible people voting and Democrats largely thinking Republicans are just imagining things … it might be a solution that pleases both sides,” he said.
“It’s been hashed out in the political debate lots and lots of times … This is a system [Democrats] honestly believe is a fair and accurate way of determining whether someone can go out and own a gun. Presumably, they would think it would not suppress voter turnout.”
But Dunlap pushed back during a back-and-forth between the two men, blasting Lott’s idea as a “sterling example of the laws of unintended consequences” that would dramatically widen the mission of the background check database.
“NICS was never intended to be used as an election tool. That’s something I find as a rather strident departure,” Dunlap said. . . .
Politico, September 12, 2017
“Think about applying the background check system that we use for purchasing guns, the NCIS system, for voting,” Lott said. “Democrats have long been concerned about voter suppression, but they have also long lauded the background check system on guns. It’s simple, accurate and in complete harmony with the right of people to go defend themselves.”
Later, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap questioned Lott, asking whether he was calling for the background check system to be used in elections.
“I don’t see why not,” Lott said. “There may be alternatives, but here you have something that many people … are on the record saying this is a good system.”
Dunlap, a commission member, replied that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms would have “some concerns” about such a system. “We’d witness a startling example of laws of unintended consequences,” he said. “NCIS wasn’t designed for elections.”
Civil rights advocates reacted to the proposal with a combination of alarm and derision.
“To basically say to voters, we’re going to use the standards for registering to vote that are used for having somebody eligible to purchase a gun, is just crazy to me,” said one attendee, Jon Greenbaum of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “People in the voting rights community are flabbergasted. … It’s problematic if he’s being serious about it and it’s problematic if he’s not.” . . .
Yahoo! News, September 12, 2017
Pittsburg Post-Gazette, September 13, 2017; Washington Post, September 12, 2017
Lott is not joking, as he made clear when The Washington Post asked him that question Tuesday before Lott presented the proposal to President Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission later that morning. Lott also assured the members of the commission that he was not joking when he presented the idea – after they asked if he was serious.
To be clear, Lott is proposing that voters literally undergo the same background check as those who are purchasing firearms. That process is the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, introduced by the Brady bill in 1993 and implemented beginning in 1998. The Trace, a journalism site focusing on U.S. gun violence, has a good explanation of how it works: You go to a gun store, fill out Form 4473, and the store calls the FBI to see if you should be allowed to own a firearm.
Since 1998, only 1.5 million people checked have been denied firearm purchases, about half of them because the person had a criminal record. By comparison, 1.5 million checks is about 400,000 fewer than were processed by the FBI this August alone. It’s about 0.6 percent of the background checks that were run. . . .
Obviously, Lott was not proposing that voters undergo the exact same background check, just that the information collected in the NICS system could be used to determine if voters are eligible to vote. See here for a discussion of other errors in Philip Bump’s piece.
Vice News, September 13, 2017
At the Tuesday meeting of President Trump’s task force on election fraud, members heard a very unusual proposal: Run background checks on potential voters. Even more strangely, that plan was suggested by John Lott, an independent gun researcher who has long opposed federal background checks on gun purchases.
Lott’s logic is simple: If Republicans worry about voter fraud, and Democrats say that voter fraud doesn’t exist, he proposes, then why doesn’t the United States just use the Democrat-approved National Instant Criminal Background Check System to double-check voting rolls?
“If NICS doesn’t interfere ‘in any way’ with people’s constitutional right to self-defense, doesn’t it follow that it would work for the right to vote?” asks Lott’s presentation on his proposal, which he presented at the second meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
Lott is an unlikely pick to testify before the commission, experts told the Washington Post. He’s published papers related to election law, but Loyola Law School election scholar Justin Levitt told the Post that most political scientists don’t consider Lott credible on such issues.
Instead, Lott is likely better known for his theory that the more gun ownership leads to less crime. Several independent studies — including 15 members of a 16-person panel for the National Research Council — have found that “existing literature” doesn’t back up Lott’s theory that right-to-carry gun laws decrease violent crime. But Lott told VICE News that other research has subsequently supported his findings. “I looked at the previous 15 years of NRC reports, prior to the firearms and violence report,” Lott said. “And there’s only one other time that there was a dissent. So if anything, my research got more support.”
Plus, in his work with gun control, Lott’s repeatedly criticized the NICS database. Not only did he once claim on this blog that 99.9 percent of the purchases it flagged as being illegal were false positives, but he also criticized liberals in an August Chicago Tribune editorial for subjecting gun owners to rigorous regulations and fees, yet being outraged by “any obstacles” that could limit people’s ability to vote.
But Lott assured Gardner that his proposal was entirely serious.
Despite Lott’s apparent earnestness, bureaucratic hurdles will likely doom his idea. The word “Instant” might be in the NICS’ name, but in reality, the system can take much longer to run a background check, the Washington Post reported. And while Lott says that states can just pick up the tab on the extra cost of these checks, the Post calculated that it could potentially cost states hundreds of millions of dollars to do so. . . .
CORRECTION (Sept. 14, 2:12 p.m.): An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Lott had only published one article on election law. He has published several. . . .
We provided the reporter for Vice News the list of 19 peer-reviewed publications on elections, voting, and election law, so it is not obvious why the reporter has cut out her original description of papers dealing with voting or election law to just election law and only claims that we have published just “several” papers.
Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2017; Governing, September 13, 2017
“It might be a way Democrats can use a system they claim works very well to go and prove, essentially, to Republicans that there’s no fraud,” said Lott, who last year criticized the same National Instant Criminal Background Check System as a “mess.”
Every credible study of voting fraud has determined it is either virtually nonexistent or too rare to affect outcomes. . . .
It isn’t clear whether the reporter from the Los Angeles Times either listened to Lott’s testimony or read his writings where he talked about how easy it is to fix the NICS system (National Review, January 2016, Fox News, October 2016, and his book the “War on Guns“).
Talking Points Memo, September 12, 2017
To quell Democrats’ concerns about anti-fraud measures leading to voter suppression, Lott suggested that the background check system that is used to clear gun purchasers should be used on those seeking to vote, as was hinted in a copy of his presentation posted online by the White House last week.
“Democrats have long been concerned about voter suppression but they’ve also long lauded the background check system on guns, saying it’s simple, accurate, in complete harmony with the right of people to go and defend themselves,” Lott said, while referencing a quote from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) praising the use firearm background checks.
“If they don’t believe that it suppresses people’s ability to defend themselves, would we believe that using this system would suppress being able to go and vote?” Lott said
He went on to claim that the gun background check systems is “actually very close in many ways to what we care about whether people can legally vote.”
The commission returned to the topic during a Q&A portion at the end of the panel, when Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap (D) seemed incredulous that Lott was actually promoting use of the gun background check system, known as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), for voting.
“I was sort of under the impression that you were making a comparative analysis, but are you suggesting that we use the NICS system for elections?” Dunlap said.
Lott dug in, telling Dunlap that, “It seems like it would solve a lot of the political divisions that are there.”
“NICS was never intended to be used as an elections tool,” Dunlap later countered. . . .
Like many news outlets, TPM ignores the rest of our discussion where I asked for specific examples of what problems that Dunlap was concerned about arising and he was unable to give any.
Talking Points Memo, September 12, 2017
Dr. Lott was the September 12th addition to Talking Points Memo’s “the world’s worst people.”
Somewhat like the Trump White House, the ‘vote fraud’ racket tends to attract all the world’s worst people. Here’s the John Lott edition, a gun rights writer who doesn’t want any restrictions on your guns but would like you to need to do the equivalent of a gun background check in order to be allowed to vote. . . .
Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 15, 2017; Syracuse.com, September 14, 2017; MassLive.com, September 14, 2017; Alabama.com, September 14, 2017; Star-Ledger, September 14, 2017
President Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission is considering a proposal that would require individuals to pass a background check before registering to vote. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, suggested background checks — similar to those required to purchase a gun — are an effective way to “check if the right people are voting.” But critics argue voting rights are not the same as gun rights, and background checks would be both costly and unjust. . . .
Gun researcher and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center John Lott caused controversy when he suggested individuals should have to pass a background check in order to vote. Lott was invited to speak before President Trump’s controversial Election Integrity Commission about effective ways to prevent voter fraud and suggested states adopt background checks similar to those required to purchase a gun.
The NICS system doesn’t just determine if potential gun buyers have criminal histories. It also checks whether a person is in this country illegally, has a nonimmigrant visa or has renounced his citizenship. Such people are not allowed to vote. The system doesn’t currently flag people who are on immigrant visas but who could be added to the system.
Lott argued since Democrats claim background checks do not interfere with one’s ability to own a gun, it should follow that they do not interfere with an individual’s ability to vote.
But many aren’t taking Lott’s proposal seriously, and are shocked he was called before the voter fraud commission in the first place. According to FiveThirtyEight, there are approximately 33,000 gun deaths per year compared to 31 documented cases of voter impersonation between 2000 and 2014. Suggesting the system used to purchase firearms should be applied to voter registration is both ridiculous and impractical.
The qualifications for purchasing a firearm are much more stringent than those for voting. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) screens such things as criminal history, dishonorably military discharges, and mental health or substance abuse issues.
If the author of this article had listened to Lott’s testimony (The Tylt), they would realize that he was talking about using some of the information in the NICS report to do this background check.
Huffington Post, September 15, 2017
John Lott, the author of the book More Guns, Less Crime, was empaneled by Trump’s sham commission to weigh in on how to solve America’s non-existent voter fraud problem. Mr. Lott proposed the implementation of criminal background checks for voters in order to “make sure the right people are voting.” This unconstitutional practice would discourage people from participating in our democracy and registering. Eligible citizens should not be shamed or condemned for past crimes for which they’ve served, rather they should be applauded for reentering society with a desire to have their voices heard in the electoral process. . . .
Alternet, September 15, 2017
That brings us to this week’s most notorious witness who testified before the panel in a New Hampshire field hearing. In recent years, John Lott has made more of a name as a firearms fanatic than as a voting rights crusader. But he testified that anyone registering to vote should undergo the same background checks as are needed to get a firearms permit. That too, was ridiculed in the press as a false equivalency, because the legal requirements to be an eligible voter are not the same as for being a gun owner.
However, what nobody mentioned in news reports was perhaps the most salient detail about Lott’s proposal that would appeal to Republican vote suppressors. Gun licenses aren’t issued to people with criminal records, which if applied to voting, could greatly expand today’s current landscape of felon disenfranchisement. In Virginia, Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has been fighting with the GOP and its red-led legislature over McAuliffe’s efforts to restore voting rights to nearly 200,000 ex-felons who completed their sentences, probation and parole. In Florida, a state that permanently bans former felons from voting, an estimated 10 percent of the state’s residents—1.6 million people—have lost their voting rights this way.
Independent (UK), September 12, 2017; The Virginia Pilot, September 12, 2017; Washington Post, September 12, 2017; MSN, September 12, 2017; Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana), September 15, 2017
But Lott also occasionally branches out into other topics. Back in 2006, he wrote a paper on voter fraud, arguing that “regulations that prevent fraud are shown to actually increase the voter participation rate.” He is not otherwise known for work on elections or voting. Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist, noted in an email that the paper was not published in an academic journal and said that its findings were “not credible.”
Lott has nonetheless been invited to speak at Tuesday’s meeting of President Trump’s commission on voter fraud. There, he’ll argue that elections officials should run prospective voters through the federal background check system, currently used for gun purchases, before allowing them to register to vote. . . .
Seattle Times, September 17, 2017
One particularly egregious presentation was given by Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Relying on data from 1996 to 2004, Lott made the case that citizens should have a thorough background check — like the one used for purchasing a firearm — in order to vote. Leaving aside how ridiculous that analogy is, we are already regularly checking many different data sources to keep our voter rolls up-to-date. . . .
The research in that particular paper actually covers the period from 1996 to 2006. In September, 2016, Washington State’s secretary of state was concerned enough about illegal aliens and other non-citizens voting that she proposed “residents to prove U.S. citizenship or legal residency to get state driver’s licenses so elections officials can ensure noncitizens are not trying to vote.“
CNN, September 12, 2017
Critics of the voter commission questioned the credentials of those who are presenting Tuesday. Among them is the Crime Prevention Research Center’s John Lott Jr., who will advocate for background checks for voters, and last wrote about fraud and elections in 2007.“They somehow found a white man who is not an academic and who last wrote anything about elections a decade ago who is advocating for background checks before voting. But they couldn’t find one of the dozens of female or minority experts who’ve studied and written extensively on elections over the past decade,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and the former director of the elections program at The Pew Charitable Trusts. . . .
CNN, September 12, 2017
The commission, led by Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, has scheduled a series of presentations from long-time advocates for stricter controls on voting. Among them: The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, who plans to highlight egregious examples of voter fraud; and the Crime Prevention Research Center’s John Lott Jr., who will advocate background checks for voters. . . .
Ms Magazine, September 14, 2017
On Thursday, the vice chair of Trump’s election integrity commission, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, published a column in the alt-right outlet Breitbart falsely claiming that in New Hampshire 5,300 people voted illegally with out-of-state driver’s licenses—a form of ID that in fact guarantees legal, legitimate voting rights. Kobach’s grotesquely fallacious remarks have been used to back the arguments of men like John Lott, head of a gun rights advocacy group, who suggested earlier this week that the background-check system used for gun purchasers should be used to determine Americans’ eligibility to vote. . . .
Esquire Magazine, September 13, 2017
John Lott, the non-expert expert witness and onetime Internet celebrity, cited those reforms as a template for the “reforms” he’d like to see in this country. . . .
John Lott, a controversial gun researcherwhose work has been questioned, submitted a presentation to the committee saying people who don’t have photo ID ― which several states require to vote ― can get it if they’re motivated enough.
Instead, the Commission considered a proposal from John Lott, a Second Amendment advocate and head of The Crime Prevention Research Center. Lott, who has criticized firearms regulations like the Brady Bill, also believes that voter ID laws lead to higher electoral turnouts, another statement that, like Kobach’s on illegal voting, has no credibility. Given his approval of the Second Amendment, and his ability to find fault with the first, his proposal would unite his twin love and hate by forcing all eligible voters to undergo a background check to determine whether or not they can vote – in spite of the fact that Lott has called background checks for guns “ineffective” at preventing crime. Political scientists have roundly dismissed Lott’s proposal, . . .
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity disagrees. Led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, this group is meeting in New Hampshire Tuesday for the second time to discuss ways to combat voter fraud. One of the presenters is John R. Lott, a well-known economist and gun rights advocate.
One of the first slides in his presentation says, “How to check if the right people are voting.”
Republicans worry about voting by ineligible people, Democrats say that Republicans are just imagining things.
Something that might make both happy? Apply the background check system for gun purchases to voting. Lott argues that background checks would flag those in the country illegally and stop them from voting.
Background checks are expensive – between $55- to-$175 a person – but Lott argues the states could pick up those costs.
This idea of background checks for all voters is in the discussion phase right now, but if the people who rally Tuesday have their way, it will never become a reality. . . .
Salon, September 23, 2017
After all, there are more than 30,000 gun deaths annually in America. Between 2000 and 2014, however, every comprehensive study – whether by courts, academics or journalists — have found only a handful of cases of voter impersonation. Lott, however, told the commission that his proposal would allow Democrats to “go and prove, essentially, to Republicans, that there’s no fraud.” . . .
The clearest sign of this strategy was seen in Lott’s presentation. His proposal for voter-registration background checks sounds absurd. Guidelines to prevent dangerous people from owning weapons have no parallel with citizen voter eligibility, and given Lott’s past statements that databases used for these verifications are “rife with errors,” it would seem that he was just trolling Democrats.
Yet such an extreme suggestion actually creates a policy space in which other “protections” against the “threat” of voter fraud look like moderate compromises by comparison. Lott also told the commission that, according to his research, restrictive voting laws actually enhance voter turnout, although published academic studies provide no support for this claim. Evidence-based public policy is not really the point of his proposal or this commission. . . .
Mother Jones, September 12, 2017
. . . John Lott Jr., who specializes in research on gun ownership and crime, was invited by the commission to speak at the meeting in New Hampshire. The witness list is as controversial as the commission itself, whose roster of voter fraud fear-mongers has sparked concerns that they will use the commission to push reforms that make it harder to vote. All of the witnesses at Tuesday’s meeting are white men, and they include former Justice Department staffers under George W. Bush who have pushed strict voter ID laws and purges of voter rolls.
But nothing in the meeting’s morning session was as explosive as Lott’s proposal. He said the background check system run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco is well suited to check whether voters are eligible to cast a ballot because it checks for such things as citizenship and criminal history. But the qualifications for purchasing a firearm are much more stringent than those for voting. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) screens such things as criminal history, dishonorably military discharges, and mental health or substance abuse issues. Not only could NICS erroneously flag someone as ineligible to vote, it could also deter people from voting who are distrustful of law enforcement and want to stay away from a criminal background check. And background checks cost money, which would have to be paid by the voter or the state.
Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democratic commission member, challenged the background check idea, noting that NICS was never intended to be used for election purposes. But Lott pushed back, saying that since Democrats liked the system for gun purchases, he saw no reason for them to oppose using the system on voters. “It’s the same things that disqualify you from owning a gun that disqualify you from voting,” Lott insisted. Commissioner Christy McCormick, a Republican member of the Election Assistance Commission, which assists states with election administration, said the background check idea was interesting. (After the session, Dunlap toldProPublica‘s Jessica Huseman that the idea is “ridiculous” and he initially thought Lott was joking. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican commissioner, also told Huseman he opposed the idea.) . . .
Portland Press Herald, September 13, 2017
Lott argued that Democrats should support it, since many are on the record supporting the background check system for firearms. “Presumably, they would think it would not suppress voter turnout,” Lott told the commissioners.
Dunlap dismissed the idea, calling it a “sterling example of the laws of unintended consequences” that would widen the mission of the background check database, which he said was never intended to be used as an election tool.
He told the Press Herald Wednesday that the information one gets from firearm background checks would not allow you to determine whether someone was eligible to vote. “It was very clear to me that the guy has never sold a gun to someone,” he said. . . .
I know what you’re thinking and I quite agree; voting locales and gun shows should then be joined together in constitutional bliss. Cast a vote, get a gun. How about a 10 percent early bird discount on your next gun purchase for voting by 9 a.m.? A free box of ammo for producing six forms of ID? An autographed poster of Charlton Heston dressed as Moses, holding a rifle over his head and proclaiming, “From my cold dead hands,” if you sign your name legibly in the registration book? The possibilities are endless. . . .
Breitbart, September 14, 2017
Writing in The Kansas City Star, Crime Prevention Research Center’s John Lott looks at the fact that campus carry took effect in Kansas and Georgia on July 1, and explains:
Gun control advocates in Kansas [predicted] disaster, just as they have in each new state that adopted campus carry. Unable to point to any actual catastrophes, opponents do their best to imagine what might go wrong.
But at school after school, no problems have occurred. Over the decades, not a single permit holder who was allowed to carry on university property has committed a crime with his gun. No permit holder has ever gotten angry over a grade and started shooting. As far as we know, no permit holder has ever used his gun to threaten anyone on campus. There have only been six accidental discharges, all of which involved minor injuries. In no case did someone other than the permit holder get a hold of the gun.
Beautiful!
I guess they never heard that “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”. It’s spelled S-A-R-C-A-S-M, fools.