Dr. John Lott had a letter to the editor that appeared in the Omaha World-Herald and Lincoln Journal Star that responded to a news article in newspapers around Nebraska about an op-ed that Lott had with Nebraska state Senator Tom Brewer.
A Jan. 20 World-Herald article (“DNA bill advances despite objections,”) pointed to criticisms of the op-ed that I wrote with Sen. Tom Brewer in your paper.
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The article labeled me as a “gun rights advocate,” not a researcher who has held academic positions at Wharton, Stanford, Yale, and the University of Chicago and worked in the U.S. Department of Justice. The article also failed to note that the criticisms arose from gun control groups (Newtown Action and GVPedia).
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These groups claimed I “padded” the list of academic studies that show the benefits of concealed carry, and did so by including studies that didn’t actually study concealed carry. But people shouldn’t take my word for it — I provided a link to all the studies so that people could check them out. As to the research I cited being “error-filled,” these were all peer-reviewed studies in academic journals. Neither of my gun control advocate critics has ever published anything in an academic journal.
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State Sen. Adam Morfeld “challenged” the research I presented by Professor Carl Moody, who shows constitutional carry reduces violent crime and police deaths. Morfeld wanted to focus only on firearm homicides, which includes defensive, justifiable homicides. But murder and self-defense are two very different things. In any case, for all states that had adopted constitutional carry by 2018, firearm homicides also declined.
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John R. Lott Jr., Missoula, Montana
President, Crime Prevention Research Center
“Constitutional Carry,” Omaha World-Herald, Sunday, January 30, 2022; “Gun story missed key elements,” Lincoln Journal Star, Sunday, January 30, 2022.
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