Another misrepresentation from Clayton Cramer

Posted by Tim Lambert on October 18, 2003
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After misrepresenting my views in this statement,

I don’t know if you actually found Dr. Lott engaged in a lie or not, but I do know that your irrational desire to see victims disarmed and murdered by criminals puts you on my list of people not to bother with anymore.

Clayton Cramer is at it again. In this post he claims:

Tim Lambert keeps attacking John Lott’s work because it is being used to prevent proper Australian-style gun control from reaching America. I can see why.

For the record, I have no desire to see victims disarmed and murdered by criminals. And the reason why I criticised Lott’s work was because I believed that he was wrong. More recently I have come to the conclusion that his work is fraudulent as well.

Cramer really has no excuse for his misrepresentations. He has been an active participant in the firearmsreg mailing list for years. On that list I have never once said that I wanted the US to adopt Australian-style gun laws. I have also stated that I do not have an opinion on what the laws in the US should be. I have also stated that I did not agree with the restrictions introduced in Australia in 1996, so I don’t see why he would think I would want to see similar laws introduced in the US when I didn’t want them introduced in Australia.

Cramer also makes a very silly argument against Australian gun laws—he posts a story about a drive-by shooting here and implies that the gun laws have failed. But all this shows is that gun restrictions do not completely eliminate gun crime. I don’t think anyone ever claimed that they would, so he is arguing against a strawman. What the people who advocated the laws argued was that they would reduce gun crime and the latest crime statistics from my state show a 26 per cent decrease in ‘shoot with intent’ incidents and a 36 per cent decrease in assaults with a handgun. Of course, these decreases may well have nothing to do with the gun laws passed a few years ago, but the fact is that Cramer ignored the evidence that might have been relevant to his claim about the laws here and instead posted something irrelevant.

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Comments

  1. #1 Seb
    October 18, 2003

    “I don’t think anyone ever claimed that they would, so he is arguing against a strawman.”

    Either that or against Mary Rosh.

  2. #2 Brett Bellmore
    October 18, 2003

    Looking at those stats, I’d venture that your law probably didn’t have much to do with the changes… unless it had a clause concerning syringes.

    Lott is an embarassment, however it’s nice to note that in the process of refuting his claim that concealed carry reform significantly reduces crime, critics have pretty well demolished the counter-claim that it greatly increases crime. With the results a wash, the oportunity to deny government arbitrary discretion, and let people do something they want to do, prevails.

  3. #3 Rick
    October 18, 2003

    Following on on Brett’s point:

    And, fortunately, with Lott’s so-called research pretty well discredited, if people choose not to extend shall issue privileges, there is little reason their elected representitives should not listen to their desires and refuse to go along with shall issue.

  4. #4 raj
    October 18, 2003

    I’ve clicked onto Cramer’s blog a few times. Two things I cannot figure out: who the heck is he and why should anyone give a tinker’s damn what he has to say? Any idiot can set up a web page and a blog, and he appears to be more evidence for the fact that more than a few people have.

  5. #5 Kevin P.
    October 18, 2003

    raj wrote:
    Two things I cannot figure out: who the heck is he and why should anyone give a tinker’s damn what he has to say? Any idiot can set up a web page and a blog, and he appears to be more evidence for the fact that more than a few people have.

    Do a Google search on Clayton Cramer.

    Some of his books

    And raj, your claim to fame is… ?

  6. #6 Kevin P.
    October 18, 2003

    Tim Lambert wrote:
    I have also stated that I did not agree with the restrictions introduced in Australia in 1996, so I don’t see why he would think I would want to see similar laws introduced in the US when I didn’t want them introduced in Australia.

    Excuse me while I fall off my chair here…

    You said these things? Really? Why?

  7. #7 Tim Lambert
    October 18, 2003

    I feel that the laws before 1996 were reasonable. I could see no point in further restrictions.

  8. #8 Jess -Sorry if this is posted twice.
    June 5, 2004

    I am more than a little confused. Law-abiding citezens are the only ones affected by gun laws, and as a result- gun laws are pointless. None the less, why don’t we leave it up to America to decide how they want to run their country? God knows what would happen if more poeple were killed by guns when they adopted our idea. “These Australians are the reason we have had so many more killings, blame them, not us your GOVERNMENT.”- I can see it now… they always share the blame- but never the admiration. Anyway, I’veh ad enough. Someone rewritethis whole lot of stuff in SIMPLE ENGLISH nad post it again.
    Cheers,

  9. #9 Ian Gould
    June 7, 2004

    Tim,

    Can you give me a link to anything more detailed by you on these laws?

    I never really looked at the detail of the laws but tended to support them on the assumption that “less guns = less gun violence”.

    Despite being an economist and knowing that the buy-back was expensive I never thought to do a cost-benefit analyis of the buyback.

  10. #10 Tim Lambert
    June 8, 2004

    The buyback caost about $500 million. Since people could take the money and buy guns that were not semi-automatic, you were really only going to make a difference in those crimes where a semi-auto gave the killer an advantage — massacres like Port Arthur. These are not common, so all you do is reduce the death toll on average by one or two people per year. Which is not a big payoff for $500 million. Now not all guns were replaced so there was a real reduction in the number of guns and the data suggest that murders have fallen by very roughly ten per year, but even this doesn’t seem like a big payoff considering the cost.