Mary Rosh cut her posting teeth hawking Lott’s research on Freerepublic.com in 2000, but she stopped posting there in 2001 and switched to Usenet. Fortunately, a poster called Washingtonian picked up the torch that Mary had dropped. From then on, Mary and Washingtonian lived parallel lives, Mary on Usenet and Washingtonian on Freerepublic.

	Mary Rosh	Washingtonian
Interests	John Lott John Lott John Lott Guns John Lott	John Lott John Lott John Lott Guns John Lott
Amazon review of More Guns, Less Crime	SAVE YOUR LIFE, READ THIS BOOK – GREAT BUY!!!! If you want to learn about what can stop crime or if you want to learn about many of the myths involving crime that endanger people?s lives, this is the book to get. It was very interesting reading and Lott writes very well. He explains things in an understandable commonsense way. I have loaned out my copy a dozen times and while it may have taken some effort to get people started on the book, once they read it no one was disappointed.If you want an emotional book, this is not the book for you. If you want a book with the facts, a book that tells you the benefits and risks from protecting yourself and your family from crime, a book that will explain the facts in a straightforward and clear way, this is the book to get.This is by far the largest most comprehensive study on crime, let alone on gun control. Professor Lott examines crime rates as well as accidental gun deaths and suicides for all 3,056 counties in the United States by year for 18 years. By comparison, the previous largest study on gun control examined 170 cities within one single year 1980. Lott examined 54,000 observations and the previous largest study looked at 170 observations. Lott used all the FBI data that was available from the first year that they released the county level data to the last year that they had put it out when he wrote his book. Unlike other studies, Lott used all the data that was available. He did not pick certain cities to include and others to exclude. No previous study had accounted for even a small fraction of the variables that he accounted for. *	Important accurate info that Opponents constantly distort This is by far the most comprehensive study ever done on guns. It provides extensive evidence on waiting periods, the Brady Act, one-gun-a-month rules, concealed handgun laws. For some gun laws this is the only study available and it is important to note how many academics have tired to challenge his work on concealed handgun laws and failed and that no one has even bothered to try and challenge his work on one-gun-a-month laws and other gun control laws. I am constantly amused the lengths to which reviewers here will go to distort Lott’s research. Take the one by the Australian who claims that Lott doesn’t explain why he uses the polling data that he does on gun ownership rates. If he was honest, he would note that Lott talks about these being the largest surveys on gun ownership rates available and that it is necessary to have such a large survey to get detailed information at the state level. A survey of 1,000 or even 1,500 people nationally is not enough to allow you to make comparisons across individual states. These guys will do anything to keep people from reading Lott’s work. *
Posts from:	Philadelphia	Swarthmore, PA USA (Swarthmore is a suburb of Philadelphia and is home to John Lott)
Also posts from:	aei.org	Washington, DC (the AEI is located in Washington, DC and is the workplace of John Lott) *
Opinion of John Lott:	“he was the best professor that I ever had” *	Five minutes after someone asked “Who are the best conservative academics?”, Washingtonian answered “John Lott at Yale University” *
Opinion of Ayres and Donohue’s paper:	The Ayres and Donohue piece is a joke. I saw it a while ago. Their own county level data that did the year by year breakdown actually showed that Lott and Mustard were correct, but they weren’t smart enough to know it. A friend at the Harvard Law School said that Donohue gave the paper there and he was demolished on this and other points. I haven’t checked their paper again, but do they still have the county level breakdown by year or did they remove it because it was the most general test and it went the wrong way from their perspective? *	This paper is garbage. Look at the most generally results that break down the impact of the law on a year-by-year basis. Graph out the coefficients and you clearly see that violent crime is falling immediately after the law. This is the most general specification, much more general than the “hybrid” model. It is also pretty clear what is happening with the intercept shift and straight line in the hybrid model. The data is nonlinear. Crime rates are falling at an increasing rate after the law is in effect. Fitting a straight line to that with an intercept shift overpredicts the crime rate in the early years. So much for their claim about a small initial increase. If you doubt me, draw a verticle line and then a quarter of a circle that starts at that line. Now fit a straight line through the middle of that curved line and you will see that it is above the curve line in the beginning. This is the same thing that is happening here. *
Lott article on arming pilots	Posted at 11:29 am on 11 Oct 2001 *	Posted at 11:47 am on 11 Oct 2001 *
Lott article claiming bias against guns	Posted at 5:43 pm on 7 Feb 2002 *	Posted at 4:43 pm on 7 Feb 2002 *
Lott article on gun laws in Europe	Posted at 1:49 pm on 30 Apr 2002 *	Posted at 5:48 pm on 30 Apr 2002 *
On the mysterious survey:	“what about the fact that Lott’s 2002 survey apparently produces the same results?” *	“Lott’s survey was repeated in 2002 and obtained similar results.” *

Mary Rosh would regale us with tales of wearing high heels and her days as Lott’s adoring student, but Washingtonian has been less forthcoming about his (or her?) personal life. We do find out from a review of Mac OS X 10.3 that:

We installed OS X 10.3 with a family pack on five computers that we have at home.

By an odd coincidence, Lott’s defence in the case of The File from the Future was that he’s innocent because he uses a Mac.

As well as More Guns, Less Crime, Washingtonian also reviewed Punishment and Democracy: 3 Strikes and You’re Out in California by Zimring, Hawkins and Kamin:

Disappointing This is an important topic, but the empirical work in this book is at the level of the average newspaper. The work doesn’t even take into account that all counties in California didn’t follow the rules. What about simultaneously trying to account for arrest rate and conviction rates or changes in any other factors that affect crime?

Oddly enough, Zimring and Hawkins wrote an article dismissing Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime” thesis.

Mary Rosh’s career was cut tragically short in January when Julian Sanchez unmasked her as Lott’s sock puppet. Lott told the Washington Post:

“I should not have done it, there is no doubt.”

Fortunately, Washingtonian has soldiered on since Lott said that his use of a sock puppet was wrong, defending Lott, promoting Lott’s books, and posting Lott’s articles.

It would have been really cool if Mary Rosh and Washingtonian had met somewhere on the Internet and had a conversation, but I couldn’t find any examples of them meeting, so readers will have to imagine what topic they would discuss and what they would say about him.

PS: More, much more, tomorrow.