Paranoia soul destroyer

Lott has some more comments on the NAS panel report on firearms research. (Also posted at the Volokh Conspiracy.)

Lott adds to his earlier claims that the panel was biased with this:

In fact, the panel apparently originated with the desire from some to respond to the debate on that issue and to respond specifically to my research that concludes that allowing law abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons reduces crime. I originally overheard Phil Cook and Dan Nagin discussing the need for a panel to "deal with" me in the same way that an earlier panel had "dealt with Isaac" Ehrlich's work showing that the death penalty deterred murder. They agreed and Nagin said that he would talk to Al Blumstein about setting up such a panel. Needless to say, that is what ended up happening.

This story seems somewhat implausible. I mean, if you were conspiring to "deal with" Lott, would you do it where he could listen to you? And while Lott attacked the panel when it was first set up, his complaint was that it had been designed to ignore his research, not that it had been set up to "deal with" him. So I asked Dan Nagin about this conversation. He replied:

I assure you that I had no such conversation with Phil or Al. I played absolutely no role is setting up this panel or defining its agenda. As a member of the Committee on Law and Justice I was aware of its formation but played no active role its organization.

According to Lott, Jim Lindgren is also part of the anti-Lott conspiracy. Lott writes:

I think that Lindgren is a biased observer. He was upset after a critical piece that I published on a paper of his work in 2003 and his attacks started shortly after that. Further his attacks are untrue.

However, if you look at Lindgren's report you will notice that Lott chose Lindgren to conduct the investigation and that the original version of the report was written in 2002. Which is before 2003. It seems that Lott's critical article was payback for Lindgren's report, rather than the other way around.

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Are you ever going to get around to addressing Lott's substantiative points? You seem to be obsessing on the issue of alleged panel bias, to the exclusion of all else.

By Brett Bellmore (not verified) on 18 Jan 2005 #permalink

I love the way the Lott-ites keep demanding things when they have so far failed to admit there is overwhelming evidence that the man is a fraud.