[On Sep 27 2002 I posted this to firearmsregprof.]
Norman Heath writes:
Just a suggestion, but perhaps Lott simply made a rough comparison between the number of claimed DGUs and the total number of shootings. I.e. if total shootings is (making this up) 120,000 and we subtract 35,000 suicides, 5000 police shootings, 200 hunting accidents, 15,000 gun murders, then even without accounting for non-fatal criminal shootings the highest possible number of live-fire DGUs would be about 64,800 (again, using made-up numbers). If at least 764,00 people claimed DGUs, then the number of those who actually shot somebody in self defense would necessarily be far under 10% of total claimed DGUs.
This is basically how Kleck came by his original estimate that 98% of DGU did not involve anyone getting shot. To get the numbers he would need for this calculation he would have to go to Kleck's work and would have come up with the same 98% figure for DGUs where no-one was wounded. However, it just seems too much of a coincidence that his own survey would just happen to produce exactly the same percentage for a different number (percentage who don't fire).
It is not my mission in life to stick up for John Lott, about whom I know next to nothing. But this hopeful little fishing expedition trying to catch J.L. in a lie has a couple of problems, not the least of which is that the inquisitors are trying to prove a negative, the non-existence of a survey. This is very unlike checking an author's claim against a cited document which does exist and can be examined. Even if no phone bills from the survey can be found, no undergrad students recall participating, etc., the case against the existence of a '98 survey can probably never be considered proven. The inquiry has little prospect of ever being conclusive, thus it appears to be more an exercise in insinuation than anything else.
On the other hand, given the amount of evidence that a national survey of the scale that Lott claims he conducted would leave, it should be trivially easy for him to prove that the survey was conducted. But he hasn't done so.
Of course, anybody is free to try to dig up some dirt against an academic who represents the "other side." But a little discretion is appropriate, in order that the inquiry itself does not become campaign of slander. It is one thing to use a listserve to ask casually where one might obtain Prof. X's dissertation. It is another matter entirely to suggest on a listserve that Prof. X committed plagiarism in his dissertation and then ask where one might obtain a copy of the dissertation in order to find the plagiarism.
Unfortunately that approach does not work for the questions that we would like answered. For example: "What, specifically, were the questions in Lott's survey?" If I asked the list that question, I think the reasonable answer would be that I should ask Lott. Duncan has asked Lott that question and Lott has not answered it. I could not see any way of making the enquiries that I felt were needed without there being some sort of implication that something untoward was going on, so I felt that I should explain my suspicions to the list.
And, raising the matter in a somewhat public forum has prompted Lott to respond to some extent, though I don't understand why he would not tell the list the story of his survey.