Ok, so what about this witness being a pro-gun activist? Well, he made it perfectly clear to me that he was strongly pro-gun and greatly admired John Lott in the long message that was sent to firearmsregprof. I should have mentioned it that day, but I knew all of the detail would be in Lindgren's long report so I didn't think to say something. In hindsight, I realize it made it look as if this guy might have concealed that he was a big fan of Lott's from us. He didn't. I apologize for the misleading impression I created.
Lindgren has sent me a long comment on this topic:
Things happen so fast in the blogosphere that people may have been jumping to some unwarranted conclusions. I didn't want this to come out piecemeal, but I don't have time to go through the whole thing even now. I had a manuscript due yesterday and a committee report due today, which are still commanding almost all of my time:My Monday night post to FireArmsRegProf responded to an earlier post to the list from David Gross, the man who came forward and said that he thought that he was surveyed by a student working for John Lott. In his post, Gross disclosed to the list that he contacted Lott through Joseph Olson (who is a pro-gun rights academic widely known on the list to be one). In his post, he mentions his close ties to Leroy Pyle, a pro-gun rights activist. Further, he makes clear how much he likes John Lott's work and how it resonates with him. So I wrote my post to a group that already understood that Gross had pro-gun ties and sympathies. I take it that many people in the wider world either did not read David Gross's post or did not understand the possible significance of the people mentioned. Further, Gross in his post expressed his admiration for the work of Milton Friedman and his contacting Dan Polsby (a former Northwestern professor also known to support gun rights). If that weren't enough, Gross made a statement about the necessity of his defensive uses and described his tape of a speech by John Lott, which he cared enough to purchase at the event and keep. Only by missing all these clues in Gross's own post (or not seeing his post) would you conclude that he had no special interest in gun rights. His post says that he has no stake in the outcome, but he openly admits his attachment to Lott's work.
After saying that I had a long interview with Gross, I wrote only 2 quite oblique sentences about what he said:
- It [the interview] has some details not in Gross's post to this list, including the kinds of questions he recalls as being on the survey and his explanation of how he happened to come forward.
- The bottom line is that I found Gross credible.
So really, I said nothing specific Monday other than I found Gross credible. I did not say, nor in the context of the list to which I posted would anyone sophisticated believe, that Gross lacked a strong attachment to John Lott's work, since Gross confessed that he did. I assumed that my readers on FireArmsRegProf either knew or assumed this from Gross's own post. I think the confusion arose mostly among those who did not see the earlier email to which I was responding.
I also promised to reveal how he came forward, which I will do now. According to Gross, he received an email from a gun rights/police list that Leroy Pyle runs or is involved with. That email, which he read part of to me, informed readers that people were attacking John Lott, questioning whether he did a study. Gross then called Joseph Olson, who put him in touch by email with John Lott, who forwarded Gross's email to me and some friends and bloggers. I called Gross fairly quickly and Gross said that he had not spoken to Lott. Contrary to some accounts, I did not discover Gross and he came to Lott (apparently by email) before he came to me.
Also, even before I posted my brief announcement that Tim Lambert posted on his website, I emailed Lambert and informed him explicitly that a "pro-gun" rights guy had come forward to say that he was surveyed in a fashion that fit Lott's account in most, but not all, respects. I further told Lambert that Gross had come forward because of an email from a gun rights/police list. So Lambert knew some of Gross's pro-gun rights orientation when he first posted his views on the respondent Gross.
During my interview with Gross, he did not hide his pro-gun activities, telling me at length about his legal representation of a gun club. He mentioned contacts with the activities of Mr. Pyle and told me that he was friendly with Joseph Olson, who introduced him to Lott at the end of Lott's January 1999 speech. Gross is a lawyer and former prosecutor.
For the terminally curious (as most blog readers are), Lambert has a little bit on discrepancies between what Lott said and what Gross said on his website. Please don't interpret my silence on that issue at this time to suggest that there are none. Further, I will explain in more detail about what in Gross's responses made me think that he was more likely than not telling the truth. I am not vouching for Gross; I just found him a credible witness. Bloggers who want to form their own opinions might call Gross and make up your own mind (as I suggested on Wednesday afternoon to Julian Sanchez). Last, I hope people will remember (as my current report covers in tedious detail and as I also noted in my earlier post on Gross):
- Secondary and legitimate concerns remain over the quality of the 1997 work to support the conclusion he reached, Lott's odd and so far unexplained attributions of the 98% figure to other people's studies rather than his own, and his shifting stories about what he told me. Some of these may never be cleared up.