In today's letters page in the Washington Post, Saul Cornell catches Lott misquoting Mustard. In a response to this review of Evaluating Gun Policy, Lott claims that Mustard wrote that the data showed "sharp decreases in murder, rape and robbery." Cornell replies:
Scholars have a duty to check their sources before they go into print. The quotation that Lott attributes to Mustard does not appear anywhere in the book I reviewed, Evaluating Gun Policy. What Mustard actually argues there is that the more restrictive nature of concealed-carry laws passed in the 1990s might account for economist John J. Donohue's discovery that states passing such laws witnessed an increase in crime. This argument implicitly concedes Donohue's point, but seeks to explain away its significance by arguing that the second wave of concealed carry laws passed in the 1990s imposed too great a cost on those seeking permits.
Readers can check this for themselves by downloading the chapter in which Mustard's contribution appears and searching for "sharp decreases".
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[Note: This is a copy of a document found at this link on John Lott's website on May 13, 2003. I have added critical commentry, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ]
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