Julian Sanchez has another thoughtful post on the question of whether it was Lott or Kopel who attributed the 98% to Kleck. I'm still trying to collect my thoughts on this one, but I should correct one statement he makes. Even if the attribution is established to be Kopel's it does not follow that Lott did not get the 98% by misreading Kleck. Lott got the defensive gun use numbers 2.5 million, 760,000, and 3.6 million,from Kleck but never attributed them to him in his public statements.
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So, was the attribution of the 98% to Kleck's study in the Lott quote below made by Lott, or did Dave Kopel add it?
"Guns clearly deter criminals, with Americans using guns defensively over 2 million times each year---five times more frequently than the 430,000 times guns were used to…
After I concluded yesterday that Kopel had probably added the attribution to Kleck in one Lott op-ed, Lott has weighed in, contradicting Kopel's story. In this posting Lott writes:
"My vague recollection of what happened is that David Kopel (Research Director at the Independence…
[Note: This is a copy of a document found on John Lott's website on April 6, 2003. I have added critical commentry, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ]
------ Forwarded Message
From: "Dave Kopel"
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 13:07:49 -0700
To: <cut>
Subject: Re: FW: A quick question. John…
Julian Sanchez finds evidence that Lott lost data because of a computer crash. I'm afraid that he hasn't discovered anything new---his time would have been better spent reading Lindgren's report:
"I talked with one of Lott's co-authors on another paper, Bill Landes, and received emails…