The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a story about David Gross, who, after all this time, is the only witness to Lott's 1997 survey who has ever been found:
A major player and legal consultant on Minnesota's new gun-permit law is a former board member of the National Rifle Association who was fired from the Minneapolis city attorney's office for opposing gun buy-back programs and carrying a gun to work.He also acknowledges shooting a deer in his back yard in St. Louis Park with a .357-caliber Magnum handgun for eating his raspberries, pointing a rifle at a neighbor many years ago who he claimed was harassing his wife, and attending his synagogue armed with a handgun in case of trouble.
David Gross, the self-described "right-hand man" to Hamline law Prof. Joe Olson, worked with Sen. Pat Pariseau, R-Farmington, and Rep. Lynda Boudreau, R-Faribault, to create the bill, which makes it easier for Minnesotans to obtain a permit to carry a gun in public places.
Gross said he put in "countless" hours over the past four years advising on the bill, including writing the section that says Minnesota "recognizes and declares that the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the fundamental, individual right to bear and keep arms."
and
For Gross, now in private law practice in a St. Louis Park, passage of the law has been somewhat of a crusade. He insists it has little to do with guns and everything to do with the Constitution. "Does my right to defend myself end at my front door? I don't think so."The fight has cost Gross financially and professionally. He estimates that his battle has cost him $1 million in lost salary and benefits. He also lost the stature he had in the city attorney's office.
All this gave Gross a very powerful motive for bailing Lott out. Back in January, with his efforts to get a carry law in Minnesota close to fruition, it would have been been disastrous for Gross if Lott, whose work and testimony had been greatly helpful to the pro-carry-law lobby, were to have been disgraced over the survey.
It seems way too much of a coincidence, not just that someone with this much of a motive should happen to have been surveyed, but that the only person to have come forward should be such a person.
And, as if all this wasn't enough, way back in January I wrote:
Julian Sanchez posts some comments from someone [David Gross] who believes he was surveyed by Lott. Lott is in error when he states that there were no other gun use surveys at that time, but once these have been eliminated, we can regard it as established that Lott conducted a survey in 1997.
Well, those other surveys haven't all been eliminated. It remains possible that Gross was surveyed in Hemenway's 1996 defensive gun use survey. Update: Hemenway informs me that
He doesn't seem to have been. No one from his state, of his gender and general age responded Yes to the self-defense gun use question, and no one in the whole survey told a story highly similar to his story...
I think that by now we can be more than 98% certain that Lott never conducted a survey in 1997.