In response to my comments about Potemra's review of The Bias Against Guns, Paul Blackman points out that Lott actually mentions the Second Amendment twice in his book. I've corrected my earlier posting to say "barely even mentions" instead of "never mentions".
The first mention is when Lott quotes Benjamin Civiletti:
"The nation can no longer afford to let the gun lobby's distortion of the Constitution cripple every reasonable attempt to implement an effective national policy towards guns and crime."
Lott does not dispute Civiletti's interpretation of the Constitution---he just uses the quote to show that Civiletti supports gun control
The second mention is a paraphrase of Italian defence minister Antonio Martino, who:
"suggested that Italy model its laws after the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, which protects the right of citizens to bear arms."
Lott only mentions the Second Amendment in passing and only when he is quoting or paraphrasing someone else.
More like this
In the July 14 issue of National Review Michael Potemra has a review of The Bias Against Guns. He writes:
Each of us has a favorite part of the Bill of Rights; for me---as for many others---it's the First Amendment. But a good rule of thumb is to consider that particular freedom most…
This is an annotated list of John Lott's on line reviews at Amazon
and at Barnes and Noble.
Most of his reviews were posted anonymously or under a false name, and he used this anonymity to post many five-star reviews of his own books and to pan rival books.
When you post a review at…
Lott has posted a transcript of the AEI event to publicize The Bias Against Guns. I'll try to correct some of the false statements in the transcript:
In 2001, according to government survey evidence, there were about 450,000 crimes that were committed with guns. Of those, there were…
Last December I examined a posting by John Ray who dismissed ozone depletion as a "Greenie scare" using facts he seemed to have just made up by himself. Now he's back, attacking gun control. This time he's not using facts that he made up---he's using facts that Lott made up. He quotes…