In footnote 40 of his article The Impact of Concealed-Carry Laws (in Evaluating Gun Policy), John Donohue comments on Lott's claims about multiple-victim public shootings:
In the wake of a recent school shooting in Germany that killed 14, Lott summarized his finding from the Lott and Landes study: "multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78 percent in states that passed [right-to-carry] laws." John Lott, "Gun Control Misfires in Europe," Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2002, A16. Although the results may at first seem persuasive, there is a major problem with the Lott and Landes data. The FBI Supplemental Homicide Report (SHR) reveals over 800 such multiple-victim deaths per year while Lott and Landes use a Lexis search that generates only about 20. While it may be that not all 800 should be included (e.g., Lott and Landes would eliminate some of the murders in the FBI data because they are not committed in public places), the true number of cases is vastly greater than the number that Lott and Landes employ. Indeed, Lott and Landes have now found that when they use the SHR data, their results "were rarely statistically significant." Consequently, if their story doesn't emerge when they use the best data, why should we believe their results using much less accurate data?
Whenever a major public shooting occurs, Lott writes an op-ed claiming that concealed-carry laws would largely eliminate them. He never mentions the problems with his data or the contrary research. No doubt he is working on one now in response to the Lockheed shootings. This one occurred in a concealed-carry state, but I imagine he'll be able to come up with something.
More like this
Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy" writes about some of the dubious numbers used by both sides on the debate about guns.
This one should be familiar to my readers:
Another number that has emerged from the antigun-control camp ties multiple-victim public shootings to restrictions…
The editorial in the Australian today stated:
With memories of the 35 killed at Port Arthur still raw, many Australians would be shocked to learn that the gun lobby in the US pounced on the Virginia Tech massacre to call for extending the right of citizens to carry concealed weapons.
Not those who…
Last week I commented on Lott's LA Times editorial where he claimed that
Examining all the multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 shows that on average, states that adopt right-to-carry laws experience a 60% drop in the rates at which the attacks…
Lott has an op-ed in The Plain Dealer where he continues to mislead:
My new book, "The Bias Against Guns," examines multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 and finds that when states passed right-to-carry laws, these attacks fell by 60 percent.…