Tom Spencer, commenting on Duncan's comments that I posted yesterday, writes:
Unfortunately folks, as you well know, the damage is already done. We've got right-to-carry laws in the vast majority of states (mine being one of the notable exceptions of course) and there's not much we can do about it at this point.
Meanwhile, Eric Rasmussen commenting on John Donohue's "The Final Bullet in the Body of the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis" is more sceptical---he'd like to see more evidence that Lott's work actually influenced the politicians who passed the carry laws. I agree that would be interesting. Rasmussen then goes on to argue that
I was also thinking that one of the lessons of the episode might be that it takes empirical work to get across theoretical ideas. The theory underlying Lott and Mustard's work is simple: if more non-criminals are allowed to carry guns, then criminals, fearful of getting shot, will be more reluctant to try to rob people. ... What all the scholarly arguments have been about is whether this theory shows up in the data we have available. But the big contribution of that debate may have been to bring the simple theory into the public debate.
The "guns deter crime" theory has pretty well always been part of the public debate about gun laws. Lott's work did not introduce the theory to the public debate, but was just the latest failed attempt to provide empirical support for that theory. A previous example was Kennesaw, where a law making gun ownership compulsory supposedly almost eliminated burglary. However, careful analysis of the data showed that this was not the case.