tlambert | August 10, 2003 Glenn Reynolds comments on the Ayres and Donohue's letter on the coding errors.
Reynolds also states that he is reluctant to believe charges of dishonesty against Lott because some critics have made ad hominem charges against him, for example, that his research was funded by ammunition manufacturers. However, his academic critics never made such charges. I specifically noted that the funded-by-ammunition-manufacturers charge was an ad hominem as recently as a few days ago and wrote generally about other unfair attacks on Lott years ago.
tlambert | August 10, 2003Lott (along with Eli Lehrer) has an editorial in the Washington Times which claims that the 1976 gun ban caused crime to increase. D.C. residents need more protection: Crime has risen significantly since the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before Washington's ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. In fact, the murder rate after 1976 has never fallen back to what it was in 1976. Robberies and overall violent crime changed just as dramatically.…
tlambert | August 8, 2003 Scott Carlson at The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story (subscription required) about askjohnlott. He quotes Lott: "Someone called me up a couple of weeks ago, very angry, claiming that they got an e-mail from me, telling them that I was advising them to do illegal things," like buy guns illegally, he says. "I just thought the person was joking. After I was done talking to them, I found this crazy Web site."
This doesn't make sense. If the person believed that the email was from Lott, the natural thing would be to reply to it, not phone Lott. If…
tlambert | August 8, 2003 The registration details for askjohnlott.org have changed: Registrant Name:Mary Rosh Registrant Organization:Center For Truth Registrant Street1:45 Main Street, 12th Floor Registrant City:Brooklyn Registrant State/Province:New York Registrant Postal Code:11201 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.7182223892 Registrant FAX:+1.7182225621 Registrant Email:maryrosh@mail.com
Compare with those for contagiousmedia.org: Peretti, Jonah 45 Main Street 12th Floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 US
tlambert | August 7, 2003 After askjohnlott linked here some people decided that obviously I must be behind the site and emailed me to let me know what they thought of me. Nope. Not me. Using false identities is not my style.
It was also suggested to me that Lott might have set up askjohnlott.org as a ploy to gain sympathy and to distract from the serious allegations that he faces. I don't that this is at all likely. If Lott was behind it, the site would never have added the disclaimer.
So who is behind it? Well, Black People Love Us, What is Victoria's Secret and…
tlambert | August 6, 2003Jeff Johnson has an story on the defacement of askjohnlott.org (now restored, by the way), but apparently both Lott and Larry Pratt suspect that the defacement was staged: "I think we have to assume that the owner of the fraudulent site that hijacked John Lott's name is running scared," Pratt speculated. "And certainly, until we know for sure, it's a possibility that he may have hacked this to try to throw off the scent."
However, as I noted yesterday, in this freeper thread someone observed that the site was vulnerable and it was defaced some time…
tlambert | August 5, 2003askjohnlott.org now just contains the following text: AskJohnLott.org was recently hacked by someone who values the Second Amendment but not the First. Although we at AskJohnLott.org can understand why pro-gun extremists would be afraid of free speech, we believe that the entire Bill of Rights should be upheld.
Ask John Lott will be restored soon. In the meantime, the following sites provide information about the John Lott controversy:
Who Is Mary Rosh?
More Guns, More Crime
Tim Lambert's weblog
Thanks, and long live the Bill of Rights!
This thread over at freerepublic.com has the…
tlambert | August 5, 2003 Lott has a posting on his blog where he insistsfew will think that the site was set up with the intention of making others think that it was a parody.
I don't agree, but you can judge for yourself.
Jeff Johnson has another overblown story about askjohnlott.org. From the story: "That's like stealing money and then, when you get caught, saying you won't steal anymore," Lott said of the disclaimer Tuesday. "They're not giving the money back that they have already stolen."
No, it's like telling a joke and then when some people don't get it, explaining that it was…
tlambert | August 4, 2003 There is now a disclaimer at the bottom of every page at askjohnlott.org: This site is not run by John Lott, he has no affiliation with it. It is run by Mary Rosh. John Lott used Mary Rosh to support his books in internet forums, and put false claims in her mouth. Now Mary Rosh has created this site, to show John Lott that parody is a two-way street. You can find out more about her at WhoIsMaryRosh.com.
I think that puts paid to the silly claim of "identity theft".
tlambert | August 3, 2003Timothy McGillicuty comments on Lott's attack on Levitt: To my immense amusement, an NRA nut named John Lott has attacked him for it because, as near as I can tell through the foam and spittle flying out of Lott's mouth, he wrote the Op-Ed piece to hide the fact that he was anti-gun.
Roger Ailes posts on the Levitt piece and askjohnlott.org.
tlambert | August 3, 2003 Brad Delong points us to a New York Times profile on "rabidly anti-gun" Steven Levitt. The whole thing is worth reading, but this part is especially interesting to me:
The year after he was hired, his wife gave birth to their first child, Andrew. One day, just after Andrew turned a year old, he came down with a slight fever. The doctor diagnosed an ear infection. When he started vomiting the next morning, his parents took him to the hospital. A few days later he was dead of pneumococcal meningitis.
... And not surprisingly for a scholar who pursues real-life subjects, the…
tlambert | August 1, 2003The Washington Times has a story about a Lott related Internet impersonation, but it's not about Mary Rosh. The Washington Times considers the Lott parody site askjohnlott.org to be a more important story than Mary Rosh. That site contains answers like this: Q: I want to get roughly ten hand guns for my friend's 50th birthday party, but I really don't want the police to know about this. Is there any way for me to do this without getting reported?
A: Hopefully, you haven't saved this for the last minute. By law, licensed gun dealers must report to federal…
tlambert | July 28, 2003John Lott informs us about askjohnlott.org but warns us that it is not run by him and is "trying to create a negative impression".
tlambert | July 26, 2003Lott responds on his blog to Wyeth's accusation that he had no evidence for his claim about Baghdad murders. (My earlier comments are here.)
Notice that Lott responds on a minor point, once again ducking the question of the coding errors. And while he links to Wyeth and responds to some of my comments he doesn't link to me, but pretends my comments were emailed to him. I link to Lott's comments and have him in my blogroll because I want my readers to see what he says and what I say and make up their own minds about who is right. Lott doesn't link…
tlambert | July 25, 2003Vladimir Kushnir describes how Symantec's censorware blocks access to many pro-gun websites such as nra.org, under the category 'Weapons'. I checked, and he has accurately described which sites are blocked. (Though the Lott site that is blocked is actually a collection of Lott's articles---Lott's own site is not blocked.) I agree with Kushnir that most people would not expect 'Weapons' (blocked by default) would block access to sites like gunscholar.com.
Kushnir also found that many more pro-gun sites were blocked than pro-control sites. I found…
tlambert | July 24, 2003Paul Bruno writes: John Lott should be below anybody's standards, but since Lew Rockwell insists on publishing Lott's work, I cannot in good conscience keep the link to his site.
Roger Ailes is rather unfair to Lott, implying that Lott would deny guns to sixth graders. Actually, in The Bias Against Guns Lott argues that sixth graders should have access to guns for self-defence.
tlambert | July 23, 2003Chris Lawrence defends Lott against the charge Wyeth made yesterday. James Joyner also comments.
Lawrence is correct when he points out that Lott's claims about Baghdad murders are not lies unless Lott knows them to be false, and, in the absence of reliable data we don't know whether they are false or true. However, what Lott did was write with reckless disregard for the truth. Rumsfeld was actually comparing combat deaths of US soldiers in Baghdad with murders in Washington, DC, so Lott had absolutely no basis for his claim. The…
tlambert | July 22, 2003Tom Spencer finds Lott's misrepresentation of Duwe et al hilarious.
The Wyeth Wire takes Lott to task for his completely unsupported claim that Baghdad has fewer murders than Washington DC. Of course, Lott's defence will be that he was just reporting Donald Rumsfeld's claims and how was Lott to know that Rumsfeld was no criminologist?
tlambert | July 21, 2003Last week I commented on Lott's LA Times editorial where he claimed thatExamining 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 occur, and a 78% drop in the rates at which people are killed or injured from such attacks.
I pointed out that he once again failed to mention the results in Duwe, Kovandzic and Moody. Homicide Studies 2002 6:4. Here is the abstract:Right-to-carry (RTC) laws mandate that concealed weapon…