files
gregladen | April 12, 2010I would wager that you don't know where many of your most important files are. If you are into music, and use iTunes, you can't find a particular song file using your file manager. You would need to locate it using iTunes. iTunes would then give you limited access to that file. It does not let you do the same thing your file manager would let you do. Many of your most important pieces of information are in emails or attached to emails. Where exactly are those things? Can you access them with your file manager with little effort, print, copy, delete, duplicate, or otherwise work with…
tlambert | April 27, 2005Lott's responses to Michelle Malkin's op-ed are in a fixed-width font, while my comments on his response are in italics like this. Lott's responses were downloaded on 25 April 2005.
Below is Malkin's op-ed with commentary by me (my comments are indented and in italics and start at the bottom of the page with the numbered responses corresponding to the numbers in the supporting document). (Note that two other discussions on this issue have been posted since February 2003 and involve a general discussion of the two other polls that ask about brandishing that have been done…
tlambert | July 18, 2004[Note: This is a copy of a document found at this link on John Lott's website on April 25, 2005. I have added critical commentary, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ]
1) Did I Attribute the 98 Percent Brandishing Number to Others? No
Apparently, some credence is being given to the claim that I have attributed the 98 percent brandishing estimate to others instead of myself. Some are taking this as evidence that I never conducted the survey. Yet, the fact is I never attributed this number to anyone else other than myself. It is claimed that I attributed this number to Gary Kleck on…
tlambert | January 9, 2004
R2 values using county-level 1977-2000 (Corresponds to Lott's corrected Table 3a)
Violent Crime
Murder
Rape
Aggrvtd Assault
Rbbry
Prprty Crimes
Auto Theft
Brglry
Lrcny
R2 without any shall-issue variable
0.86
0.81
0.76
0.80
0.91
0.81
0.84
0.81
0.80
R2 (Single dummy variable model)
0.86
0.81
0.76
0.80
0.91
0.82
0.85
0.81
0.80
R2 (Spline model)
0.86
0.81
0.76
0.81
0.91
0.82
0.85
0.81
0.80
R2 (Hybrid model)
0.86
0.81
0.76
0.81
0.91
0.82
0.85
0.81
0.80
Values that have increased when the shall-issue variable is added are in bold.
My thanks to David Powell for computing these…
tlambert | October 24, 2003
by Michael Maltz
Anyone who has looked closely at the data used by John Lott in coming up with his “findings” in More Guns, Less Crime (MGLC) would come to the same conclusion, MGLC = GIGO. First, the data are so full of holes as to be unusable for the analyses he conducted. Second, Lott badly miscalculated the crime rates. Third, he ignored a major discontinuity in the data. [And fourth, as Ayres and Donohue have shown, even if the first three points were not valid (which they are), he did it wrong.] It’s a bit technical, so bear with me.
1. Gaps in the FBI Crime Data.
Lott used the FBI-…
tlambert | October 15, 2003[Note: This was an attachement to a Nov 17 posting to firearmsregprof on Nov 17. My comments are in italics like this. TL]
by David B. Mustard
I take issue with two points of Jim Lindgren?s representation of my statements about John Lott?s 1997 survey, as posted on instapundit.com.
Claim that I backed off my comments about what I knew about Lott's survey during a previous conversation with Frank Zimring
I did not back off my comments that I made to Frank in our first conversation (which I believe was about July 1, 2002) when he called me to ask some very specific questions about my…
tlambert | June 5, 2003In The Latest Misfires in Support of the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis Ayres and Donohue write:
In the wake of some of the criticisms that we have leveled against the Lott and Mustard thesis, John Lott appeared before a National Academy of Sciences panel examining the plausibility of the more guns, less crime thesis and presented them with a series of figures showing year-by-year estimates that appeared to show sharp and immediate declines in crime with adoption of concealed-carry laws. David Mustard even included these graphs in his initial…
tlambert | April 10, 2003Otis Dudley Duncan
This discussion is concerned with four topics: (1) Lott’s references to, remarks about, and discussions of DGU statistics originating in sample surveys or polls carried out by other investigators; (2) Lott’s claims about a survey he says he conducted in 1997; (3) Lott’s reports on a survey he conducted in 2002; (4) several matters that have proved to be distractions from the careful consideration of the foregoing. Section (5) presents my conclusions. They may be read at once by anyone who has followed closely the Internet exchanges about the Lott case.
Before proceeding, I…
tlambert | April 5, 2003[Note: This is a copy of a document found at this link on John Lott's website on April 6, 2003. I have added critical commentary, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ]
Statement on John Lott's Survey Work on Self-Defensive Uses of Guns
by David B. Mustard Monday 10 February 2003
Background
John and I started working on our concealed carry paper in the fall of 1995. I was finishing my Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Chicago, and John was a faculty member. We worked on our paper intensively from about February 1996 to September 1996. We presented it at the American Law and…
tlambert | April 5, 2003[Note: This is a copy of a document found on John Lott's website on April 6, 2003. I have added critical commentry, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ]
------ Forwarded Message
From: "Dave Kopel"
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 13:07:49 -0700
To: <cut>
Subject: Re: FW: A quick question. John Lott
I've got no specific recollection of editing the piece, but the
evidence seems to indicate that attributing the 98% figure
to Kleck was an error by the Independence Institute,
rather than an error on the author's part.
Dave Kopel
------ End of Forwarded Message
Apparently, some credence is…
tlambert | March 30, 2003John R. Lott, Jr. Resident Scholar American Enterprise Institute
[Critical Commentary by Tim Lambert
This is a copy of the original document by Lott, downloaded from Lott's web site here on March 21, 2003. My comments appear in italics like this.]
Guns make it easier for bad things to happen, but they also make it easier for people to stop crime and prevent bad things from happening. The important question that ultimately concerns everyone is the net effect, whether on net guns save lives or cost lives and whether they increase or decrease violent crime that threaten so many…
tlambert | February 25, 2003compiled by Otis Dudley Duncan and Tim Lambert revised 26 Feb 2003 by Tim Lambert
This pages documents direct and indirect references Lott has made to a survey he claims to have carried out in 1997. Further analysis is here, and the latest update is here.
The information of over 2 million defensive uses and 98 percent is based upon survey evidence that I have put together involving a large nationwide telephone survey conducted over a three month period during 1997. Letter from John Lott to Otis Dudley Duncan, dated May 13, 1999.
There are 15…
tlambert | February 9, 2003Otis Dudley Duncan and Tim Lambert
The discussions on so many blogs on the Lott case have been invaluable not only in turning up new evidence but also in illustrating the wide variety of reactions to the evidence. One thing that strikes a professional researcher is that many who have commented do not look at such cases in the way that researchers are trained to do. What this case is about is the professional work of a a social scientist, and the question is whether that work meets the ethical standards of scientific inquiry and reporting. And commentators are not at liberty to define…
tlambert | January 25, 2003From: John Lott Sent: 1/26/03 1:44 PM Subject: Response to Lindgren's "Lott's Tax Arguments" Response to Lindgren's "Lott's Tax Arguments"
My wife, who took care of our taxes, has a discussion below about how the forms were completed. The main point is that all payments to research assistants if documented by check went into the professional services category. This also includes other expenses that they might have incurred in their work such as their telephone expenses, xeroxing and the like. On the business form, we list out expenses that we directly make ourselves.
As to claims that…
tlambert | January 21, 2003Tim Lambert's questions:
Why did Lott repeatedly make false claims that the 98% figure came from other studies and from Kleck?
Even Lott cannot possibly be sure that the correct result of his survey was 98% since there is no way to check his calculations. Why did he repeat the figure over and over again?
Lott has conceded that the size of the defensive gun use sample in his survey was very small. Too small, in fact, for the result to be statistically reliable. Why did he never even mention the markedly different results obtained from the other surveys…
tlambert | January 19, 2003[This is an email sent to John Lott that Lott posted to the firearmsregprof mailing list on January 20, 2003.]
I believe that in my emails to you and in my conversation with James Lindgren, I have stimulated just about all of my memories and impressions that I'm going to have concerning the survey that I took, without having any substitutions and additions by any possible suggestion, express or implied. I do not wish to be seen as a partisan in this matter, for I am not. I also am unwilling to speculate. My recollections and impressions of the survey that I took are now closed to prevent any…
tlambert | January 19, 2003From: John Lott Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 1:58 PM To: Eugene Volokh [Critical Commentary by Tim Lambert. This is a copy of a January 20 email by Lott to the firearmsregprof list. My comments appear in italics like this.]
Response to Lindgren's January 17th posting:
Lindgren's role in this process seems to be that of a prosecutor. [This is not correct. Lindgren is careful to present any evidence that supports Lott. ] He claims that he "never heard of a professor doing anything of that size with no funding . . . ." Well, I did the 2002 survey paying students $10 per hour out of…
tlambert | October 17, 2002compiled by Otis Dudley Duncan and Tim Lambert revised 23 Oct 2005 by Tim Lambert
Note: With the exception of academic publications, some tapes and some found by LexisNexis search, these were found on the Internet. The web is, of course, not perfectly reliable, and items appearing there can later disappear. This approximately chronological listing is probably incomplete, and we welcome additions and corrections.
This page documents how often Lott has made the false claim that 98% of with-gun defences involve merely brandishing the gun. A summary and the latest update on…