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Articles
by or about John R. Lott, Jr., PhD

HCI Links John Ashcroft To A Mass Murderer Investors Business Daily 01/17/2001

Gun Licensing Leads to Increased Crime, Lost Lives  Los Angeles Times, 8/24/2000

One Case for Guns Christian Science Monitor 8/21/2000

When It Comes to Firearms, Do as I Say, Not as I Do Los Angeles Times, 6/1/2000

Gun Locks:  Bound to Misfire http://heartland.org Mar/Apr 2000

The Cold, Hard Facts About Guns Chicago Tribune, 5/8/1998

How to Stop Mass Public Shootings
by John Lott
(originally published in L.A. Times, May 25, 1998, p. B5)

It is too bad Barbra Streisand won't debate Charlton Heston over the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. Yet, as entertaining as that debate would be, the more important question is: Would gun control have prevented the horrific shootings discussed in her movie based on Colin Ferguson's rampage, which took six lives on the Long Island Railroad in 1993?

In Streisand's movie, the solution is clear: more regulations of guns. However, what might appear to be the most obvious policy may actually cost lives. When gun-control laws are passed, it is law-abiding citizens, not would-be criminals, who adhere to them. Police officers or armed guards cannot be stationed everywhere, so gun-control laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves.

Other countries have followed a different solution. Twenty or so years ago in Israel, there were many instances of  terrorists pulling out machine guns and firing away at civilians in public. However, with expanded concealed-handgun  use by Israeli citizens, terrorists soon found ordinary people pulling pistols on them. Suffice it to say, terrorists in Israel no longer engage in such public shootings.

The one recent shooting of schoolchildren in the Middle East further illustrates these points. On March 13, 1997, seven Israeli girls were shot to death by a Jordanian soldier while they visited Jordan's so-called Island of Peace. The Times reported that the Israelis had "complied with Jordanian requests to leave their weapons behind when they entered the border enclave. Otherwise, they might have been able to stop the shooting, several parents said."

Hardly mentioned in the massive news coverage of the school-related shootings during the past year is how they ended. Two of the four shootings were stopped by a citizen displaying a gun. In the October 1997 shooting spree at a high school in Pearl, Miss., which left two students dead, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car and physically immobilized the shooter while waiting for the police.

More recently, the school-related shooting in Edinboro, Pa., which left one teacher dead, was stopped only after a bystander pointed a shotgun at the shooter when he started to reload his gun. The police did not arrive for another 10 minutes.

Who knows how many lives were saved by these prompt responses? Anecdotal stories are not sufficient to resolve this
debate. Together with my colleague William Landes, I have compiled data on all the multiple-victim public shootings occurring in the U.S. from 1977 to 1995. Included were incidents where at least two people were killed or injured in a public place; to focus on the type of shooting seen in the Ferguson rampage, we excluded gang wars or shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery. The U.S. averaged 21 such shootings annually, with an average of 1.8 people killed and 2.7 wounded in each one.

We examined a range of different gun laws, such as waiting periods as well as methods of deterrence, such as the death penalty. However, only one policy was found to reduce deaths and injuries from these shootings: allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns.

The effect of "shall-issue" concealed handgun laws, which give adults the right to carry concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness, was dramatic. Thirty-one states now have such laws. When states passed them during the 19 years we studied, the number of multiple-victim public shootings declined by 84%. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90%, injuries by 82%. Higher arrest rates and increased use of the death penalty slightly reduced the incidence of these events, but we could not conclusively determine such an effect.

Unfortunately, much of the public policy debate is driven by lopsided coverage of gun use. Horrific events like the Colin Ferguson shooting receive massive news coverage, as they should, but the 2.5 million times each year that people use guns defensively -- including cases in which public shootings are stopped before they happen -- are ignored. Dramatic stories of mothers using guns to prevent their children from being kidnapped by carjackers seldom even make the local news.

Concealed handgun laws also deter other crimes from occurring. I recently analyzed the FBI's crime data for all 3,054 counties in the United States from 1977 to 1994. The more people who obtained permits, the more violent crime declined. After concealed handgun laws have been in effect for 5 years, murders declined by at least 15%, rapes by 9% and robberies by 11%. Permit holders were found to be extremely law-abiding, and data on accidental deaths and suicides indicate that there were no increases.

The possibility of a law-abiding citizen carrying a concealed handgun is apparently enough to convince many would-be killers that they will not be successful. Without permitting law-abiding citizens the right to carry guns, we risk leaving victims as sitting ducks.

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The Cold, Hard Facts About Guns
by John Lott
(originally published in Chicago Tribune, May 8, 1998, at 27)

America may indeed be obsessed with guns, but much of what passes as fact simply isn't true. And these misimpressions have real costs for people's safety. Many myths needlessly frighten people and prevent them from defending themselves most effectively.

Myth No. 1: When one is attacked, passive behavior is the safest approach.

The Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey reports that the probability of serious injury from an attack is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than for women resisting with a gun. Men also benefit from using a gun, but the benefits are smaller: offering no resistance is 1.4 times more likely to result in serious injury than resisting with a gun.

Myth No. 2: Friends or relatives are the mostlikely killers. The myth is usually based on two claims: 1) 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances and 2) anyone could be a murderer.

With the broad definition of "acquaintances" used in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, most victims are indeed classified as knowing their killer. However, what is not made clear is that acquaintance murder primarily includes drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by first-time customers, gang members killing other gang members, prostitutes killed by their clients, and so on. Only one city, Chicago, reports a precise breakdown on the nature of acquaintance killings: between 1990 and 1995 just 17 percent of murder victims were either family members, friends, neighbors and/or roommates.   Murderers also are not your average citizen. For example, about 90 percent of adult murderers have already had a criminal record as an adult. Murderers are overwhelmingly young males with low IQs and who have difficult times getting along with others. Furthermore, unfortunately, murder is disproportionately committed against blacks and by blacks.

Myth No. 3: The United States has such a high murder rate because Americans own so many guns.

There is no international evidence backing this up. The Swiss, New Zealanders and Finns all own guns as frequently as Americans, yet in 1995 Switzerland had a murder rate 40 percent lower than Germany's, and New Zealand had one lower than Australia's. Finland and Sweden have very different gun ownership rates, but very similar murder rates. Israel, with a higher gun ownership rate than the U.S., has a murder rate 40 percent below Canada's. When one studies all countries rather than just a select few as is usually done, there is absolutely no relationship between gun ownership and murder.

Myth No. 4: If law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry concealed handguns, people will end up shooting each other after traffic accidents as well as accidentally shooting police officers.

Millions of people currently hold concealed handgun permits, and some states have issued them for as long as 60 years. Yet, only one permit holder has ever been arrested for using a concealed handgun after a traffic accident and that case was ruled as self-defense. The type of person willing to go through the permitting process is extremely law-abiding. In Florida, almost 444,000 licenses were granted from 1987 to 1997, but only 84 people have lost their licenses for felonies involving firearms. Most violations that lead to permits being revoked involve accidentally carrying a gun into restricted areas, like airports or schools. In Virginia, not a single permit holder has committed a violent crime. Similarly encouraging results have been reported for Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee (the only other states where information is available).

Myth No. 5: The family gun is more likely to kill you or someone you know than to kill in self-defense.

The studies yielding such numbers never actually inquired as to whose gun was used in the killing. Instead, if a household owned a gun and if a person in that household or someone they knew was shot to death while in the home, the gun in the household was blamed. In fact, virtually all the killings in these studies were committed by guns brought in by an intruder. No more than four percent of the gun deaths can be attributed to the homeowner's gun. The very fact that most people were killed by intruders also surely raises questions about why they owned guns in the first place and whether they had sufficient protection.

How many attacks have been deterred from ever occurring by the potential victims owning a gun? My own research finds that more concealed handguns, and increased gun ownership generally, unambiguously deter murders, robbery, and aggravated assaults. This is also in line with the well-known fact that criminals prefer attacking victims that they consider weak.

These are only some of the myths about guns and crime that drive the public policy debate. We must not lose sight of the ultimate question: Will allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns save lives? The evidence strongly indicates that it does.

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Thursday, June 1, 2000  
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20000601/t000052004.html

When It Comes to Firearms, Do as I Say, Not as I Do
By JOHN R. LOTT JR.

Guns: Rosie O'Donnell, who opposes handgun permits for others, doesn't see problem with her bodyguards having them.  

Rosie, say it's not so! The news last week was surprising: Rosie O'Donnell's bodyguards had applied for permits for concealed handguns. Few have declared their opposition to guns as strongly as O'Donnell. For someone who ambushed Tom Selleck on her television show last year on gun control, called for the abolition of the 2nd Amendment and emceed the so-called Million Mom March in Washington, the advice that O'Donnell has freely given others no longer seems to match what she thinks is best for her own family. 

Earlier in May on ABC-TV's "This Week," Rosie was asked if she opposed concealed handgun laws. She declared: "Of course, I'm against them." She has claimed that "I also think you should not buy a gun anywhere."  O'Donnell previously has been accused of trying to generate attention for her flagging television show by attacking Selleck, despite her agreement with him not to discuss guns. Her credibility was tarnished by appearing in ads for Kmart, a major seller of guns. 

Yet the current hypocrisy is more fundamental. A spokeswoman for O'Donnell justifies guns for the talk show host's bodyguards because of threatened violence. Yet how does her concern differ from what motivates anyone who gets a gun for self-defense? Why does O'Donnell give others advice that she doesn't find applicable to herself? 

O'Donnell's response that she still does not "personally own a gun" misses the whole point. Of course, she does not need her own gun when her bodyguards have their guns with them. 

Unfortunately, O'Donnell joins a long list of people who demand that others disarm even while they keep their own armed bodyguards. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, for example, surrounds himself with armed guards even when he visits relatively low-crime areas, but he opposes issuing handgun licenses for people to keep a gun at home in even the most dangerous parts of the city. (Chicago has the highest murder rate of any large city in the U.S.) 

For their own safety, people should not follow what O'Donnell preaches, but what she does: Get armed protection. As she apparently believes for her own safety, and as the statistics bear out, passive behavior is simply not the wisest course of action. The chance of serious injury from an attack is 2 1/2 times greater for women offering no resistance than for those resisting with a gun. Having a gun is by far the safest course of action, especially for people who are relatively weak physically--women and the elderly. 

Concealed handgun permit holders not only protect themselves but often others, though this receives very little attention. Take the following two incidents occurring the same week as O'Donnell's story hit the media:  

In Florida, a robber at a Wal-Mart store slashed two employees with a knife, but before he could cause further injuries 53-year-old Sandra Suter pulled out a pistol and said, "I have a concealed weapons permit. Either drop the knife, or I'll shoot you." After repeating her threat, the robber dropped his knife. 

In Indiana, 70-year-old George Smith stopped two armed robbers at a store because he had a gun. As one of the store clerks saw it, "I think George was the real hero. He saved my life." He likely saved other lives as well, but probably no one outside of Indianapolis has heard of this story. 

Unfortunately, no one like Suter or Smith was present at Wendy's last week in Brooklyn when five workers were killed. If they had been, and been able to prevent the attack, would that have gotten the same attention? Despite the focus in the media, people use guns defensively about five times more frequently than guns are used to commit crime. 

Greenwich, Conn., where O'Donnell lives, is one of the wealthiest and safest cities in the United States. Most people there can sleep well at night without a gun for protection. This is not true in many other places, particularly in poorer urban areas. As long as inexpensive guns have not been outlawed, many poor, vulnerable citizens will continue to rely on guns for self-protection. 

McDonnell may be able to afford bodyguards and pride herself that she does not "personally own a gun." Yet many other people have just as great a need for protection. Guns are the poor man's bodyguard.  

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John R. Lott Jr. Is a Senior Research Scholar at Yale University Law School. the Second Edition of His Book "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws" (University of Chicago) Is Being Published This Month [June 2000]

August 21, 2000
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/08/21/fp9s2-csm.shtml

One case for guns
John R. Lott Jr.

There are a lot of bad things that can happen with guns, and guns can make it easier for such things to happen.  But guns can also prevent dangerous situations and make it easier for people to defend themselves. That's the story that's not being told.

No matter what one's views are on the issue of gun control, one issue in the debate concerns us all: Will allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns or carry concealed handguns, on net, save lives? The answer is yes, it will. In my research I've looked at all 3,054 US counties over 20 years, as well as the largest national gun-ownership surveys, and state documents on illegal gun use. Gun-control laws either have no impact or increase violent crime. The states now experiencing the largest reduction in crime are the ones with the fastest-growing rates of gun ownership.

It is interesting to look at the differences between men's and women's opinions on this issue when they are surveyed. Anywhere from 30 to 40 percent more women support gun control than do men. Even when surveys are conducted to determine who actually owns guns in America, there are striking differences between men's and women's responses, including married couples. Married men claim to own guns at about a 30 to 35 percent higher rate than married women report having guns in the home. Interpretations? Perhaps the husband hasn't revealed he owns a gun; or guys brag about owning guns when they don't; or women don't want to admit their husbands have guns in the home. My guess is the last explains most of the discrepancy. 

A lot of people's perceptions about guns come from news media. Constantly hearing about the bad uses of guns must have a big impact on people's perceptions of the risks of guns. Yet, we rarely hear about tragic events avoided through gun use. When was the last time you heard news about someone who'd used a gun to save a life? In 1997, for example, while people used guns to commit crimes about 430,000 times (more than 9,000 of those being murders), studies by respected institutions estimate that guns were used defensively about 2 million times. Simply brandishing a gun was sufficient 98 percent of the time to cause a criminal to break off an attack.

Yet many dramatic cases of guns saving lives go unreported. Consider the school shooting in Pearl, Miss. A Lexis-Nexis search for the month after the October 1997 attack shows about 700 news stories on the shooting. Only 19 of them mention the school's assistant principal, and just 13 mention he had something to do with stopping the attack. No national evening news broadcast mentioned his heroic efforts.

What actually happened? He was able to stop the shooting by brandishing a gun. He obeyed the federal law, which prohibits guns within school boundaries. He'd locked the gun in his car and parked it more than a quarter-mile away. When the attack occurred, he ran to his car, got the gun, came back, pointed the gun at the attacker, and ordered him to the ground. He held him there for more than five minutes before police arrived.

Everyone remembers the day-trader shooting in Atlanta last year, but few know that in the following 10 days there were three cases where citizens used guns to stop similar attacks. Possibly because no one was killed or injured in those cases, they weren't considered newsworthy.

A lot of the discussion we have these days about guns would be quite different if even a few of these cases, sometimes very dramatic ones, got some news attention.

The ability to defend oneself with a gun is particularly important for people who aren't the physically strongest members of society. Of all the people who would benefit the most from being able to protect themselves, whether it's the poor who live in high-crime areas, or women, or the elderly - it's particularly out of line to think they're better off if we instantly eliminate gun ownership. 

-30-

John R. Lott Jr., a senior research scholar at Yale Law School, is the author of 'More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws' (University Press of Chicago). This article is an excerpt of an address delivered last April at the International Women's Forum, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Wednesday, August 23, 2000
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20000823/t000079167.html

Gun Licensing Leads to Increased Crime, Lost Lives
By JOHN R. LOTT JR.

     Who could possibly oppose licensing handgun owners? Requiring training for potential gun owners both in a classroom and at a firing range before they are allowed to buy a gun seems obvious. Licensing, especially when eventually coupled with registration, will supposedly also help identify criminals and prevent them from getting guns.

     Yet, as usual with guns, the debate over licensing mentions just the possible benefits while ignoring the real costs to people's safety. If the California Senate passes licensing this week, it will not only cost Californians hundreds of millions of dollars annually, but, more important, it will increase violent crime.

     In theory, if a gun is left at the scene of the crime, licensing and registration will allow a gun to be traced back to its owner. But, amazingly, despite police spending tens of thousands of man hours administering these laws in Hawaii (the one state with both rules), as well as in big urban areas with similar laws, such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., there is not even a single case where the laws have been instrumental in identifying someone who has committed a crime.

     The reason is simple. First, criminals very rarely leave their guns at the scene of the crime. Would-be criminals also virtually never get licenses or register their weapons.

     So what of the oft-stated claim that licensing will somehow allow even more comprehensive background checks and thus keep criminals from getting guns in the first place?

     Unfortunately for gun control advocates, there is not a single academic study concluding that background checks reduce violent crime.

     The Journal of the American Medical Assn. this month published an article showing that the Brady law produced no reduction in homicides or suicides. Other, more comprehensive research actually found that the waiting period in the Brady law slightly increased rape rates.

     The Clinton administration keeps issuing press releases boasting that violent crime rates have fallen since 1994, when the Brady law was adopted. Yet violent crime started falling in 1991. The Brady law did not apply to 18 states, but after 1994 their violent crime fell as quickly as other states.

     While still asserting that the law "must have some effect," U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno was reduced this month to saying, "It might just take longer to measure [it]."

     The reason why the Brady law does not affect criminals is simple. It is the law-abiding citizens, not the criminals, who obey the laws. For example, the waiting-period provision in the law prevented law-abiding women who were stalked or threatened from quickly obtaining a gun for self-defense.

     There are still other problems with the law that the state Legislature is considering. When added to the current state waiting period, the processing time for a license will delay access to a gun by a month. While even short waiting periods increase rape rates, waiting periods longer than 10 days make it difficult for law-abiding citizens to obtain guns to protect themselves and increase all categories of violent crime.

     The hundreds of dollars it will take to pay for the license and the up-to-eight-hour training course, as well as the many arcane reasons for losing a license, will reduce gun ownership by law-abiding people.

     Since no other state has such restrictive rules for simply owning a gun, it is difficult to know how much gun ownership will decline, but similar rules for obtaining concealed handgun permits reduce the number of permits issued by 60%. The reduction in permits increased violent crime.

     It is already illegal for criminals to go around carrying guns. Making it difficult for law-abiding citizens to even own guns in their own homes is not going to make them safer from the criminals.

     Part of the proposed "training" appears better classified as indoctrination, making gun owners memorize grossly exaggerated fears of the risks of owning a gun.

     It will also be the the poor who bear the brunt of these costs and who will be priced out of gun ownership. They are also most vulnerable to crime and benefit the most from being able to protect themselves.

     With all the new gun laws already scheduled to go into effect after the November elections, why don't legislators simply require that California homeowners to put out a sign stating: "This home is a gun-free zone"? Legislators could lead by example and start with their own homes.
- 30 -
John R. Lott Jr. Is a Senior Research Scholar at the Yale University Law School. The Second Edition of His Book "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press) Was Released in July

Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times

The Bush record on guns
John Lott

     Guns continue to be a central issue in the presidential campaign. For a year now, Vice President Al Gore has painted Texas Gov. George W. Bush as an extremist, a pawn of the National Rifle Association who recklessly endangered people by signing a concealed handgun law. Mr. Gore has gone as far as linking Mr. Bush's signing of the Texas concealed handgun law to last year's fatal shooting at a Fort Worth church. Handgun Control has just launched an advertising campaign featuring actor Martin Sheen making similar claims.
     Mr. Gore's and Handgun Control's typecasting is made easier by the stereotypical view held of Texas. But what few realize is that with about 42,000 words' worth of state gun laws, Texas law is actually quite average. Those accusing Mr. Bush of flip-flops to position himself as a moderate are, to put it charitably, unfamiliar with his record.
     • Concealed handgun laws:
     Texas' concealed handgun laws have a lot of company. Thirty other states have similar so-called "shall issue" laws, which set up objective rules allowing people permits once they pass certain criteria: a criminal background check, a minimum age, payment of required fees, and any necessary training. Another 12 states have more restrictive "discretionary" rules, where local officials can use their discretion to determine whether an applicant has demonstrated sufficient need for protection. Only seven states totally forbid the carrying of concealed handguns.
     Yet, even this does not give the complete picture because Texas has one of the most restrictive shall-issue laws, with the third longest training requirement at 10 hours. (Half the other states require no training whatsoever and another quarter require three to five hours.) Texas also has the highest fees at $140, compared to the average of $60. Background checks in Texas are also relatively stringent.
     Mr. Bush makes no apologies for signing the law that went into effect in January 1996, and says, "I believe the law we passed in Texas has made Texas a safer place." Indeed murder rates in Texas fell by 25 percent between 1995 and 1997, much faster than the 16 percent decline in states without shall issue laws. The rape rate in Texas fell twice as fast.
     • Guns in churches.
     The most emotional attack against Mr. Bush is that he signed a 1997 law allowing people to carry concealed handguns in churches. But this charge is completely misleading. Churches are still listed as an area where permit holders are forbidden to carry their weapons. What the 1997 law did was create a uniform warning sign requirement for permit holders across all public buildings, including churches. The change was strongly supported by ministers in the state.
     After the concealed handgun law took effect in 1996, owners of public buildings had the right to post a sign stating that concealed handguns were not allowed on their property. Churches were initially exempt from this warning requirement because concealed handguns were never permitted in churches. But since it is not always obvious which buildings are church property, in order to avoid confusion, the 1997 law explicitly made the rule the same across all public buildings. The law was also motivated by issues of fairness and ease of prosecution, since many thought that permit holders ought to be warned before entering a building where guns were prohibited.
     • Trigger locks.
     Some media pundits expressed surprise when Mr. Bush said that, if passed, he would sign a law mandating that trigger locks be sold with guns. Leaving aside whether such legislation is wise, this is in line with what he did as governor. He signed legislation in 1995 that made it a crime to store firearms in a way that a reasonable person would know that someone under 18 could gain access to a weapon. Indeed, while 17 states have similar laws, Texas is one of only four states that sets the age limit for access as high as 18. The other states set it between 12 and 16.
     • Suits against gun makers.
     Mr. Bush made liability reform a cornerstone of his governorship, and has signed into law major tort reform early during his first term as governor. He has long been unwilling to "subcontract out public policy to the trial lawyers," and the legal assault on the gun is no different. His decision to support this legislation, which restricts city suits against gun makers was courageous, because after the Columbine attack politicians in many other states, fearing public reaction, delayed or quietly buried reform legislation. But Mr. Bush held firm, and signed legislation only weeks after Columbine.
     While Mr. Bush has supported legislation backed by the NRA such as concealed handguns and restraining suits against gun makers, he has opposed them on trigger locks and background checks at gun shows. His consistency stands in sharp contrast to the changes in Mr. Gore's positions on guns and abortion when he first tried to make the move from Tennessee to the Democratic presidential primaries in 1988. Mr. Bush is not the trigger-happy cowboy Mr. Gore and Handgun Control are portraying him to be.

Some Time To Kill
In Waiting Periods, Gun Buyers Are At Mercy Of Criminals
by John R. Lott Jr., from the Investor's Business Daily

John R. Lott Jr. is a senior research scholar at the Yale University Law School
and the author of "More Guns, Less Crime"(University of Chicago Press, 2000).