Gun Control Myths Quotes

“Take the Solomon Islands, for example. Despite the islands' 1999 ban on handguns and virtually all rifles, 21 people died in three mass public shootings from 2000 to 2002. There may have been other mass public shootings, but the islands have only issued a police report that briefly provides details on the years 1998 to 2003. I have asked the Royal Soloman Islands Police Force for information on other years, but has proven fruitless. After talking to the police, it was pretty clear that since their nation gets most of its revenue from tourism, they saw little benefit to providing this information.

Even if these were the Solomon Island' only mass public shootings from 1998 to 2012, the annual death rate from these events would come to 2.98 per million people (given an average population of 470,000 over those 15 years). This is 46 times higher than the US rate”
― John R. Lott Jr., Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“The New York Times’ pro-gun control results seem to stem from a heavy reliance on public health researchers. Furthermore, the Times only asks questions calling for more government regulations of gun ownership. But the Times’ panel was even more supportive of gun control than was the average public health researcher in our survey, so it is hard to believe that there wasn’t bias at work in the selection of the panel’s membership.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“By contrast, public health researchers place these same policies near the bottom of their list. Their top policy choice — barring gun sales to people deemed dangerous by a mental health provider with just over a 6 out of 10 rating — is the fifth most valued policy by criminologists (4.88), but their other top policies aren’t viewed positively by criminologists.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Both have the same top four preferred policies for stopping mass public shootings. American criminologists rate the following policies most highly: allow K-12 teachers to carry concealed handguns (with a survey score of 6), allow military personnel to carry on military bases (5.6), encourage the elimination of gun-free zones (5.3), and relax OSHA regulations that pressure companies to create gun-free zones (5). The top four policies for economists are the same, but in different order: encourage the elimination of gun-free zones (7.9), relax OSHA regulations that pressure companies to create gun-free zones (7.8), allow K-12 teachers to carry concealed handguns (7.7), and allow military personnel to carry on military bases (7.7).”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“There are some differences in the political views of researchers in these different fields of study, but they lean heavily Democrat. Democratic economists outnumber their Republican counterparts by almost five to one, while in sociology (of which criminology is a subfield) there are about 37 Democratic faculty members for every Republican.5 No similar numbers are available for the field of public health, but political campaign donations indicate that few medical school faculty members make donations to Republicans.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“The paper fails to report that in only 8 of these 444 homicide cases was the murder weapon the gun that had been kept in the home. Moreover, the number of criminals stopped with a gun is much greater than the number killed in defensive gun uses. In fact, the attacker is killed in fewer than 1 out of every 1,000 defensive gun uses.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“At a town hall at George Mason University in January 2016, President Obama said, “If you look at the statistics, there’s no doubt that there are times where somebody who has a weapon has been able to protect themselves and scare off an intruder or an assailant, but what is more often the case is that they may not have been able to protect themselves, but they end up being the victim of the weapon that they purchased themselves.”20 Obama seems to be echoing a claim that has been championed by Arthur Kellermann and his many coauthors.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“The first of these CDC-funded studies came out in November 2015.9 Using data for Wilmington, Delaware, the study discovered that the majority of young men who were involved in firearm crime were also involved in crime as juveniles. Many got expelled from school, were abused as children, dropped out of high school prior to graduation, or were unemployed. Then, the study simply asserts that government programs would help solve the problem. It suggests providing “life skills training,” “individual placement and support” for jobs, “multi-dimensional treatment foster care,” and something listed as “coping power.” It isn’t surprising that research funded by a Democratic administration would reach these policy conclusions.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Americans have a right to be concerned with the increased frequency and severity of mass public shootings in their own country. But the fact of the matter is that the rest of the world has it worse, and is definitely not an example for the U.S. to follow. The U.S. has high gun ownership rates, and it hasn’t resulted in any elevated level of mass public shootings.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“The Small Arms Survey is the most commonly-cited source for data on gun ownership rates. It has given support to the claim that the United States has by far the highest level of gun ownership, with 88.8 guns per 100 people.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“As we touched on earlier, this causes a dramatic underestimate of the true rate of ownership in Israel and Switzerland. Both the Israeli and Swiss governments issue guns to civilians, while the government still technically owns the guns. In Israel, the government owns most guns, and people apply to have them issued. In Switzerland, all able-bodied Swiss males between the ages of 18 and 34 keep military weapons in their homes.46 After age 34, they can apply for permission to keep their military weapons, and the majority opts to do so.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Of those shootings, 53 occurred in the United States and 2,354 happened in the rest of the world. While the US had about 4.6 percent of the world’s population during this period, it had just 2.20 percent of the mass public shootings.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“When I requested information on how he had obtained his list of foreign cases, Lankford emailed me back with the mere assurance that “it was a lot of work.”22 Lankford wouldn’t even give journalists any specific details on how he collected his sample.23 His paper contains no information on his use of different databases, foreign languages, or search terms. It simply claims, “Complete data were available for 171 countries, and they averaged 1.7 public mass shooters per country from 1966 to 2012.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“CNN reported: “An agent working for the FBI’s background check system, who was performing the review on Roof, failed to contact the Columbia, South Carolina, police department which arrested Roof — in part because of a clerical error in records, listing the wrong agency.”11 Most people know that any felony conviction, even a non-violent one, precludes you from ever legally owning a gun. Even a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction will ban you from having a gun. Just being charged with a state offense that could result in a prison term of two years is sufficient for you to lose your right to buy a gun.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“My numbers show that at least 16.5 percent of attacks between 2014 and 2017 were stopped by concealed handgun permit holders. Back in 2015, when I pointed out errors in the first FBI report, the authors simply responded, “We acknowledge in the FBI report that our data are imperfect.” But no correction was ever made.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“The entire gun control debate would likely be dramatically different if the national media would cover some of the heroic actions of permit holders.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“National media outlets such as ABC,8 CNN,9 and NBC noted that the alleged gunman told another white man: “Whites don’t kill whites.” It sounded as if the gunman was merely reassuring a bystander. But that bystander was a permit holder who was pointing a gun at the killer. What the killer actually said was: “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.”10 The killer was pleading with a permit holder not to shoot him.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Right-wingers don’t normally declare that “conservatism is dead” and that “global capitalist markets are the enemy of racial autonomists.” Tarrant calls himself an “Eco-fascist.” Have you ever met a right-winger who pontificates about the need for “furthering the unionization of workers” or minimum-wage increases? Or one who denounces “the ever-increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit”? Tarrant writes: “The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“In March 2019, immediately after the New Zealand attack, I tweeted that the shooter was “a socialist, environmentalist, who hates capitalists & free trade.”63 I also wrote that the killer believed his attack would “lead to more gun control” in New Zealand and the United States. Twitter locked my account for two months so that I couldn’t post anything or even read messages from other users.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“The problem is that even top psychiatrists failed to identify them as real threats. And it’s not as though psychiatrists lack incentives to get the diagnosis right. Beyond their reputation, professional pride, and desire to help, psychiatrists also have a legal obligation to inform authorities of threats. Families of the Aurora movie theater victims sued Holmes’ psychiatrist for not recommending that his patient be confined.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Forty-three percent of mass public shooters were seeing mental health care professionals prior to their shootings (Figure 15). The New York Times came up with a slightly higher number when it analyzed mass public shootings from 1949 to 1999.46 The results confirm something that we have known for a long time — it is very difficult for psychiatric professionals to know who will actually commit mass murder.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Jake Berry, a reporter with the Nashua Telegraph (New Hampshire), concluded after a 2013 interview with gun control researchers: “On the whole, Lott’s colleagues—both in the media and academia—don’t dispute his findings [on gun-free zones].”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Police and security guards play an important role in stopping crime, but there uniforms put them at a disadvantage in these terrorist-type attacks. Knowing that the officer is the only person with a gun makes things quite simple for attackers. They need only kill him first. It is the equivalent of wearing a neon sign saying “shoot me first.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Mass killers have even explicitly talked about their desire to attack places where civilians can’t defend themselves. One need only listen to the February 2016 wiretap of an ISIS supporter who was planning an attack on one of the biggest churches in Detroit. Khalil Abu-Rayyan explained his choice of target this way: “A lot of people go there. Plus, people are not allowed to carry guns in church. Plus, it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard.”32 Fortunately, Abu-Rayyan’s father alerted the FBI.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Bans on large-capacity magazines are more or less exclusively obeyed by law-abiding citizens, and will prevent concealed handgun permit holders from carrying many bullets in their guns.15 Concealed handgun permit holders usually don’t carry multiple guns or magazines, whereas attackers often arm themselves to the teeth. Magazine limits mean that criminals are more likely to out-gun law-abiding citizens.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Semi-automatic guns don’t fire “rapid bursts” of bullets. Fifty-caliber sniper rifles were never covered by the federal assault weapons ban. Such weapons may be “super destructive,” but the New York Times neglects to mention that there is no recorded instance of one being used in a murder, and certainly not in a mass public shooting.8 “Urban assault vests” may sound like they are bulletproof, but they are actually just nylon vests with a lot of pockets.9 These are just a few of the many errors that the New York Times made in their news article.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“How many gun control laws that a state has potentially explains about 3% of the changes in its total number of firearm deaths.47 The ultimate question is whether total deaths, not just firearm deaths, go up or down as a result of more gun control.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“The claim that guns are rarely used in self-defense comes from only counting defensive actions that result in the death of the attacker. But by any measure, only a fraction of one percent of defensive gun uses result in the criminal attacker being killed or wounded. In 95% of the cases, merely brandishing a firearm is enough to fend off an attacker.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“A month later I again asked for the information, but all I got was a vague email saying: “Regarding how countries and territories are covered, much depends on specific registration rules and reporting practices. A lot of countries publicly report annual retail sales, seizures and disarmament, or public registration figures. Others routinely see annual data reported in the press. We also get reports by asking. That kind of thing gives official annual inflation/deflation.”21 But he never gave me a list of sources for each country. There was no way to actually check the numbers.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control

“Gun control advocates such as Vox never mention that every single time that guns are banned — either all guns or all handguns — homicide/murder rates rise.”
― John Lott, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control