Customer Reviews

The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Even for a cynic such as myself, Lott's documentation of how the media and the government distort our perceptions of guns is amazing. The research that went into this book is impressive. He documents not only the imbalance in newscoverage but also how the media actually makes news to discredit guns. He shows how government studies systematically measure only the bad things that happen with guns and never discuss the benefits.

"If you want the truth the anti-gunners don't want you to know... you need a copy of The Bias Against Guns." --Sean Hannity, of Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes

"John Lott's thoughtful study should be read by everyone interested in the control of violent crime, and protection against terrorism." --Vernon L. Smith, 2002 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics

"John Lott's 1998 book, More Guns, Less Crime, created quite a stir among the gun-control romantics, whose expressive advocacy involves neither sound analytics nor empirical evidence. In this follow-on book, The Bias Against Guns, Lott continues the struggle, and responds to his critics, motivated by his strong conviction that analysis and evidence must, finally, win the day." --James Buchanan, 1986 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics

"Another major contribution by John Lott to the evidence on the effects--good and bad--of gun-control legislation. An important supplement to his More Guns, Less Crime."--Milton Friedman, 1976 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics

"As a gun-toting rock 'n' roll star all my life, I have lived firsthand the outrageous media and Hollywood bias against good guys with guns forever. I laugh in their face. John Lott is my academic hero." --Ted Nugent, recording artist and author of Kill It & Grill It and Gods, Guns, & Rock 'n' Roll

"[Lott] marshals unimpeachable evidence on how the anti-gun crusade, driven by sins of omission and commission, might actually be costing many more lives than it saves. You'll want to have this intellectual ammunition." --Walter E. Williams, economist and syndicated columnist

"John Lott is a scholar's scholar and a writer's writer--and his book shows why. That gun ownership might bring social benefits as well as costs is a story we do not often see in the press, and Lott here explores why. With a blend of new data, evidence, and examples, he unpacks the bias against such stories in the media."--J. Mark Ramseyer, Harvard Law School professor

Most impressively he also provides all his data to people who what to recheck the work that he has done on the benefits of keeping guns in the home as well as his work on gun shows, concealed handgun laws, one-gun-a-month rules, and "assault weapons" bans. The web site is noted in the book as (...).

John Lott's 1st book, "More Guns, Less Crime," was an eye-opening look into what the science shows about the presence of guns in society and clearly illustrated the benefits of armed, law abiding citizens. His latest book, "The Bias Against Guns," expands further into media and governmental bias on the issue of guns and he debunks many of the "common sense" proposals for gun regulation; showing that these proposals actually increase crime while having no effect on accidental gun deaths.

Dr. Lott is a brilliant economist and he approaches his subject with a detached and unemotional, scientific process. In "The Bias Against Guns," he takes the reader through the progression of verifying findings and considering alternate explanations. The result is a thoroughly convincing work that argues for gun policy based upon dispassionate science instead of vitriolic and emotional claims made by the media and some in government.

Part I of "The Bias Against Guns" is a careful analysis of how government and the media have unfairly framed the gun control argument to show only the costs of guns in our society. Liberal media and government have - for many decades - systemically and purposefully ignored the benefits of gun ownership in America and around the world. Many people who view themselves as clear-minded independent thinkers will be shocked when they read this section of the book. An open-minded appraisal will reveal that a distaste and fear of guns is far less rational than a fear of automobiles, or, for that matter, five gallon buckets. Guns, cars and buckets are tools that have costs (dangers) and benefits. Part I of "The Bias Against Guns" shows clearly how the media and the government have advanced a one-sided, costs-only view of guns in our society.

Part II of "The Bias Against Guns" is a detailed, scientific evaluation of many different gun control measures. In his previous book, John Lott largely restricted his research to the costs and benefits of laws permitting ordinary citizens to carry concealed handguns. In "The Bias Against Guns," Lott evaluates laws such as safe storage requirements, the effects of gun control on multiple victim public shootings, "gun free" zones, bans on "assault weapons" and restrictions on gun shows. Again, Lott's dispassionate analysis gives these issues very fair treatment, evaluating all possible explanations for his findings. The results are sometimes surprising but always based upon scientific evidence and not emotional presuppositions.

If you are a proponent of law-abiding citizens owning guns, you will find much in "The Bias Against Guns" that will support your point of view. If you are among the many Americans that are more afraid of having a gun in your home than a car in your garage, I strongly urge you to read John Lott's latest book. You will come away convinced that our nations gun policy should be based upon what the science of the matter reports and not the liberal media's version of "common sense."

If you want the facts on gun control, Lott's two books, "The Bias Against Guns" and "More Guns, Less Crime" are the way to go. Of the two, this later work is perhaps easier to aborb and the better choice for the lay reader. Lott's evidence is especially compelling in the current climate of terrorism threats as we determine how best to protect a free society, (whether through creation of an impossibly large police force that can be in all places at all times, or through empowerment of law abiding citizens to take increased accountability for self protection and as a deterrent to crime in their communities.)

You will undoubtedly see some reviewers give this five stars and some only one. The one star reviewers will not include any factual refutation of the arguments that Mr. Lott presents. His research is simply sound, and this soundness is not changed by the shrill personal attacks by the gun control crowd.

I have taken off one star from this review because of occasional redundant sections that remind the reader of Yogi Berra's deja vu maxim. Perhaps a stricter editor might have improved the flow a bit!

This book has been endorsed by three Nobel prize winning economists. Lott's research will be the standard source material for the gun policy debate for years to come.

Dr. John R. Lott is primarily an economist who has held positions at the University of Chicago, Yale, Stanford, UCLA and other respected institutions of higher learning. He was also the chief economist of the United States Sentencing Commission in 1988-89. He is no lightweight in the field, and he knows how to interpret statistics. Not only statistics that he himself has gathered, but those for every county in the United States over a period of several years that were gathered by the United States government.

Using the government's own figures, he wrote "More Guns Less Crime," evaluating the violent crime results emanating from the 33 states with "must issue" concealed carry laws as opposed to those without. The "must issue" laws, in effect, insist that law-abiding citizens who pass certain requirements must be issued a concealed carry permit for a handgun, regardless of the local sheriff's feelings about gun-control or an armed populace.

His evaluation of the statistics? Those states without the "must issue" laws, many of whom forbid the law-abiding to carry the means of defending themselves regardless of the U.S. Constitution to the contrary, have a considerably higher rate of violent crime and shootings, and in effect because of their gun-control laws are costing their citizenry hundreds of lives, thousands of injuries, and millions in property loss and damage.

John Lott says, on page 13 of this, his new book, "My role as an economist is not to consider whether Americans have a 'right' to own guns, to keep them unlocked, to sell them at gun shows, to carry guns with them wherever they go, and so on. My only objective is to study the measurable effect that gun laws have on incidents of violence, and to let the facts speak for themselves."

And this he does, very effectively.

In "Bias Against Guns" he does an admirable job of demonstrating how the press and television virtually always report shootings of children nationally, although such events (as he shows) are extremnely rare--for example, whereas 34 children under the age of six were accidentally shot in one year, in the entire nation, 43 were drowned in 5-gallon buckets!

He also looks at multiple shootings, where two or more people are shot by the same perpetrator, as in schools, restaurants, shopping malls and other public venues--acts of terrorism included. IN this he looks not only at the United States, but also at Israel where such events are every day occurrences, and how the Israelis handle the problem, and how best to deter such events.

As he points out, the media almost never report any of the 2,500,000 cases where firearms are used for defense against criminal attack and dangerous animals.

As he says, brandishing a gun and thereby causing an attacker to flee is not news. When man bites dog, that is news but when dog bites man--a much more frequent event--that is NOT news.

Not only the press, but the government also--particularly under the administration of Bill Clinton--spent millions on advertising campaigns vilifying firearms and using spurious
and misleading facts and figures. Polling organizations word their public polls in such a way that it seems the public is in favor of gun control, whereas the opposite is true. Never do they ask the question,"Does private possession of firearms, on balance, create more good than harm?"

And the latter, according to the statistics, is exactly the case. On balance, guns among the population do more good and stop far more violence from occurring than they cause.

The gun-control advocates, especially including the media, tend to use emotion-laden individual cases to make their point, but as Lott points out, the only responsible way to judge the situation, in a population of 275 million, is through the statistical approach, and to do a cost/benefit analysis. In the case of privately owned firearms, the benefits hugely outnumber the the cost in lives, pain, and property. Furthermore, privately owned firearms are the only clear, effective deterrent to crime--more than longer, tougher sentencing laws, capital punishment, and certainly more than gun-control which has never worked, anywhere.

This is a fine book, and as with his last,"More Guns Less Crime," is worth your time if you have an open mind. If, however, you have your mind made up that gun-control is the only answer to all of our problems of violence and you view any other side as "gun culture" propaganda, then you should pass on this one. It will give you ulcers.

Joseph "Joe" Pierre,

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance

Many controversial topics pit beliefs and emotions against one another, with facts thrown in as a legitimizing afterthought. In his new book, "The Bias Against Guns," John Lott does not use sparse facts to bolster an emotional appeal on gun-control, but follows the careful development and analysis of data to reach measured conclusions. The only emotional demand the author makes is the restrained appeal to judge the data, analysis methods and facts rather than to make knee-jerk conclusions about the relationship between gun ownership, crime, self-defense, multiple shootings, gun-lock, gun-free zone, and conceal carry weapons laws. Although Lott starts out well in an attempt to make his methods accessible, this casual reader became buried in the logic paths, surrogate data methods and analytical techniques used to conduct valid research. Sadly, the simple data gathering methods and analysis that many gun-control authors employ, while more straight-forward to understand, also leads to false conclusions, as Lott demonstrates. The vast majority will have to wait while academics have at Lott's latest work. While the technical failings of Michael Bellesiles' "Arming of America" have lead to his academic censure and halt in publication of the book in little more than 2 years, John Lott's first book "More Guns, Less Crime" is going strong five years after publication. Not without his academic detractors ...the long-term survival of Lott's work and publication of this second installment in his continuing research bears out broad acceptance of his conclusions.

Get your hands on this book. Lott does for the media coverage of guns what Goldberg's and Coulter's books on media bias in general. If anything, his discussion is more convincing since he has actually counted up the different types of stories and isn't simply relying on the annecdotal discussion found in the other books. His book is also broader, with him looking at how the anti-gun agenda is pushed through everything from polling to government reports. He also explodes myths about the risks of having guns in the home and shows that the media bias of exaggerating those risks actually puts people's lives in danger.

Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down.

As a professor of statistics, I laughed out loud when I read an earlier reviewer write: "I can't believe John Lott has a doctorate and gets away with such flawed research. He 'randomnly' called a little over 1000 people and made a conclusion for the entire nation. Can't do it with such a small sample."

Flawed research? What an intellectual ignoramus! Not only can't he spell 'randomly' correctly, he doesn't understand anything about statistics. He puts randomly in quotes when even a beginning student in statistics recognizes that this is REQUIRED if sample information is to be credible and representative of the population being sampled.

And if 1,000 people aren't enough to draw a conclusion about the entire population, Mr. Einstein, how does the Gallup Poll forecast national elections with an accuracy of +/- 3% by talking with only 1,100 people?

The only thing flawed here is the reviewer's obvious anti-gun bias.

Like most closed-minded individuals, this reviewer proves himself to be Invincibly Ignorant

For like members of the Flat Earth Society, no matter how many facts and arguments against their positions they encounter, they simply refuse to admit that they might be wrong. Instead, they resort to name calling and character assassination.

I have read the book and find Dr. Lott's data and conclusions extremely compelling. I recommend this book to anyone that is open to the truth about the bogus intellectual underpinnings of the gun-control movement in America.

Gun Control has become a major political issue and usually a political weapon during election years. Whether you agree with gun control or agree that the second amendment has taken a real beating from the liberal groups, this book should provide a more in depth insight into why the things you read in the papers, see on TV and hear form some liberal politicians is not quite everything you need to know.

Having read the author other book "More Guns, Less Crime", I was intrigued by how well the author defends his positions on guns, gun control and gun lobbyists. I was even more impressed by the arguments and the facts to back them up this book contains.

What the author has done is take on the establishment and show that the media, the left and the PACs have distorted, obfuscated and demagogue the issues, leaving the people confused and in most cases scared.

As a parent I am concerned about the weapons and guns and this book is tremendously compelling, showing that banning, limiting, controlling of weapons, including automatic and assault, hasn't lowered or decreased crime, in fact the opposite has occurred.

Lott is very well researched and very well documented. He states his case with a great deal of confidence and after reading the text I find myself agreeing with just about everything. I found that the book confirms the statements "It is not the gun that does the damage, it the person using the gun." Overall - well done!

"Too often, the debate over guns is a philosophical one, pitting the freedom of gun owners against the safety of everyone else," says economist Dr. John Lott in The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control is Wrong.

But what if those two things are one and the same? What if, on average, privately-owned guns are far more likely to save lives or property than destroy them? And what if freedoms beyond simple ownership, such as concealed weapons permits, have the same effect?

Lott, using intense statistical methods, demonstrates in the book (a supplement to 1998's More Guns, Less Crime) that this is in fact the case. Systematically displaying the evidence and rebutting his critics, he makes his case convincingly and in a reasoned tone.

Though there have been criticisms of his methods, three Nobel Prize winners in Economics are quoted praising the book on its jacket, and no study has disproved his results (look to the National Academy of Sciences or the CDC for rigorous, government-funded attempts). Lott makes his data available to anyone who would like to study it, and of course anyone is free to undertake their own study.

Beyond rearticulating and updating the findings of More Guns, Less Crime, Lott uses this book to point out anti-gun bias in the media. While gun accidents and gun crime are often covered, he argues, one rarely sees coverage of defensive gun uses. Many citizens are lead to believe that such uses do not even take place.

In fact, Lott says, between 1.5 and 3.4 million defensive gun uses occur yearly (this estimate is based on survey data; estimates reported by Jens Ludwig and Philip Cook in Evaluating Gun Policy put the number at less than a third of Lott's lower bound).

He presents some especially dramatic, often heroic case studies and explains that these highly newsworthy stories got little news coverage, while less interesting accidents and crimes get lots of it. He also provides several disturbing examples of times major news sources outright lied about defensive gun use.

The book is written in a clear, reasoned diction that makes for quick if not gripping reading. Some of the statistical methods detailed are difficult to comprehend, but the results are explained with an average reading audience in mind.

Depending on ones political leanings and preferred literary style, it can be either a disappointment compared to or a breath of fresh air from Ann Coulter's sarcasm and name-calling. Certainly, it is far easier to recommend to a left-winger than Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, but it is also a bit less entertaining and easy to understand.

In The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control is Wrong, Lott provides an important, academic and unique viewpoint on guns and gun control. For those of all political persuasions, it provides information important to debates. The Bias Against Guns is a worthwhile, quick read.

An excellent, factual read. I tried to pick apart the book, but Lott is far better a statistician than I, so his work holds up.

As stated elsewhere, the facts will drive the anti-gun zealots crazy. Along with facts, Lott uses sensible analysis. Contrary to what one "reviewer" wrote, you can, according to the rules of sampling theory use samples of 1000 to represent much larger populations! A small amount of experience with statistics will demonstrate that! That just shows the hysteria of the hoplophobes.

Now to the politics...

Harvard systematically discounts positive uses of guns in their biased analyses, yet no one accuses them of malfeasance.

One of the more ridiculous comments is that you should not use a gun for self-defense because it could be taken away and used on you. The option is to use the phone and dial 911. That is illogically stupid and moronic. We are supposed to believe some nut will not hesitate to take away your gun-- when you could shoot him-- but he will not take away your phone. Duh.

Another reader says guns should be regulated like cars. Okay, fine, I will take your gun license as long as you aggree to follow the same rules as for cars. Namely: 1. Getting a license requires merely showing up and taking the eye test and written test, 2. Having the license means I can take my gun wherever I want to, like I can with my car, 3. I can own as many cars as I want so I should be able to own as many guns as I want, 4. I do not need a waiting period for a car, so I should not need one for a gun, 5. As long as my license is valid, I can borrow any gun from whoever is willing to let me- or loan mine, 6. It is no one's business how I store my car, fully gassed up and ready to go or not-- therefore it should not be their business if I store my gun ready for defense of myself or my loved ones. 7. Liberals cannot stop me from owning as powerful a gun as I want.

and 8. Since all car owners are not held responsible for all traffic injuries and fatalities everywhere, then you cannot blame all gun owners for all gun accidents and fatalities-- just those that actually did it.

Sounds fair, but gun control is not about fair, or even about guns, it is about control.