Nat.Acad.of Science gun control report!

[Tom]

Shooting Blanks
- New York Post
"This month the National Academy of Sciences issued a 328-page report on gun-control laws," writes John Lott. "The big news is that the academy`s panel couldn`t identify any benefits of decades-long effort to reduce crime and injury by restricting gun ownership. The only conclusion it could draw was: Let`s study the question some more (presumably, until we find the results we want)."
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/37260.htm

 

[danr55]

Tom, That doesn't surprise me a bit. When I wrote my paper, part of my conclusion was that there are approximately 3.4 times as many firearms held privately today as there were in 1979 and the violent crime rate has declined to about 1/3 the per capita rate of that same period. If I were to draw any conclusion from those data, it would be that as the private ownership of firearms increased, the violent crime rate decreased.

I'm sure that was not the result they were looking for...

 

[Tom]

It looks like it was a biased committee, gun control advocates, from one article I found. Here is the full committee report, for free.

http://books.nap.edu/books/0309091241/html/index.html

Chapter 6 is on John Lotts decisive and exhaustive research showing a reduction in violent crime due to controlled carry laws, which we have in 34 states now. One committee member wrote a dissenting opinion to the committee report, which sounds good to me. Keck is a sociologist from Florida who also found some national pro gun results for preventing crime. Both Lott and Keck have books out, yet they were not on this committee?

Lots of politics here.