Gun Lobbys Favorite Expert Sees Las Vegas Massacre Claims Fall Apart

[turbinetree]

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

Discredited gun researcher John Lott attacked strong firearms regulations in a FoxNews.com op-ed with a dishonest comparison between the United States and Europe relating to gun laws and public massacres.

Following a mass shooting sniper attack on a Las Vegas country music concert that left 59 dead and more than 500 people wounded, Lott — a go-to source for conservative misinformation about gun violence following high-profile shootings — published an opinion piece at FoxNews.com comparing machine gun attacks in Europe versus the United States.

Lott wrote that “Europe, which has all the gun controls that are being pushed in the aftermath of the Las Vegas carnage, has actually suffered more bloodshed from these types of attacks than the U.S.,” before noting that machine guns have been used in multiple public attacks in Europe in recent years while the Las Vegas attack “may be the first mass public shooting in the U.S. involving a machine gun.”

Using this comparison to attack strong gun regulations is highly misleading because it is premised on a narrow subset of gun violence — public mass shootings involving machine guns. For example, the parameters of Lott’s comparison exclude mass attacks in the U.S. where the shooters used semi-automatic assault weapons, such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which killed 26, and the Pulse nightclub shooting, which killed 49.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/gun-lobbys-favorite-expert-sees-las-vegas-massacre-claims-fall-apart/


Fuck you

[iluvtennis]

1. Another asswipe. They are so exasperating.

[billh58]

2. Also from this article:

Overall, the association between stronger gun laws and lower gun violence is well-established. As the Harvard Injury Control Research Center has concluded, “A broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the U.S., where there are more guns, both men and women are at a higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.”

Simply put, more guns equals more gun violence.

[Major Nikon]

3. He's basically the Seralini of gun violence research

He's a junk science purveyor who gets paid by the NRA for his "research" which can't seem to be replicated by real researchers. He supposedly conducted a gun survey which produced results which were virtually impossible and highly contradictory to other real surveys. When pressed for the evidence of the survey he claimed his dog ate it.

[gratuitous]

4. John Lott also beats women

It's amazing how Lott's sordid past of battering women has simply disappeared from the public realm. Try a google search on his name, and you'll have to drill down a long ways past pages of laudatory articles on what a public health savant Lott is.