IN January 1997, I published a paper in the Journal of Legal Studies on the consequences of legalizing concealed weapons. Using FBI crime data for all 3,054 U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, I demonstrated that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns deters violent crime and produces no significant increase in accidental handgun deaths. In addition, in counties which permitted citizens to arm themselves, murder rates fell by at least 8.5 per cent, aggravated assaults by 7 per cent, rapes by 5 per cent, and robberies by 3 per cent.
The study, ideally, should have been the occasion for a reasoned examination of our gun-control laws. Instead, its reception became a case study in dishonesty among gun-control advocates and gullibility among reporters. In the end, the study's media fallout was almost as telling as its original findings.
When I was preparing to present the study at the Cato Institute in early August 1996, I wanted to get a proponent of gun control to provide critical comments on the paper. I approached 22 gun-control advocates before Jens Ludwig, a young assistant professor at Georgetown University, accepted my invitation to comment.
Some of the people I approached -- like Susan Glick, of the Violence Policy Center -- said straight out that they were unwilling to act as commentator because, as Miss Glick put it when I spoke to her that June, she didn't want to ``help give any publicity to the paper.'' When I asked her if I could at least send her a copy of the paper because I would appreciate any comments she might have, she said, ``Forget it. There is no way that I am going to look at it. Don't send it.''
But when the story broke anyway in USA Today on August 2, Miss Glick was among the many people who left telephone messages asking for a copy of the paper. The media were calling, and she ``need[ed] [my] paper to be able to criticize it.''
At around 3:00 P.M. that day ABC News reporter Barry Serafin called me saying that certain objections had been raised about my paper; he mentioned that one of those who had criticized it was Susan Glick. After talking to Mr. Serafin, I gave Miss Glick a call to ask her if she still wanted a copy of my paper. She said that she wanted it right away and wondered if I could fax it to her. I then noted that her request seemed strange because Mr. Serafin had just told me that she had said the study was ``flawed.'' I asked how she could have said it was flawed without having looked at it. At that point Miss Glick hung up.
Many of the attacks from groups like Handgun Control, Inc., and the Violence Policy Center focused on claims that my study had been paid for by gun manufacturers or that the Journal of Legal Studies was not a peer-reviewed journal. These attacks were false, and I believe that those who made them knew they were false. At least they had been told by all the relevant parties at the University of Chicago -- where I am the John M. Olin Law and Economics Fellow -- and at the Olin Foundation that the funding charges were wrong, and the peer-reviewed status of the Journal of Legal Studies is not in question.
But the attacks claiming that my work had been paid for by gun manufacturers were unrelenting. Rep. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) wrote in the Wall Street Journal: ``The Associated Press reports that Prof. Lott's fellowship at the University of Chicago is funded by the Olin Foundation, which is 'associated with the Olin Corporation,' one of the nation's largest gun manufacturers. Maybe that's a coincidence . . . But it's also a fact.'' In a letter that the Violence Policy Center mass-mailed to newspapers around the country, Kristen Rand, the Center's federal-policy director, wrote, ``Lott's work was, in essence, funded by the firearms industry -- the primary beneficiary of increased handgun sales. Lott is the John M. Olin fellow at the University of Chicago law school, a position founded by the Olin Foundation. The foundation was established by John Olin of the Olin Corp., manufacturer of Winchester ammunition and maker of the infamous 'Black Talon' bullet.'' Stories repeating this assertion appeared in newspapers from the Chicago Tribune to the Houston Chronicle to the Des Moines Register, as well as in high-brow publications like The National Journal.
The Associated Press eventually released a partial correction stating that the the Olin Foundation and Olin Corporation are separate organizations, but a Nexis search of news stories reveals that only one newspaper in the entire country that had published the original Associated Press report carried the correction.
William Simon, the Olin Foundation's president (and former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury), tried to set the record straight in a letter to the Wall Street Journal in September 1996:
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The John M. Olin foundation, of which I have been president for nearly 20 years, is an independent foundation . . . created by the personal fortune of the late John M. Olin, and is not associated with the Olin Corp.
The John M. Olin Foundation has supported for many years a program in law and economics at the University of Chicago Law School. This program is administered and directed by a committee of faculty members in the law school. This committee, after reviewing many applications in a very competitive process, awarded a research fellowship to Mr. Lott. We at the foundation had no knowledge of who applied for these fellowships, nor did we ever suggest that Mr. Lott should be awarded one of them. We did not commission his study, nor, indeed, did we even know of it until last month . . .
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If Olin were trying to buy research, it must be getting a very poor return on its money. Given the hundreds of people at different universities who have received Olin fellowships, I have been the only one to work on the issue of gun control.
After the funding attacks, the gun-control organizations brought up new issues. In the spring of 1997, the Violence Policy Center sent out a press release entitled ``Who Is John Lott?'' It claimed, among other things: ``Lott believes that some crime is good for society, that wealthy criminals should not be be punished as harshly as poor convicts.'' I had in fact argued that ``individuals guilty of the same crime should face the same expected level of punishment'' and that with limited resources to fight crime, it is not possible to eliminate all of it. Nonetheless, these silly assertions were picked up by publications like The New Republic.
So much for a reasoned debate. Before I did my original study, I never would have guessed how deeply people fear discussion of these issues. I never would have guessed how much effort goes into deliberately ignoring certain findings in order to deny them news coverage. I never would have guessed how much energy goes into attacking the integrity of those who present such findings, with such slight reference -- or no reference at all -- to the actual merits of the research. Nor would I have guessed how often such attacks get carelessly reproduced in the media.
Count me sadder, but wiser -- and considerably more skeptical whenever I scan the headlines or turn on the TV news.
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