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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Selectric II who wrote (238985)	3/17/2002 4:03:46 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 769670

Hogwash. This 'rebuttal' relies on bogus data, probably using the '2 million defensive gun uses'. Gathering such data by interviewing participants who have a vested interest in inflating the statistics is not considered to be science by any reputable professional. If you throw out that bogus data, this 'rebuttal' falls apart completely. The FACT is that the ratio of truly reported justifiable homicides vs others is STILL 22 to 1. The rebuttal says that "well, yeah, but if there were no guns, then there would be 2 million more crimes" is complete BS. If there were no guns, then many of those 30,000+ people per year would still be alive.

To: Selectric II who wrote (238985)	3/17/2002 4:36:46 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Interestingly Lott in his book "More Guns, Less Crime" spends a whole chapter responding to his critics. He handed out copies to both sides for review before he published his work. He had difficulty finding debaters but no difficulty in finding media who "attacked" his work. Susan Glick of VPC called it "flawed" before she had even gotten the copy she requested by fax from Lott. His study was published in the Journal of Legal Studies, a peer reviewed publication. He is affiliated with the Olin Foundation, which is separate from Olin Industries, which does manufacture Winchester ammunition but does not manufacture firearms (a charge made by Sen. Schumer and others) Bill Simon, former Sec. of the Treasury was the Olin Foundation head and stated categorically that they do not tell scholars what to write or what to say. Lott's previous research was crime. This was his first research on gun control. He stated simply if Olin were trying to get positive research they were getting poor return as his was the only gun control research amongst their 100's of grants. He answers 23 separate questions or criticisms over a space of 30 pages. The polls on defensive uses of handguns that range from 760,000 uses to 3.6 million have been done by such organizations as the LA Times, the Gallup Poll and the Peter Hart Research Associates, hardly radical or right wing.