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I agree except that the translations available so far indicate that "Saddam" referred to a peasant shooting down an Apache, not just shooting down something. But it's still not hard to imagine that this was filmed pre-war and then the Iraqis made up the farmer story when the first Apache went down so that they could use this tape later. The media is incredibly gullible to report that these tapes "prove" anything one way or the other. (Like the writers who claimed the earlier "Saddam" tape proved he was alive just because it referred to Umm Qasr.) Considering that there are an infinite number of unambiguously contemporaneous things that Saddam could say, I don't think today's tape proves anything, although it certainly fuels the mystery.

That will be tue only if a 'real' survey shows a very different / contradictory result form the phantom survey, which I expect is NOT the case.

Actually, there have been many other surveys on this point, and they all reached results that contradict Lott. (Those other surveys include some done by Gary Kleck, the preeminent and very pro-gun criminologist at Florida State University.) The discrepancy between those surveys and Lott's survey are the very reason that people started wondering about the legitimacy of Lott's survey in the first place.

I fully agree that the statistic that all this fuss is about (the 98% statistic) is very minor and not vital to Lott's primary conclusion (his regression analysis of the effect of changing concealed-carry laws). Indeed, I said that Lott was lying, if he was lying, about something that was "incidental" to his work.

But is the validity of his primary conclusion really all that matters, as you suggest? It may be all that matters when it comes to the public policy questions of what concealed carry laws should say. But it can't be all that matters to the issue of whether Lott is a credible scholar or a liar, which seems to be a real question aside from the validity of his 1997 study.

Methinks your views about honesty and academic integrity are colored a great deal by whether the lying professor in question is pro-gun or anti-gun. I don't have that bias. I think they should be fired if they faked data, no matter which side of the gun debate they are on.

As I say, there is only one thing at issue here: was the data he used in his ORIGINAL study, on which everything else was based, legit and reliable. It was.

That's an interesting notion - that lies don't matter as long as you're honest about something else that's more important. I tend to think that when a person lies about something, even an incidental thing, it goes to the person's credibility. For example, Bellesiles always defended himself on the ground that the probate records that he was accused of distorting or falsifying were only a couple of footnotes in a huge book. But if he lied about those, I think it's hard to trust the rest. And Clinton and his defenders always said it didn't matter if he lied about extramarital affairs, because it was incidental to the really important thing - how he did his job as president. But lies matter. Credibility matters. Don't make excuses for a liar like John Lott just because you like some of his conclusions.

One of the things debunking the whole liberal attack on Lott was the fact that at least one of his interview subjects has stepped forward to say that yes, he was interviewed by Lott.

Not exactly. He doesn't say he was interviewed by Lott. Lott didn't interview anyone; he says he paid college students to telephone people and interview them. This person says that he remembers getting a phone call and participating in a survey about gun use, and he thinks it was probably Lott's survey. Of course, this person also happens to be an NRA board member and a gun rights activist.

It's strange that you're willing to pass that off as conclusive proof that Lott is telling the truth. Let's put it this way - if Sarah Brady was accused of lying about something, and the only "witness" who stepped forward to corroborate her story was the president of a local Million Mom March chapter, what would you be saying about the credibility of that defense?

It is awfully strange that Lott did a major survey, used cash to pay the students doing the survey for him, can't remember the name of any of those students, and doesn't have a single scrap of paper (even a list of the questions) left from the survey.

Those who are interested in this affair should read Lott's response, posted above, and also the report by Prof. James Lindgren. Keep in mind that Lindgren is among those who accomplished the discrediting of Bellesiles, so he certainly can't be accused of having any anti-gun bias. Frankly, his report is devastating to Lott's credibility. Lindgren concludes that:

"I remain hopeful that University of Chicago undergraduates will come forward with a credible story about hours of phone calling in January 1997. Everyone would be enormously relieved were that to occur. If no one does come forward, Lott has done his career a great disservice this January by changing his story in so many ways. Although most of these changes are small ones, the fact that he would make them at this worst possible time is profoundly disappointing to those of us who would like to think the best of him."

I won't paste the entire report here, because it's very long, but it's all available at...

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lindgren.html

This dealer can't account for how 200+ guns got out of the store. If I was Bushmaster, I think I'd be slamming the dealer and ATF for not catching it sooner. I don't think I'd be saying the dealer is a "good customer" and I'm still happy to sell to them.

"But she gave a gun to a child."

Yes, he is a child, in the sense that he is her son. But he was 22 years old.

Actually, the case is about a Raven MP-25, made the original Raven Arms Co. before its factory burned down and it went out of business in 1991. Phoenix Arms started making "Ravens" after that. So if you want the actual gun at issue in this case, you'll have to look for it used.

Hold your horses, everybody. There is nothing in federal or Delaware law that prohibits someone from buying a gun and giving it as a gift to someone else (unless that person is prohibited by age, felony record, etc. from possessing it). The original source of this story, the New York Daily News, has reported that it is going to run a retraction in tomorrow's paper to make clear that its story was wrong and she did nothing illegal. So let's not push the erroneous part of the story. She's not a criminal - just a hypocrite.

I agree it's a stupid decision, but if you want to get into the legal technicalities, I'm afraid you're on pretty shaky ground...

1. Where in the U.S. Constitution is there any mention of "public rights"?

They are talking about common law rights. That is a different kind of rights from constitutional rights, but they are still very real in the law and very important. For example, if someone carelessly ran over your house with a bull dozer, or if somebody made a contract with you and then just broke it and kept your money, I suspect you'd like to be able to sue them and recover damages for it. Well the constitution doesn't give you any right to those damages. But the common law of torts and contracts do. And the common law also establishes certain public rights. You may disagree with this judge's assessment of the scope of public rights, but there's no point in denying that they exist or suggesting that they somehow must derive from the Constitution.

2. Yes he is bound to follow the federal court. The Constitution and laws on the United States are the supreme law of the land.

Actually, that's not really true in this instance. All of the issues that this court was deciding were issues of New Jersey state law, not federal law. That means New Jersey courts are the controlling authority on what New Jersey law is and whether this is a valid case. You and I happen to think that this particular New Jersey judge was wrong and will be overturned by the New Jersey intermediate appellate court or by the New Jersey Supreme Court - but if we're wrong and the New Jersey Supreme Court were to agree with this judge, there would be nothing that any federal court could do about it. The U.S. Supreme Court could not reverse a decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court about whether Newark has stated claims against the gun companies under New Jersey tort law. The gun companies would have to come up with some federal reason, whether constitutional or statutory, why the New Jersey tort law was overridden or preempted by federal law, and unfortunately they haven't been able to come up with any such argument about federal law that any court has been willing to accept. Where the gun manufacturers have won, they've won because of what courts have decided about state law, not federal, and that's how they'll ultimately win in New Jersey too.

3. The defendants should remove this case to federal court and also file a civil rights action against the city for violating a number of their constitutional rights. If the do and prevail, which they will, the city will have to pay damages plus all their legal fees. It is a sure way to get cities to stop this nonsense.

The gun manufacturers have tried to remove cities' lawsuits to federal court a total of eleven times - and the attempt has been unsuccessful every single time. The federal courts send the cases back to state court (they "remand" them, to be technical) because they find that there is no federal jurisdiction over the cases, because as I said the cases present state law issues only.

As for suing the cities, what I would call "fighting fire with fire," I think that's a really great idea. Unfortunately, it's been attempted three times now (once by Second Amendment Foundation, once by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and seven gun manufacturers, and once by a Texas group called the Civil Liberties Defense Foundation) and it's been a pretty miserable failure every time. It's easy to say "Let's sue them back," but it's a lot tougher to come up with a legal theory that would actually work against them. The law doesn't always accomplish what would be justice.

Maybe someone can help me out here. Is the federal ban on "assault weapons" not permanent? I thought I was knowledgable about gun laws, but this is news to me. Does anyone know when the ban is scheduled to expire?

The assault weapon ban, enacted as part of the 1994 crime bill, included a ten-year "sunset" provision, so it will expire in 2004 unless Congress passes a law to postpone the sunset or to make the ban permanent. It will be interesting to see what happens, as this will be an election year issue for Bush and Congress. Bush was pretty vague about his position on this during the last campaign - his campaign position papers were carefully phrased to say that he supported the "current" assault weapons ban without saying whether he supported or opposed continuing it beyond 2004. During his confirmation hearings, Ashcroft indicated that he would support reinstating the ban - it was apparently the bone he was willing to throw to the anti-gunner Senators interrogating him, so that may be a sign that the Republicans don't intend to fight against continuation of the ban.

This is very old news. The article refers to Gov. Jeb Bush signing the law on "Tuesday" - that was Tuesday, May 1, 2001. This article was actually published May 2, 2001, not on December 14 as the post suggests.

Her response was wrong. Your message was not "hate speech" or anything else for which you could be punished. As you correctly point out, we have a right to express ourselves in this country, no matter how crude and simplistic our expression may be.

"Your [sic] either with US or With the Terrorists"? I am sure you realize there are many people, especially conservatives and libertarians of the sort that frequent Free Republic, who harbor both complete antipathy to the terrorists and a healthy skepticism and suspicion about our own government authorities and many of their policies, particularly interventionist foreign policies. The notion that someone is a traitor if unwilling to go along with the consensus American point of view is a dangerous one because it can be turned back against us.

Everything you say about the NJEA may be true. In fact, it probably is. But that sophomore kid's paper certainly doesn't have anything to do with proving it.

You imply that this is some sort of lesson plan used by New Jersey teachers. That is so misleading you should be embarrassed to have posted this. This isn't written by a teacher or for the use of teachers. It's written by a tenth grader who was assigned to pick a controversial topic and do research on both sides and write about what he thought. Other students wrote about the death penalty, Middle East peace, assisted suicide, telecommunications reform, and overpopulation.

Click here to see the list of all the tenth graders' papers posted on the website.

We did this sort of thing when I was in school. I remember studying Reagan's and Carter's positions in sixth grade in 1980 and writing about why I thought Reagan should be elected.

So this kid disagrees with you, me, and lot of other people on Free Republic about gun control. Big deal. If he'd reached the conclusion you like, then would his assignment have bothered you? I doubt it. I guess some people like free thought only when it agrees with them. At least they've got them doing research on both sides of the issues and trying to learn how to think about real issues of controversy. I don't want schools indoctrinating anybody, but I also don't want them discouraging independent thought about controversial issues. Do you?

If you actually take the time to read the original post, it does not say the Brady gang opposes arming pilots. It says they have "concerns" about the proposal, that it "should be considered with great care," and that the FBI and FAA are doing the right thing by studying the issue. And the press release seems to support putting armed sky marshalls on planes. Last time I checked, those are exactly the same things that President Bush is saying about these same issues.

There is certainly a lot of anti-gun rhetoric mixed into the press release (about background checks, etc.), but I am surprised that they actually are not taking a reflexively anti-gun position on the pilot issue.