Free Republic

Ohio State University is still reeling from the attack last week. A terrorist followed the Islamic State playbook as he drove his car into a crowd of students and slashed others with a knife — 12 people were injured. Fortunately, a campus police officer was able to shoot the attacker in a record time of less than two minutes. University President Michael Drake took this as evidence that only campus police should be armed on campus. Police are very important, but they virtually always arrive after the attack has occurred and they have an extremely difficult job stopping terrorists —...

If it wasn’t for Michael Bloomberg’s billions, there wouldn’t be much of a gun-control movement. This year, Bloomberg got a background check initiative onto the ballots of Maine and Nevada. He lost in Maine by 4 percent, and won in Nevada by just 0.8 percent. Now, Nevadans won’t be able to privately transfer their firearms without going through a background check. Bloomberg’s initiative only eked out the win in Nevada because of the $20 million spent to support it, amounting to an incredible $35.30 per vote. He outspent his opponents by a factor of three – in Maine, by a...

Here are just a few of the more revealing findings: There is some evidence that black officers are more likely than white officers to shoot black suspects, but there is no evidence that the reverse is true. This was something of a wildly unexpected data point. I can’t even fathom a guess as to what might account for this, but the actual difference in the number of cases is small enough that it may just be an expected statistical aberration. What’s more revealing here is the amount of work that John had to do to assemble these numbers. The reason...

The death of Michael Brown in August 2014 caused millions of dollars in property damage locally, and precipitated the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement nationally. Further, it focused scrutiny on law enforcement by the press, the public, and the political elites. Following that fatal OIS in Ferguson, there has been a widespread perception — perpetuated by the mainstream national media — that white police officers are biased against black subjects in their use of lethal force. However, a new study authored by John Lott and Carlisle Moody of the Crime Prevention Research Center digs deep into the numbers...

<p>The day after a Minnesota cop was charged in the July shooting death of a black man, an in-depth study purported to show race generally does not play a role in police shootings.</p> <p>Among the findings of the investigation released Thursday by the Crime Prevention Research Center: White police officers are not significantly more likely to shoot black suspects; body cameras have had little effect on decreasing police killings; the more cops at the scene, the less likely it is a suspect will be shot.</p>

http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2016/11/libertarian-vp-nominee-bill-weldmy.html Libertarian VP nominee Bill Weld claims:"my belief is that the libertarian party pulls substantially more from Mr. Trump" @ 2:41 mark (video is available here). I had heard that Weld has been raising money with this message as a way of getting those who want Hillary to win to donate money. Consistent with that, it also just so happens that the big dollars that the libertarians have been spending have apparently been on conservative talk radio. The New York Times also has an op-ed saying that the Libertarians will tilt the election to Hillary Clinton. With just a few...

With Bloomberg's gun control initiative getting very close in the Nevada polls, here is a piece that was published in one of Nevada's bigger newspapers. http://www.rgj.com/story/opinion/voices/2016/11/04/one-view-mistakes-consequences-if-question-1-passes/93279474/ The same initiative is on the ballot in Maine. Read and share with people in Nevada and Maine.

In their Oct. 23 Sunday Opinion essay, “Guns on campus only invite tragedies,” Daniel Webster and Ronald Daniels claimed that letting college students carry guns for protection is a “recipe for tragedy.” Permit holders commit firearms-related violations at a lower rate than even the very low rate for police officers. The rate is in the thousandths of a percentage point, and data for Michigan, Nevada and Texas show that the rate is just as low for college-age permit holders. But instead of looking at how young permit holders actually behave, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Webster simply point out that “violence, alcohol...

Federal data showing annual accidental gun deaths in Tennessee soared to 105 from just 19 propelled a fierce firearms control campaign, but it turned out the stats were about as accurate as a two-dollar pistol. The numbers, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seemed to show the Volunteer State led the nation in accidental shooting deaths due to a more than five-fold increase in 2014. But an eagle-eyed Second Amendment advocate's suspicions turned out to be right: The number of accidental deaths had actually dropped, from 19 to just five. “It was a big mistake,” said John Lott,...

In terms of individual rights, there has probably never been so much at stake in a presidential election. If Hillary Clinton wins, Americans will soon lose the right of self-defense in their own homes. Wednesday night in Las Vegas moderator Chris Wallace quickly started off the debate by asking Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about the Second Amendment. Hillary was asked about her claim: "the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment.” The 2008 Heller decision struck down Washington, D.C.’s complete ban on handguns. Before the decision, people in the District could own a rifle or a shotgun, it...

At this Sunday’s town-hall style presidential debate the public is able to vote for their favorite questions. The ABC News and CNN moderators plan on using the 30 questions that receive the most votes. Largely because of efforts by gun control organizations, the current top two questions are both on gun control. The first is, “Would you support requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales?” and the second is, "How will you ensure the 2nd amendment is protected?” By Sunday morning at this writing, those questions had received 73,844 and 64,041 votes, respectively, well ahead of the third-place question...

Is Donald Trump's "law and order" campaign just code for racism? The media and Hillary Clinton sure believe so. After Trump's recent talk in Chester, the front page of the New York Times criticized him for supporting the deportation of people who have been charged with crimes and the aggressive profiling of terrorism suspects as racist and counterproductive. The theme is echoed with Clinton attacks that Donald Trump appeals to "xenophobic, racist, misogynistic" people. But who actually cares more about African Americans, in particular poor blacks, who are the most likely victims of violent crime? High crime rates in urban...

St. Cloud is still reeling from the stabbing of nine people on Sept. 17. The terrorist yelled “Allahu akbar!” as he attacked shoppers at the Crossroads Center mall. A bombing in New York City left 29 people wounded. The Cascade Mall in Burlington, Wash., was next, with five people shot to death. While investigations are still ongoing, all of the attacks are likely to be similarly-motivated and perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. Similar deadly attacks have included the Boston Marathon bombings, the Chattanooga and Little Rock military recruiting office attacks, San Bernardino, and earlier this year the Orlando nightclub shooting. Minnesota’s...

Dr. John Lott is the go-to expert when it comes to crime data and Second Amendment rights. His studies from the Crime Prevention Center have been cited in numerous pieces, including ones published here on Townhall, about the Left’s incessant, and often ridiculous, efforts to strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights. His studies have proven that contrary to what the anti-gun Left says about concealed carry holders, they’re actually more law-abiding than law enforcement. . . . In Oregon, Christopher Harper-Mercer was able to kill nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg last year. Oregon has a universal...

The new Harvard-Northeastern survey is very disappointing. There are two points to this survey. That the percentage of the population owning guns is falling and that a very small percent of the population is buying a huge number of guns. The new book The War on Guns has a chapter showing that both of these points are inaccurate. — If one looks at all the surveys on the question of changes in gun ownership, most surveys show that gun ownership rates have been constant over time (some evidence shows that gun ownership has been increasing). A brief discussion of some...

Carole MacNeil interviews John Lott, author of "The War on Guns" on September 17, 2016 about Donald Trumps' statements on Hillary Clinton and gun control http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/767532099852

Federal lawmakers seeking to pinpoint the number of illegal immigrants who successfully sneak across the southern border ordered up a report from the Department of Homeland Security, but the agency refuses to release it and instead cites a misleading statistic that overstates the number who are nabbed, sources told Fox News. DHS denied it is holding back the report, but sources say it was completed in November and that it shows roughly half of adults who attempt to cross the border make it - approximately 250,000 in total. But that number is at odds with DHS’ official estimates. The agency...

Shouldn’t journalists who want to tackle the issues related to illegal use of guns in America, and thereby help us find real solutions to violent crime in places like Chicago’s South Side, start by being honest? John Lott thinks so. It is this principled position that caused him to agree, despite his prior experiences, to be interviewed for Katie Couric’s film “Under The Gun.” As an expert on these issues, he hoped to offer some perspective and balance. Although he says he went into the interview like a person readying himself to be grilled by a prosecutor, even he was...

It's a sustained game of whack-a-mole. Up pops the claim, and in comes the hammer. Bang! Bang! Bang! And that's why you're wrong. Believe that most academics are in favor of more gun control? Bang, you're wrong. Convinced that extending background checks is a no-brainer? Bang, you're wrong. Outraged that research into "gun violence" is outlawed in the United States? Bang, bang, bang again. Nothing escapes Lott's gaze: Not the idea that American gun violence is unique among the world's nations; not the claim that Australia's harsh restrictions yielded a worthwhile outcome; not the recent hysteria over the prevalence of...

’ve just finished reading one of the best books on gun control to come out in some time and wanted to share some of the experience with you. The timely and superbly written tome by John R. Lott Jr. is titled, “The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies.” You may remember John Lott from our previous coverage here of both gun control and crime in the United States. Some of his previous work included an analysis of the different ways that economists and criminologists view gun ownership, which he revisits in this book. Long before that, John...