Bogus Gun Research

Posted: Feb 20, 2019 12:01 AM
Bogus Gun Research

Source: (AP Photo/Philip Kamrass)

Last week Rep. Nancy Pelosi warned President Donald Trump that if he declared an "emergency" to build a wall, "think what a president with different values can present... Why don't you declare (the epidemic of gun violence in America) an emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would... A Democratic president can declare emergencies as well."


Warren tweeted: "Gun violence is an emergency. Climate change is an emergency..."


Not every problem in America should be declared an emergency -- or used by a president to justify acting without Congress.

But why are guns on the Democrats' "emergency" list anyway?

One reason is sloppy reporting by lazy media.

Last year, they claimed that there were school shootings at "hundreds of schools." It was "an almost daily occurrence" in the U.S., some said.




A few years ago, much of the media claimed that the U.S. has "the most mass shootings of any country in the world." President Barack Obama added it's "a pattern now that has no parallel anywhere else."

CNN and The L.A. Times wrote about "Why the U.S. Has the Most Mass Shootings." ("The United States has more guns.")

But the U.S. doesn't have the most mass shootings, says Lott. It's a myth created by University of Alabama associate professor Adam Lankford, a myth repeated by anti-gun media in hundreds of news stories.

"Lankford claimed that since 1966 there were 90 mass public shooters in the United States, more than any other country," says Lott. "Lankford claimed 'complete data' were available from 171 countries."

But how could that be? Many governments don't collect such data and even fewer have information from before the days of the internet.


He won't say.

"That's academic malpractice," says Lott in my video about the controversy.

I'm not surprised that Lankford didn't reply to Lott's emails. Lott is known as pro-gun. (He wrote the book "More Guns, Less Crime.") But Lankford also won't explain his data to me, The Washington Post or even his fellow gun control advocates.

When Lott's research center checked the data, using Lankford's own definition of a mass shooting, "four or more people killed," the center found 3,000 shootings around the world. Lankford claimed there were only 202.

Lankford said he excludes "sponsored terrorism" but does not define what he means by that. To be safe, Lott removed terrorism cases from his data. He still found 709 shootings -- more than triple the number Lankford reported.



If journalists had just demanded Lankford explain his study methods before touting his results, his "more mass shootings" myth would never have spread.

So if Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren ever follow through on their threat to declare gun violence a "national emergency," be sure to check their math.

Or just remember the wisdom of the Second Amendment.

Government's desire to control us -- and to lie to make its case -- is the real emergency.