John Lott

Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down Chicago’s and Washington, D.C.’s gun control laws. Politicians predicted disaster. “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence,” Washington’s

Academic debates occasionally get pretty ugly, and that is just the way it is. Sometimes they get really very ugly. There is one case that has bothered me for several years. James Q. Wilson is now 80 years old, and

If Congress and the president don’t raise the debt ceiling, the consequences will be disastrous, politicians and pundits tell us, — the equivalent of an economic Armageddon. And President Obama warns that the consequences are so dire that he cannot

Carrying a gun protects people from criminals, but carrying an audio recorder can also pretty important. The Phildelphia Daily News yesterday showed just how valuable a tape recorder can be. Some police in Philadelphia apparently didn’t know what Pennsylvania and

Is President Obama really the Deficit-Cutter-in-Chief? After racking up massive deficits through his various Stimulus programs and facing continued losses from Obamacare, the White House is now trying to portray Obama as taking a leading role in solving the problem.

Everyone wants to keep guns away from criminals, but gun control advocates, such as Media Matters, don’t want to acknowledge that there are costs to disarming law-abiding citizens. Lately Media Matters has particularly been incensed that anyone would point out

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne seems to actually believe the Obama administration’s claim that he has helped gun rights (see here). Yet, it almost seems as if many on the left attack Obama simply to make him appear more moderate

Tom Brokaw said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on January 13: “Gun control is too simple a phrase to define all the complications and nuances of it, frankly. In Arizona they have a wide open system. I would be nervous about

Only someone at the New York Times would claim that their paper was not “anywhere close” to Fox News on bias. What was surprising was the source of this trashing. Clark Hoyt, the just retired ombudsman of the New York

People walking the streets armed with guns must be dangerous, right? The Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center keep claiming that even those individuals who have legally obtained permits to carry concealed handguns are extremely dangerous. With millions of

Despite all our experience with permitted concealed handguns, the debate continues. There are always fears about what might happen. A New York Times article on Monday repeated some of those concerns in an article on Utah’s permit system: Peter Hamm,

President Obama surely didn’t intend it, but he deserves some credit for last year’s 7.4 percent drop in murder rates. His election caused gun sales to soar, and crime rates to plummet. While gun sales started notably rising in October

Gun owners might not feel besieged right now, but they should be very concerned. Last week the Obama administration announced its support for the UN Small Arms Treaty. This treaty poses real risks for freedom and safety in the United

“Human Target” is a fun show to watch. Christopher Chance (Mark Valley) is an expert at self-defense and his job is to protect people from life-threatening situations. This episode is about the case that moved Chance from being an assassin

Has “Burn Notice” gotten new writers? They used to have some very insightful comments about guns and crime (e.g., see the episode in season 2 entitled “Lesser Evil”). Yet, now one needs a scorecard to keep tracks of all the

The District of Columbia’s murder rate plummeted by an astounding 25 percent last year, much faster than for the US as a whole or for similarly sized cities. If you had asked Chicago’s Mayor Daley, that wasn’t supposed to happen.

The global warming scandal keeps getting worse. Revelations over the last few weeks show that many important assertions in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were based on misquotes and false claims from environmental groups, not on published academic

Trillions of dollars are at stake in the man-made global warming debate. The Climategate scandal – where leaked emails and computer programs involve dozens of prominent scientists worldwide – has almost everything one would want in a good scandal: conspiracies,

USA’s new series “Royal Pains” is about Dr. Hank Lawson (Mark Feuerstein), who serves as a “concierge doctor” to the rich and semi-famous residents of the Hamptons. In the course of the show, there are some unfortunate public policy claims

When script writers run out of something else to say (e.g., there are only so many times they can say everyone is uninsured and miserable about it), guns and gun makers are easily available to demonize. “Life” and “House” have

The TV series “Chuck” this last week had some dialogue on the benefits of carrying one’s gun with them (Chuck Versus the Predator). Chuck (Zachary Levi) formulated a mission at the Buy More electronic store and insisted the team —

The US Department of Justice released a very important report in January, but it got little attention. The report found that 80 percent of crime in the US was gang related and that the vast majority of that was drug

The season finale of “Burn Notice,” entitled “Lesser Evil,” involves Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) trying to keep both himself and Madeline Weston, his mom (Sharon Gless), safe from some angry spies. Madeline and Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) are surrounded by

Could you imagine if Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush had used a teleprompter to answer questions during a press conference? The late night joke writers wouldn’t have let it go until the President gave in to the merciless ridicule

These pictures were obtained here. If Gerald Ford had hit is head, I somehow suspect comedians would have had a field day with it. When Ford slipped on some wet steps while deplaning Air Force One, that single incident was

Shooting animals is so “brutal,” especially if they are shot from the air, right? Slamming Sarah Palin for “casting aside science” and “championing the slaughter of wildlife,” one would think that Ashley Judd’s stance in a new ad on hunting

Guns have figured frequently in “Boston Legal,” with Denny Crane (William Shatner) using them defensively from time to time. Recently, in episode 3 of season 5 (“Dances with Wolves“), Denny fired a gun to defend himself from a robber who

The Fox network’s “House M.D.” has never been very friendly towards guns. The last show of season 2 found House shot by a disgruntled former patient. In the ninth episode of season 5, someone demands medical treatment at the point

Local television coverage of a defensive gun use. A news story video of the man who came to this woman’s aid can be seen here. The criminal was apparently savagely beating the woman over the head with a beer bottle.

[youtube 7inFTve35gE nolink] Well, even though Adrian Monk couldn’t get the gun out of the gun safe at least the safe itself could be used as a weapon. This is one of the very few TV shows that have made