Flutterby™! : John Lott on guns 2004-09-04 19:03:14.632059+00

John Lott on guns

2004-09-04 19:03:14.632059+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

Snitched from La Di Da: John Lott on media bias against guns

#Comment Re: John Lott made: 2004-09-06 14:16:46.407664+00 by: Bryant

Well, except that it's John Lott, who is about the most embarassing advocate for gun rights I know of. I don't want that guy representing my views. E.g., Lott on voting machines:

"After the election, most electronic voting machines transfer the election results to a compact disk or some other 'read only' format. These CDs are then taken to a central location where they are read into a computer."

And he's prone to fabricating identities with which he reviews his own books on Amazon, posts about himself on Usenet... bleh.

As to this article... yeah. The Applachian Law School story is great, but it's just ironic that Lott is slamming the media for not reporting the complete story. He keeps leaving out the fact that Bridges was a police officer, which makes him less useful for supporting the case for civilian gun ownership.

One can do better than John Lott, and should. IMHO, he's setting gun rights advocacy back.

I agree that Lott badly damaged his reputation by posting positive reviews of himself pseudonymously.

However, whatever his faults, the article makes an important and true point about media bias. And he does mention the law enforcement backgrounds of the students although he admittedly doesn't emphasize it:

"...Many stories mentioned the law-enforcement or military backgrounds of these student heroes, but virtually all of the media, in discussing how the killer was stopped, failed to mention the students' guns..."

What he doesn't mention, however, is the role (or lack thereof) that the guns played in the apprehension. Bridges says he pointed his gun at the gunman, but none of the other witnesses remember that.

The thing about Lott is that you always have to read anything he writes with an exceedingly critical eye, and frankly, I'd rather spend my time reading someone who has integrity.

Yow. Thanks for that review of Lott. I was going to say that it sounds like there are some features I need to add to the weblogging software regarding keeping track of people so I know when to use them for sources, because now that you mention it I seem to remember something about this guy, but I actually looked back through the archives and found that hadn't mentioned him before.