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John Lott

ABC Ignores Evidence Guns Useful in Confronting Criminals

By Brad Wilmouth | April 13, 2009 | 12:55

On Friday’s World News with Charles Gibson on ABC, substitute anchor Diane Sawyer previewed the same night’s special on guns in America, "If I Only Had a Gun," and, on World News, ran a report focusing on how challenging it is to react to a gunman when taken by surprise, even if one is armed. ABC News enlisted the services of police officers to train college students in firearm use and then had the students react to one of the officers as he pretended to be a crazed gunman and burst into a small lecture room. Sawyer informed viewers: "Our training is already more than almost half the states in the country require to carry a concealed weapon."

The report documented that all of the trained students performed poorly in trying to defend themselves. Sawyer narrated a clip of one such botched attempt at self-defense: "Joey struggles to get his gun out, but it's stuck in his shirt. He can't even get it out to aim it. Had this event been real, police say Joey would have been killed in the first five seconds." Each of the students taking part appeared to be wearing a T-shirt which the concealed handgun was tucked underneath.

But the report only focused on this one narrow scenario in which the law-abiding citizen is taken by surprise by a skilled gunman, while the report ignores other scenarios and crime situations when the record shows that armed citizens do sometimes succeed when forced to confront criminals.

In the May 31, 1999, National Review article, "Why New Gun Laws Won’t Work," University of Chicago Professor John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, wrote about two then-recent school shooting sprees that were cut short when an armed citizen in each case used his own weapon to capture the gunman. Lott:

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Are Women Responsible For Growth in Goverment?

By Terry Ann Rendon | May 26, 2008 | 20:59

John R. Lott, Jr. makes a compelling case in his article posted over at Fox News. Lott writes:

Women's suffrage also explains much of the federal government's
growth from the 1920s to the 1960s. In the 45 years after the
adoption of suffrage, as women's voting rates gradually increased
until finally reaching the same level as men's, the size of state and
federal governments expanded as women became an increasingly
important part of the electorate.

But the battle between the sexes does not end there. During
the early 1970s, just as women's share of the voting population
was leveling off, something else was changing: The American
family began to break down, with rising divorce rates and increasing
numbers of out-of-wedlock births.

Over the course of women's lives, their political views on average
vary more than those of men. Young single women start out being
much more liberal than their male counterparts and are about 50
percent more likely to vote Democratic. As previously noted, these
women also support a higher, more progressive income tax as well
as more educational and welfare spending.

'Evening News' Distorts Severity of Food Inflation by Reporting Only Highest of Increases

By Jeff Poor | May 02, 2008 | 16:45

Although the economy is showing only a slow rate of growth, consumer spending actually showed an increase for the month of March. But, don't be fooled - that's a bad sign, according to "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric.

"[T]he government reported today that consumer spending in March shot up twice as much as economists were expecting, and it's not because we're buying more - it's because the prices are so much higher, especially food," Couric said on the May 1 broadcast.

However, crediting consumer spending growth, up 0.4 percent according to the Commerce Department, to food inflation is not accurate, according to economist Dr. John Lott.