The Latest Media Matters attack: CBS Evening News Allows me To "Falsely Connect Gun Laws To Higher Murder Rates"

Since Media Matters latest attack piece leads off with just referencing their list of all their attacks on me, let me start with this link.

Lott is technically correct that the D.C. murder rate in 1976 -- the year a ban on private ownership or possession of handguns in nearly all circumstances went into effect -- was 26.8 people per 100,000 residents, and was 31.4 in 2008, the last year the ban was in place. But those two data points don't tell the whole story. For example, the murder rate in the last full year in which D.C. did not have a gun ban, 1975, was 32.8  -- higher than the murder rate when the ban ended.

People can judge for themselves what I have written about the crime rates in DC.  DC's murder rate was falling relative to the other largest fifty cities prior to the ban and they rising relative to those cities afterwards.  

Data from Australia also casts doubt on Lott's premise that more restrictions on firearms equal more murders. Following a series of mass shootings that culminated with the 1996 Fort Arthur massacre of 35 people, Australia enacted extremely restrictive gun laws that placed strong limits on firearm ownership -- especially for handguns and semi-automatic rifles -- and confiscated 650,000 privately owned guns. 

My comment was about gun bans.  The Australian gun buyback reduced gun ownership dramatically, but after that people were allowed to go out and buy guns again (though they now had to get licensed in many cases).  The purchases eventually raised the gun ownership rate back to where it was before the buyback.  A full discussion can be seen in my testimony available here.