Interview on Adelaide, Australia's big talk radio station 1395 AM on gun control in the US and the World

 CPRC's John Lott talked to Leon Byner about gun control in the US and other countries (Thursday, March 10, 2016 from 6:35 to 6:43 PM EST, 11:05 to 11:13 AM local Adelaide, Australia time).

The interview is available here.

interview with Melissa Kerr on Sunny 99.9fm El Paso, TX: Discussion on new laws to allow Campus Carry and Open Carry of Firearms in Texas

I spoke with show host Melissa Kerr of Sunny 99.9fm El Paso, Texas about a new law in Texas that allows the open carrying of legal firearms, which took effect this January. Texas became the 46th state which allows open carry. There were concerns before the law took place but those concerns have not proven to be a real issue.  Most of the discussion focused on Texas' new campus carry law.

Audio available here.

Share CPRC's graphic: Do Background Checks on Private Firearm Transfers Help Stop Mass Public Shootings?

Please share our graphic!  Click on graphic to enlarge.  A copy of the paper upon which this graphic is based is available here.

My newest piece at Fox News: "You know the case for background checks is weak if . . ."

John Lott's newest piece at Fox News is on the extremely low quality of research by public health researchers starts this way:

Academic advocates of gun control apparently need to manipulate the data in order to argue for background checks on private gun transfers.  Even the prestigious medical journal, the Lancet, does not seem to be above publishing junk science on gun control.  There has been extensive, glowing media coverage from the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Reuters, and US News & World Report. 

Currently, background checks must be performed when a gun is purchased from a dealer.  “Expanded” background check laws would require that checks also be conducted on private transfers of guns (say between a father and a son or with a neighbor). 

These laws exist in 19 states.  Of course, previous public health researchers simultaneously carefully pick one state at a time to examine (Missouri or Connecticut), which years to look at, and what types of crime to study.  To do the matter justice, a researcher really must look at all of the states that passed the laws, and then compare the changes in crime rates between those states that passed the laws to those that didn’t. 

Using data from 2010, the new Lancet study claims that these background checks on private transfers will reduce state firearms deaths (homicides plus suicides) by 57 percent.  Yet, few researchers would look at firearm deaths across states in one year. 

To put this in perspective, let’s look at another simplistic comparison.  A lot of people like to point to the UK’s lower homicide rate and fewer guns and attribute this to strict gun control laws. Many cite this as proof that gun control reduces homicides.  But there is a problem. The UK had an even lower homicide rate before the country banned handguns.  After the ban, homicide rates rose by 50 percent over for the next 8 years. 

The point is that homicide or suicide rates can differ for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with gun control, and that simply looking across countries or states is often quite misleading. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

Something that I should have posted before: "Third Democratic official reportedly likens Republicans to Nazis"

From Fox News:

Another Democratic official on Wednesday invoked Nazis while describing Republicans, in the third such incident this week as Democratic leaders gathered in Charlotte for their national convention.  

South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian compared the state’s Republican female governor, Nikki Haley, to Adolf Hitler’s mistress and eventual wife, while speaking Wednesday at a delegation breakfast in Charlotte, according to The State newspaper. 

“She was down in the bunker a la Eva Braun,” Harpootlian reportedly said, referring to Haley’s daily news briefings inside a basement studio at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. . . . .

Pat Lehman, the dean of the Kansas Democratic delegation, likened the talking points of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign to the “big lie” strategy used by the Nazis, according to a report by the Wichita Eagle. 

“It’s like Hitler said, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big lie, and if you tell it often enough and say it in a loud enough voice, some people are going to believe you,” Lehman reportedly said this week. . . . 

Similarly, the chairman of the California Democratic Party earlier this week compared Republican tactics -- and specifically Paul Ryan's convention remarks -- to the tactics of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. 

California Democratic chief John Burton made the remarks Monday in an interview with San Francisco station KCBS while in Charlotte, N.C. 

"They lie and they don't care if people think they lie ... Joseph Goebbels -- the big lie, you keep repeating it," Burton said. "That was Goebbels, the big lie." . . .