Testifying before the Nevada Assembly Judiciary Committee on eliminating many Gun-Free Zones

From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

. . . Proponents of the bill included John Lott, an academic and president of an organization called the Crime Prevention Research Center, who offered statistics to debunk some of the arguments against the bill.
Lott said his review shows no evidence in the states where campus carry is allowed that a permit holder has ever committed a crime on a campus. There were three accidents which resulted in no harm, he said. There are no cases of a permit holder shooting an innocent bystander and there are no cases of responding law enforcement shooting a permit holder by mistake, he said.
Lott said his review of mass shooting incidents shows that perpetrators intentionally seek out gun-free areas to commit their crimes.
The group Media Matters calls Lott a “discredited gun researcher” who makes false claims about gun violence. Lott’s group is associated with NRA member Ted Nugent. Media Matters says it is dedicated to correcting “conservative misinformation” in the U.S. media.
But Lott defended his research, and said Media Matters for several years would not let him correct the errors in the many attacks on him in the comment section on their site.
“They won’t even let their readers know there is a response,” he said.
Lott said his organization also has a prestigious academic advisory board.
The published research runs about 70 percent finding a benefit from campus carry laws for reduced crime to 30 percent showing no effect, he said.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures in information dated from February 2015, 23 states let universities make the call on carrying concealed weapons, 20 ban weapons and seven, including Utah, Colorado and Idaho, allow firearms to be carried with some limitations. . . .

From the Las Vegas Sun:

. . . The testimony was emotionally charged on both sides and involved victims of violent crimes who were divided on the effect of guns at schools, places that have been home to some of the nation’s most horrific mass shootings in recent years.
Fiore brought in John Lott, a nationally known gun-law expert and author of the book “More Guns, Less Crime.”
Democratic lawmakers peppered him with questions about the potential of a campus carry permit holder shooting an innocent bystander.
Lott said he’s found no examples of such instances in his research across the country. He said permit holders are more lawful citizens than police officers and non-permit holders.
“The question is not how young people behave,” he said. “The question is about how permit holders behave.” . . .

Media Matters' systematic removal of my responses from their website, also most of my responses to their attacks in one place

I was going to post this in June this year when I thought that the Washington Post's Eric Wemple was going to run a story on what Media Matters' behavior, but I put it off as I waited for him to run something.  In any case, here is the information that I was going to post:

ORIGINAL POST:

Media Matters' practices what I call hit-and-run journalism, where they make an attack and ignore any response that is provided.  I have tried over about seven years to put up comments on their website responding to these claims (often quotes out of context or deliberately misread data).  It appears to me that Media Matters wants to leave their readers with the impression that the other side never provides a response to their claims.  

Media Matters has removed all sorts of comments that I have placed on their website (indeed, I never kept count, but it is a lot), even ones that involve me explaining to people why my eyebrows are deformed because of surgery that I had as a kid.  Here is one case recently where they made the mistake of removing my comments, but not the comments that responded to my original post.

After Erik Wemple from the Washington Post contacted them about their removal of my comments, some recent ones reappeared.  In this screen shot you can see Media Matters putting back the links to my response to one of their attacks (in this case see the second comment from the bottom).

Media Matters apparently told Wemple that my comments were removed because their readers had tagged them as offensive.  But Media Matters only very recently changed their system for putting up comments.  Prior to that they would have to approve someone twelve times before their comments would automatically be posted on their website.  The problem is that their screeners would virtually never let any of my comments through (surely not enough that I ever got close to the magic number of twelve).  This problem over many years had absolutely nothing to do with their readers supposed complaints.  In addition, Media Matters confirmed to Wemple that I had previously complained to them multiple times over the last seven years about them refusing to publish my comments.

More information will be provided soon.  But you can see that I have long complained about Media Matters sanitizing its comment section.  Indeed, I have complained in person several times to people from David Brock on down from at least 2008.  I have also made notes about this attempt to shield their readers from my responses on my website (see links below) as well as on Twitter.  A couple of my many responses to Media Matters posts on Twitter can be seen here.  One from May 2012 (note that I only joined Twitter in March 2012):

Here is one from mid-2013.

Here are numerous other Tweets from 2013 and the beginning of 2014.

I also have copies of emails that I sent them.  Other exchanges about there unwillingness to post my comments were made in person and on the telephone.

When Media Matters has attacked me, I would write up a response and post a link to the comment on their website.  Here are 23 times that I wrote up and posted, though I haven't gone through everything that I have written and I am sure that there were more responses.  Below I first show Media Matters' title and then a link to their claims and then my response.

-- Who Is Gun Advocate John Lott?

My response

-- Watch A Medal Of Honor Recipient Smack Down A Pro-Gun Researcher's "Foolish" Plan To Arm Troops On Bases

My response

-- On Obama's Surgeon General Nominee, It's Medical Experts Vs. Discredited Gun Zealots

My response

-- The NRA Encourages Its Members To Lie To Their Families At Thanksgiving

My response

-- Gun Researcher John Lott Offers False Firearm Statistics Days Before Congressional Appearance

My response

-- Gun Advocate John Lott: Travyon Martin's Mother Used As A Prop To Make Stand Your Ground Seem Racist

My response

-- The Nine Worst Claims About Guns From John Lott's New Book

My response

-- New Report Debunks Right-Wing Falsehood About Public Mass Shootings

My response

-- Why Is NY Times Citing Discredited Gun Researcher John Lott?

My response

-- Gun "Researcher" Pushes Sham Statistics In The Wall Street Journal

My response

-- Discredited Gun Researcher John Lott's Failed Attempt To Correct Obama's Gun Statistic

My response and a Washington Post Fact Checker article available here.

-- John Lott Tries To Substantiate His Debunked Assertions By Repeating Them

My response

-- John Lott Vs. The FBI

My response

-- "Mother Jones and Media Matters bungle study on Mass Public Shootings" 

My response.

--  "Napolitano And John Lott Advocate For Allowing People To Carry Concealed Guns Without Permits" 

My response

-- Coulter: High-Capacity Magazine Put Loughner "At A Disadvantage" During Massacre

My response

-- John Lott Continues Media Tour In Defense Of "Kill At Will"

My response

-- John Lott Tries To Substantiate His Debunked Assertions By Repeating Them

My response

-- Progressive Economists Refute AP, Defend The Buffett Rule

My response

-- Fox Column Shrugs Off Unprecedented Obstruction Of Obama's Judicial Nominees

My response

Other responses to Media Matters by me:
Media Matters, 'Stand Your Ground' and me 
David Brock, Media Matters and gun control hypocrisy
MEDIA MATTERS' POTENTIALLY LETHAL DISTORTIONS ON GUNS

"Media Matter's dishonest attacks on Fox News" -- discussion here.

Media Matters has also done everything from doctoring pictures of me (see here) to .

Here is a response that I didn't post on Media Matters website.

-- Fox's Bolling Inadvertently Advocates For Gun-Free Zones

My response.

Here is a response that I tried posting about seven weeks after I sent Erik Wemple the original story.

-- "Gun Researcher John Lott Relies On Falsehoods To Downplay Gun Violence Threat To Women"

My response

Finally, let me point to a column that Ann Coulter has on this general topic, where she takes on the claims that keep on calling me "Discredited." See Ann's column available here.

More Media Matters mistakes on gun-free zones

On April 16, 2014, Media Matters has a new post entitled: "Fox's Bolling Inadvertently Advocates For Gun-Free Zones."

1) "Bolling has been a vocal critic of gun-free zones, frequently promoting the right-wing misnomer that mass shooters target places like schools where guns are banned. According to Bolling's logic, gun-free zones are 'easy targets for whackos,' so 'it's time to take those gun-free zones signs down.' He's argued that mass shootings 'would happen with far less frequency' if no such gun bans existed."

Media Matters' link go back to previous posts that they have put up on the topic.  I have put up some notes on their incorrect statements available here. 

The point of this discussion was that Michael Bloomberg has 24 hour/7 day a week armed body guards.  He understands the benefits from guns for protection, but he opposes others being able to have the same protection.  That he supports a gun-free zone for everyone but himself.  

Of course, Media Matters doesn't directly deal with this point.

Instead, Media Matters points out that gun shows ask patrons not to have guns loaded.  They also make it sound as if there are attacks involving multiple victim public shootings that occur at gun shows.  

2) When shootings do occasionally occur at gun shows, it's been because people don't follow these rules and bring in loaded weapons. As CNN reported in the case of an accidental shooting at a gun show last year, "The original owner of the Taurus semi-automatic 9 mm handgun used in the shooting brought the firearm into the show fully loaded. This is despite the policy of searches to make sure all guns are not loaded and rendered safe before others can handle them."

Gun shows are hardly gun-free zones.  Even in shows where guns are unloaded, both guns and ammunition are easily accessible.  If an attack were to occur, in seconds the guns could be loaded.  There are so many guns that could quickly be loaded at a gun show, it would make only a small difference in being able to respond quickly to an attack.  With lots of people handling guns at a show, the sponsors want to make sure that there are no accidental discharges.  With no real chance of a successful mass shooting or a robbery, it seems reasonable to limit risks of accidental shootings.  The one case that Media Matters points to is an accidental shooting. 

3) "Studies show that most mass shootings in recent years have occurred in places where guns were allowed, and experts say that gun-free zones do not encourage mass shootings. It seems Bolling has finally agreed, albeit inadvertently."

In order, the responses to the links that Media Matters makes are "studies show" available here.  The discussion in the link to "occurred" attacks research that Ann Coulter cites by myself and William Landes, but the problem is that their attack has nothing to do with the research.  In the final link ("experts say"), Media Matters relies on a report by Mother Jones.  The problems with that article are available here.

It was nice of Greg Gutfeld to mention me in his discussion.

Media Matters resisting effort by staff to form union

To say that Media Matters vocally supports unions and union causes would be a bit of an understatement.  

Media Matters for America is apparently resisting an effort by Service Employees International Union Local 500 to unionize its staff. 

Last week, the union filed a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board, indicating that the nonprofit media watchdog organization rejected an effort by the union to organize MMFA's staff through a Card Check election. . . . .

For some reason I suspect that if a conservative organization rejected such an effort at unionization, it would be something that they would put up more than a few scathing posts on. 

Media Matters, TPM, and others mislead over my interview on MSNBC: Gun-free zones on military bases

An analysis of Media Matters' attacks on me is available here.  So far their attack has been the lead story on their website for almost an entire day.  Do you think that Media Matters and TPM don't like me?

Media Matters defends Obama surgeon general nominee Vivek Murthy against my op-ed at Fox News

My op-ed yesterday at Fox News is available here.  Well, Media Matters couldn't stay away from attacking my piece.  Below I will try to give a quick point by point response.

Linking back to a post that Media Matters had on December 17, 2012, Media Matters claims, in their typical evenhanded fashion, that I have been "thoroughly discredited."  My response to their claims is available here.  Responses to other claims against me by Media Matters are available here and here.

Here are some responses to Media Matters' current claims.

1) "Seizing on a 2013 letter that Murthy's organization Doctors for America authored after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Lott expressed concern that Murthy's group "has advocated that physicians question parents about their gun ownership and counsel them not to own guns or always to store them locked up." This type of doctor-patient counseling is non-controversial and aims to prevent gun accidents involving children. The practice is also protected by the First Amendment and attempts to regulate doctors' speech have been struck down as unconstitutional."

The point here is not that doctors can't do this type of advising, but what the implications of such advice will be.  My point is that my research finds that mandating that people lock up their guns actually encourages criminals to attack people in their homes and it increases death rates.  My op-ed makes this argument clear on two points: having people lock up their guns doesn't reduce accidental gun deaths or suicides among children and that it increases deaths from crimes.  Media Matters response is to cite a 1997 paper by Cummings, Grossman, Rivara, and Koepsell that uses panel data on accidental deaths and another is a poorly done case control study that is typical of public health researchers (Media Matters actually cites this last study twice as if it were two different studies), but they ignore that my research has discussed the earlier 1997 paper in depth and that there is a large literature on the problems with these "case control" studies (see chapter 2 here).  

Here is one of my discussions on the 1997 paper:

The Cummings et al., supra note 15, research provides evidence of a 23 percent drop in juvenile accidental gun deaths after the passage of safe-storage laws. Juvenile accidental gun deaths did decline after the passage of the law, but what Cummings et al. miss is that these accidental deaths declined even faster in the states without these laws. While the Cummings et al. piece examined national data, it did not use fixed year effects, which would have allowed them to test whether the safe-storage states were experiencing a drop relative to the rest of the country. The simple dummy variable that they use is only picking up whether the average juvenile accidental death rate is lower after the passage of safe-storage laws. One potential problem with this approach is that any secular decline in accidental gun deaths would produce a lower average rate after the law even if the rate of decline was not affected by the law. Finally, because they did not break down the results by type of gun or, as we shall do later, by a more detailed age breakdown, they never observed some of the anomalies that we will show for some categories of accidental gun deaths (for example, for handguns) actually rising after the passage of safe-storage laws. In a recent interview with USA Today, Cummings stated “that, unlike Lott, he didn’t explore the possibility that gun-storage laws actually cause crime. ‘I guess I wouldn’t have, because it seems like a very implausible connection,’ Cummings says. ‘But I guess anything’s conceivable.’ ” (Martin Kasindorf, Study: Gun-Lockup Laws Can Be Harmful, USA Today, May 11, 2000, at 8A.) 

So Cummings et al didn't even try to look at the net effect of safe storage laws on safety.

2) "Finding a government conspiracy in Murthy's nomination, Lott also argued that Doctors for America's support for allowing doctors to document gun ownership means that doctors could forward this information to the government as a 'way of registering guns.'"

Besides referring to my comment as a conspiracy theory, Media Matters doesn't really address the concern.  If doctors record gun ownership information and if this gets forwarded along with the general medical records that are being given to the federal government, the government will be able to do a simple search to see who owns guns.  It would be useful for Media Matters to explain why my point is wrong.

3) "Turning back to the topic of gun safety, Lott wrote that if Murthy is "really worried about children's safety," he should focus on other dangers to children including "a swimming pool, chemicals and medications, bathtubs, water buckets, bicycles, cars and items that can cause suffocation.  This argument is premised on the baseless assumption that Murthy has privileged discussing safe gun practices over other safety concerns. But as the Doctors for America letter cited by Lott notes, 'One of our most important tasks as health care providers is to counsel our patients about how to take care of themselves and prevent disease and injury. We counsel patients about tobacco cessation, educate them about diet, and remind them to wear seatbelts and sunscreen.'"

Sorry Media Matters, but the cases that I raised were not ones that were in Murthy's list, and I raised them for precisely the reason that they represented much greater risks in the home than the guns that Murthy is so fixated on.  For car accidents, the risk exists even when children are wearing seat belts.  If Murthy really wanted to advise parents of all the risks in the home and if he did it in order of risk, it would be a long time before he got to accidental gun deaths for children.  From what I wrote at Fox News:

If Murthy really worried about children's safety, his time would be better spent advocating that doctors ask patients about other, greater dangers lurking around the children’s and their playmates' homes: a swimming pool, chemicals and medications, bathtubs, water buckets, bicycles, cars and items that can cause suffocation. . . . 

4) Media Matters then cites Tim Lambert, a computer scientist from Australia, to bolster their claim that my research can't be trusted, but they ignore that Lambert has been caught by a computer scientist at the University of Maryland making numerous false claims and fabricating discussions that were supposedly by me.

5) "Citing data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Lott wrote, "Accidental gun deaths involving children are especially horrible, but they are fortunately rare." Defining "rare" is subjective, but it is worth noting thatMother Jones used news reports to identify 84 children aged 12 and under who died in gun accidents in a one-year period in 2012-2013. The New York Times has reported that official figures on gun accidents involving children are undercounted "because of idiosyncrasies in how such deaths are classified by the authorities." Relative to other nations, accidental gun deaths involving children are not rare in the United States, where the CDC found children are nine times more likely to die in accidents compared to other high-income nations."

The New York Times and Mother Jones articles depend on very unreliable initial news stories.  The CDC has much more detailed data on these cases and they have information that might not have been revealed until later in the investigation.  For example, in the case of an accidental shooting, the adult responsible might try to blame a child in the home for the tragedy because they believe that a young child will not be punished while the adult could end up in jail.

My results might be different in part because I use the cases identified by CDC and the New York Times and Mother Jones rely on initial newspaper stories.

6) "In a final dubious claim, Lott wrote that "states that have mandated that people lock up their guns didn't see a reduction in accidental gun deaths or suicides for children or teenagers," citing his own research on the topic. But according to three studies published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, safe storage laws were associated with reductions in youth accidents and suicides."

See point number 1 above.  Note also that the last two links in this paragraph are actually to the same paper.

7) "This figure is dated because of the NRA's largely successful effort dating to the 1990s to prevent the CDC from researching gun violence."

Of course, this claim is also false.  The 1996 budget amendment didn't stop the CDC from doing research and indeed government funded research from a public health prospective has increased dramatically since then.  Over all, the number of medical journal articles on firearms either stayed the same or rose.  Bloomberg only got his claim that the number of medical journal papers on firearms fell because he was actually measuring firearms papers as a percentage of all medical journal articles.  Both firearms research and non-firearms research rose, but non-firearms research rose by a larger amount.

Because of Media Matters past altering of their posts without acknowledging that they have done so, here are screen shots of their current discussion.

Google manipulating news searches for left wing political ends?: A case study

Google has previously been accused of "purging Conservative news sites."  There are other accusations that Google has manipulated search to harm Rick Santorum (more here).  Al Gore has been a Senior Advisor to Google. Well, I decided to do a test by searching on my own name.  Here is what I get on my name for Google and Bing for "best match" news search.

The first screen shot shows what happens with Bing and the second with Google.  Notice how under Google the lead searches are for a couple Media Matters pieces and other attacks on me.  But for Bing the first search findings are for Fox News; for John Lott, the sports writer who writes about the Toronto Blue Jays; and then outdoor life.com and the Daily Caller and Breitbart.  The Media Matters links come in at number 9.  Click on the screen shots to make them bigger.

I then tried doing the search using the "most recent" option for both searches.  With Bing, You get a lot stories from Outdoorlife and Shooting Sports News to Fox News and the Daily Caller.  For Google, two of the first three hits are attacks on me.  Three of the first six are attacks.  And Media Matters shows up in two of the first six hits.

So why does Google put so much more weight on pieces in Media Matters?  Interestingly, there were other "Opposing Views" columns that were favorable to me, but Google only seems to pick up the critical columns.

This bias in Google searches is something that I have seen over the years, but it isn't just important to me, it is Google's way of impacting the political debate and giving it a decidedly leftward tilt.

One final point, Bing seems to find a lot of stories that Google doesn't find.

A computer science professor that I know who specializes in these search questions wrote me:

this is the kind of thing we have seen for years, and seems to be a classic example in point. Google's secret sauce is flavored with larger doses of some sites than others, which is to say, their computation of page rank places more credibility on sites which emphasized one rather than the other set of sources. There are lots of benign reasons why this could be true in any one point example (and I can explain them in detail if you like), but to see this as a pattern over time tells us something about their algorithms. . . .

Media Matters falsely claims Blacks don't benefit from Stand Your Ground laws and too many other false points to list in a title

Media Matters continues its hit-and-run tactics.  Their typical approach is: Make a charge, assume no one will check out their claims (after all most Media Matters links are to other Media Matters posts), not respond to any comments placed at other places because that might allow their readers to see those responses, and not allow me to respond to the attacks on the Media Matters website.  For a long list of previous false Media Matters claims see this link here.

The front page of Media Matters website now contains this headline: "Gun advocate John Lott Lashes Out at Trayvon Martin's Mother." Seriously?  I said Martin's mom was one of "two very sympathetic witnesses. . . ."  And that "it's very hard to say anything when you're having to deal with a mother who has lost her son, under any circumstances. I have five kids; I can't imagine what it would be like to deal with that situation."  What I did say was that they were sympathetic women who had undergone a horrible tragedy and that I couldn't imagine going through myself, but that Trayvon Martin's death wasn't caused by Stand Your Ground laws.  How exactly is that lashing out at Sybrina Fulton?

Media Matters responds to my last point about the Stand Your Ground law not being relevant by making a series of points:

Lott's testimony largely argued that African-Americans benefit from Stand Your Ground laws, a falsehood invented by the right-wing media. . . .

If you want to see evidence that blacks benefit more than whites, see my discussions here, here, and here.

As to the claim that Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis cases occurred because there wasn't the need to retreat, Media Matters claims: 

In Martin's case, Lott employed a right-wing media canard to state on NRA News that because "the defense was never raised," by George Zimmerman's attorneys that the law was absent from the case. . . .

As usual, Media Matters' discussion is at best selective.  I didn't rely solely or even primarily on "the defense was never raised."  In numerous places I have extensively discussed the ability to retreat.  Two options are possible:

1) Trayvon Martin was the aggressor and George Zimmerman was on his back with Martin on top of him hitting him repeatedly. In that case, there would be no chance to retreat, no possibility for that portion of the law to apply.

2) Zimmerman was somehow the aggressor.  If so, the Florida Stand Your Ground law is very clear and I had this in my testimony to the Senate.  Florida law already states that the Stand Your Ground provision is:

“not available to a person who . . . initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself, unless: (a) . . . he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant . . .  or (b) In good faith, the person withdraws from physical contact with the assailant and indicates clearly to the assailant that he or she desires to withdraw and terminate the use of force, but the assailant continues or resumes the use of force.”

Isn't it pretty clear that even under Florida law if you initiate the confrontation you aren't allowed to Stand Your Ground.  Indeed, I read that portion of the law during the Senate hearing on October 29th on Stand Your Ground laws and Media Matters has put up a post on that hearing.  The reason why the judge gave the jurors the Stand Your Ground law is so that they could read the above passage. 

Media Matters goes on to assert:

In fact, Stand Your Ground was cited by local officials as the reason Zimmerman wasn't initially arrested, an explanation of the law was included in instructions to the jury, and a juror later cited the law by name as a reason for why Zimmerman was acquitted. . . .

Jacob Sullum has a useful discussion at Reason.com about the jury instruction and Juror B37's comment:

The "stand your ground" language that the jurors heard is part of the standard jury instruction in cases where the defendant claims his use of deadly force was justified. The defense asked for it to be included (why not?), and the judge agreed, but that does not mean it figured in the verdict. While Juror B37 did utter the phrase "stand your ground" a couple of times in the interview to which Fulton refers, she also made it clear that she believed the essential elements of Zimmerman's story: that Martin was the aggressor; that Zimmerman was pinned to the ground, unable to escape, when he fired his gun; and that Martin was assaulting Zimmerman in a way that made him reasonably fear for his life. That scenario has nothing to do with the right to stand your ground, and Zimmerman could have used exactly the same defense in any state, whether or not it imposes a duty to retreat. 

Perhaps the jurors were "confused," as Fulton suggests, misunderstanding what "stand your ground" means. If so, they were not alone.

The issue of the initial arrest was one of simple self defense.  If one actually reads the link provided by Media Matters, there is no specific mention of Stand Your Ground.  Instead, the city notes:

Why was George Zimmerman not arrested the night of the shooting? When the Sanford Police Department arrived at the scene of the incident, Mr. Zimmerman provided a statement claiming he acted in self defense which at the time was supported by physical evidence and testimony. By Florida Statute, law enforcement was PROHIBITED from making an arrest based on the facts and circumstances they had at the time.  . . . 

As to the Jordan Davis case, I explained during the hearing that claiming Stand Your Ground defense of not having to retreat is applicable doesn't mean that it actually applies to this case.  I said that if Jordan Davis' Mom is correct and "her son was listening to music and someone shot him simply for listening to loud music.  There was no threat there," the Stand Your Ground law isn't applicable.  There was no threat that a reasonable person would believe risked imminent death or serious injury.

Again, to protect against Media Matters re-editing their post, here are screen shots of what they put up.  Click on either to enlarge.

Discredited Media Matters offers more misleading information on John Lott's CNN appearance

Media Matters lives in a bubble of its own.  I have given up trying to post responses on its website and they will never directly respond to any posts that I put up on this blog, Fox News (e.g., here, here, and here), or other places.  I have previously directly responded to Media Matters incorrect claims about background checks in posts such as this available here.  Presumably, actually responding to my points or allowing me to respond would let Media Matters' followers know that their points are wrong.

Today, Media Matters has a new post on my appearance on CNN's New Day on Saturday.  What I have argued in the past is that the false positive rate for NICS background checks is probably some place between 95 and 99.8 percent.  The two newest NICS check annual reports under the Obama administration have cut down on the amount of information provided and thus made it even more difficult than it already was to determine the actual number of false positives.  Here is a small portion of one of my previous posts:

Some may remember the five times the late Senator Ted Kennedy was placed on a “no fly list.” If someone is flagged by the NICS system, it is because it appears that they didn’t put down something in their background that disqualified them from buying a gun. Yet, an initial denial does not mean that the individual is actually disqualified from owning a gun. Take the numbers for 2009, the latest year with data available. There were 71,010 initial denials. Of those, only 4,681, or 6.6 percent, were referred to the BATF field offices for further investigation. As a report on these denials by the U.S. Department of Justice indicates, “The remaining denials (66,329 – 93%) did not meet referral guidelines or were overturned after review by Brady Operations or after the FBI received additional information.”  The last two of these three categories are clearly false positives.  The first might involve false positives, but it is possible that the disqualifying offenses are too old (though there are some prosecutions that involve misdemeanor violations that are four decades old so that isn't too obvious).  To put it differently, the initial review didn’t find that these individuals had a record that prevented them from buying a gun. (Numbers for 2010 are available here.) 

Still that isn’t the end of the story. Of these 4,681 referrals, over 51 percent, or 2,390 cases, involve “delayed denials,” cases where a check hasn’t even been completed. Of the rest, 2,291 covered cases where initial reviews indicated that the person should have been denied buying a gun. But the government admits that upon further review another 572 of these referrals were found “not [to be] a prohibited person,” leaving about 4,154 cases. That implies an initial false positive rate of roughly 94.2%. And it still doesn’t mean that the government hasn’t made a mistake on the remaining cases. In some cases for example, a person’s criminal record was supposed to be expunged, and it had not been? 

Of the cases referred to the BATF field offices there were still a number of false positives.  A 2004 sample found out that about 21 percent of these cases were found to be false positives (the percentage is slightly higher if a weighted sample is used). 

Up until this point, no discretion about the merits of the case has entered the picture. If a review of the records indicates that someone is a prohibited individual, they are included. But of these 4,154 cases, only 140 cases involving banned individuals trying to purchase guns being referred to prosecutors, just 60 of which involved providing false information when buying a firearm. Of those 140 cases, prosecutors thought the evidence was strong enough to bring a case only 77 times. . . .

Take the numbers for 2010.

FBI denials referred to ATF: 76,142
Referred to field: 4,732   (6.2 percent)
Not referred to field: 68,209 (89.6 percent)
Overturned:   3,163  (4.2 percent)

Of those referred to field:
No prosecutorial merit: 1,661
Federal/state guidelines not met: 1,092
Not a prohibited person: 480
Closed by supervisor: 457
No potential or unfounded: 396

Of these 4,732, the 480 for "not a prohibited person" and the 396 for "no potential or unfounded" are clearly false positives.   That 876 accounts for 19 percent of the ones referred to the field offices.

So what does prosecutorial merit mean?  Well, prosecutorial merit is defined as: "Cases involving restraining orders, domestic violence misdemeanors, non-immigrant aliens, violent felonies, warrants, and indictments are most often included in referral criteria."  With the exception of non-violent felonies, this pretty much covers the reasons that a criminal record can keep you from obtaining a gun.  Other misdemeanors don't prohibit one from owning a gun.  It would be nice to know the breakdown here, but misdemeanors that don't prohibit one from owning a gun would also be counted as false positives.

If the guidelines are not met or the case was closed by a supervisor, these cases could also involve false positives.  The more interesting question is can we say from this discussion whether any of these cases are clearly not "false positives" and the answer is "no," not enough information is provided.

So what are we left with?  In 2010, out of 76,142 initial denials, there were 44 prosecutions and the government own only 13 of those.  Were there also state prosecutions?  Sure, the number of those cases appear to be very small and no numbers are provided on them.  In addition, state background check systems also identify other people who have tried to buy guns illegally independently of the federal numbers, but if you want to add in the state denials you end up with initial denials being above the 76,142 shown above.

Media Matters cites the Washington Post on denials, but they leave out the fact that even the Washington Post didn't confirm that these initial denials were justified.  The Washington Post doesn't really take a position on the central question that Media Matters is citing them for.

Even accounting for all of the appeals and overturned referrals, it seems as if 1.5 million people over the last 14 years have been denied a firearm. Whether one believes these were all the “wrong people” is more a matter of opinion, but the president is free to make that assertion. Clearly, that many people were denied a firearm — and we have no way of knowing how many ever obtained one in the future. . . .