Myth-Busting Monday

Gun lobby myths about gun violence.

May 01, 2023

The following points were taken from testimony by John Lott before the Texas House of Representatives Community Safety, Select committee hearing on April 18, 2023, following testimony by families from Uvalde. Lott's flawed research in favor of lax gun laws has been debunked by numerous sources over the years, and he has not been able to substantiate his claims.

In partnership with GVPedia, we have countered Lott's testimony with data-backed resources.

Myth #1: Only 17% of guns used to commit crimes in Mexico originate in the U.S.

At least 70% of guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes and traced were initially sold in the United States. In his testimony, The gun lobby's "expert" witness, John Lott, claims that the actual percentage of crime guns originating in the United States is closer to 17%. This statement erroneously assumes that every single gun not traced did not originate in the U.S., but even with that assumption, Lott’s number is still a fabrication. From 2009-2014, Mexican authorities seized 158,560 firearms. They sent 104,850 guns to the ATF for tracing. The ATF found 73,684 firearms (or 70.3%) originated in the U.S. To learn more about the errors in Lott’s calculations and assumptions, you can read this GVPedia factsheet.

Myth #2: Nearly all public mass shootings occur in gun-free zones

Mass shootings do not overwhelmingly occur in gun-free zones, with credible studies finding that only 12-13% of such shootings occur in areas that ban firearms. In his testimony, Lott stated that 94% of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones. Before the past several years, Lott argued that 98% of mass shootings occurred in gun-free zones. Regardless of which figure is used, it is false. Lott’s research on gun-free zones is marred by massive data errors. When studying the period from 1977-1997, Lott treats every mass shooting fatality as an individual mass shooting, greatly distorting his numbers. When GVPedia revealed this error in 2019, Lott corrected it without public update, but then reintroduced it in his most recent research. To learn more about the errors in Lott’s work on gun-free zones, you can read this GVPedia factsheet.

Myth #3: Mass shooters target gun-free zones

There is no evidence that mass shooters systematically target gun-free zones. In his testimony, Lott claimed that shooters overwhelmingly want to maximize casualties and therefore chose undefended targets. He cites the 2022 Buffalo shooting that killed 10 and wounded three individuals, along with that shooter’s manifesto, as part of this evidence. Yet the Buffalo shooter wrote that there was a “100% guaranteed” chance that he would encounter a civilian with a gun, writing, “This is Buffalo after all so I am expecting some boys to be packing.” The manifestos and statements of other mass shooters do not support Lott’s claims about targeting gun free zones, as can be read in this GVPedia factsheet.

Myth #4: The low rate of LTC permit revocations prove that concealed handgun permit holders commit virtually no crimes

Arguments relying on the rate of permit revocations ignore multiple investigations revealing that the data is fatally flawed. A 2011 investigation of two large Michigan counties uncovered that 77% and 79% of permit holder convictions went unreported, meaning that many permit holders who should have had their permits revoked did not. Another 2011 investigation of North Carolina permit revocation data discovered that, in more than half of felony convictions, authorities failed to revoke or suspend permits. These investigations demonstrate that at the very least, revocation data cannot be relied on to determine how law-abiding concealed carry permit holders are, as demonstrated in this GVPedia factsheet.

Along with these errors, it is important to note that Representative Vikki Goodwin was correct to question John Lott’s credibility. Over the past decades, John Lott has been caught:

Fraudulently claiming to have published a study in the peer-reviewed Econ Journal Watch even though the journal had rejected his paper.
Falsely claiming that the mass shooting rate in Europe is equivalent to that in the United States while his own research actually showed that the U.S. had double Europe’s rate.
Falsely claiming that more than 99% of Brady background check denials are errors. An Inspector General’s report revealed that these background check denials are accurate in 99.8% of cases.
Fabricating an entire survey on defensive gun use. When asked to provide hard evidence of the survey, he claimed all the data had been lost in a computer crash.
Repeatedly supporting studies that have significant errors that either nullify or reverse their results.
Frequently hiding his work behind fake identities. In 2003, Lott was uncovered as having invented the identity Mary Rosh — who claimed to be a former student of Lott’s — to defend his own work.

You can read more about Lott’s long history of ethical misdeeds and numerous falsehoods in this GVPedia project.

This article was first published on Texas Gun Sense.

Texas Capitol building image by David from Pixabay; image of Texas House of Representatives committee hearing on April 18, 2023, courtesy of Texas Gun Sense.