Myth-Busting Monday
Myth-Busting Monday
MYTH: The National Research Council found no evidence that any gun violence prevention laws work
This article was originally published on GVPedia.
Summary:
Researcher John Lott has repeatedly claimed in a number of articles since 2004 that a 2004 National Research Council (NRC) report written by a committee of 16 national experts could not find a single firearm regulation that reduced gun violence.
The NRC and National Academy of Sciences responded to Lott with a letter saying Lott’s column “contained significant errors.”
The NRC study was not about gun control (as Lott claims). The study was about “the quality of the data and research on firearms injury and violence.”
The goal of the NRC was to scrutinize the quality of scientific data, not to make conclusions about firearm policy.
The only chapter in which the NRC panel used its own statistical analysis was on Right-to-Carry laws. With a vote of 15-1, the panel concluded there was insufficient evidence to claim that Right-to-Carry laws decreased violent crime.
Lott’s Claim
The National Research Council (NRC) is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
In a December 2004 New York Post opinion piece, John Lott claimed that a NRC report released earlier that month “couldn’t identify any benefits of the decades-long effort to reduce crime and injury by restricting gun ownership. The only conclusion it could draw was: Let’s study the question some more (presumably, until we find the results we want).”
Lott also claimed that “the panel couldn’t identify a single gun-control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide, or accidents.”
In a June 2015 article on his website, Lott makes a similar claim writing that the NRC “report examined seemingly every possible gun law that has been studied by academics, but the panel could not identify one single law that made a statistically significant difference.”
He argues that the NRC panel didn’t find that right-to-carry laws reduce crime because the committee ignored studies, members were biased in favor of gun control, and academics are pressured to not dissent.
The Facts:
The NRC and National Academy of Sciences penned a refutation of Lott’s charges titled “A Lott of misinformation.”
NRC Executive Officer E. William Colglazier wrote, “Lott’s column gave the clear impression that the study was about gun control. It was not. The study was about the quality of the data and research on firearms injury and violence. These data and studies are frequently used by both sides in the debate on gun control. It was the committee’s task to make judgments about the quality of this scientific knowledge. The committee was not asked and does not offer any conclusions or comments on gun control policy.”
Contrary to Lott’s claim, the NRC report did not review every gun law. For example, permit-to-purchase laws were not examined despite strong evidence they reduce violence. Despite Lott’s assertion that the panel concluded that no gun laws work, the panel examined studies demonstrating that broadening background check denial criteria had a beneficial impact but stated that this evidence was “suggestive rather than conclusive” due to the small number of studies and potential confounding factors.
The only chapter in which the NRC panel used its own statistical analysis was on Right-to-Carry laws. The NRC panel attempted to duplicate Lott’s data model but, in doing so, repeated some of Lott’s errors. With a vote of 15-1, the panel concluded there was insufficient evidence to claim that Right-to-Carry laws decreased violent crime. A 2014 study by Stanford Professor John Donohue revealed that if the panel had corrected for those errors, they would have found substantial evidence that RTC laws increase crime.
The rest of the NRC report consisted of commenting on the validity and quality of the data and studies. The NRC panel did not conduct its own statistical analysis to determine significance in any other chapter.
The lone dissenter in the NRC panel was James Q. Wilson. In response to this dissent, the panel wrote, “While it is true that most of the reported estimates are negative, several are positive and many are statistically insignificant. In addition, when we use Lott’s trend model but restrict the out years to five years or less, the trends for murder become positive and those for other crimes remain negative. Therefore, the key question is how to reconcile the contrary findings or, conversely, how to explain why these particular positive, or negative, findings should be dismissed.”
When the NRC report was published, Ralph Luker, an American historian, wrote: “the NRC’s report has been released and it is unfavorable to Lott. It remains to be seen whether the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society will withdraw their sponsorship of his work. Lott’s liberal critics have quietly allowed due processes to work in his case.”
Similarly, Stuart Benjamin, a professor of law at Duke, wrote the report “contains bad news for Lott: It concludes that ‘There is no credible evidence that ‘right-to-carry’ laws, which allow qualified adults to carry concealed handguns, either decrease or increase violent crime.’ They discuss Lott’s research at some length and find it wanting… He staked his reputation on his claim that the data showed a decrease. So much for his reputation.”
In counter arguments to this evidence, Lott fails to provide new information.
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