What doesn't come through in the Lott material on Slate is that the 98%
figure is one sentence in a big book. The vast bulk of Lott's work on
shall-issue laws is based on publicly available data. The best figure
on defensive gun use involving brandishment only is from a survey by
Kleck and it is 75% - this sounds quite different from 98% but given the
size of the samples of involved the difference is not significant.
Indeed, the main finding from the surveys is not the brandishment result
but the fact that guns are used defensively several million times a year
(according to Kleck's survey and several others.)
Alex Tabarrok
--
Alexander Tabarrok
Department of Economics, MSN 1D3
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA, 22030
Tel. 703-993-2314
Web Page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/
and
Director of Research
The Independent Institute
100 Swan Way
Oakland, CA, 94621
Tel. 510-632-1366
- Lott William Dickens
