Quote:

Compared to ANY statistics put out by the gun grabbing crowd John Lott’s work is a paragon of probity and accuracy.



I didn't mean to say that Lott never published his gun stats work in journals, only that the big study you mentioned that was the basis for his first book was not. I couldn't agree with you more in regards to the above quote, BTW so I'm going to have to play devil's advocate to some extent but I'll give it a try

Lott's work will always be suspect (unjustly or not) because he went over the fence and took a public political stance. Also, his work is funded by private money from a political organization. I don't understand how you can accuse independent, university funded researchers of being biased in regards to secondhand smoke (who use experimental data with controls and multiple treatments etc.)yet don't see any bias in social science data funded by a political group? Unless what we're really discussing are beliefs and if that's the case then data mean nothing.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. -Nietzsche