JOHN LOTT, JR.
Senior Advisor for Research and Statistics
LinkedIn
WHEN THE GUN LOBBY TRIES TO JUSTIFY FIREARMS EVERYWHERE, IT TURNS TO THIS GUY
July 28, 2015
Researchers pressed Lott, then a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, to release the data behind his claim that 98 percent of defensive gun uses in the United States involved a would-be victim merely brandishing a gun. Lott claimed that it was based on a data from a survey he had conducted—but that the data had been lost in a computer crash. Lott redid the survey in 2002; of more than 1,000 people surveyed, seven said they’d used a gun to defend themselves. Of those seven, six merely flashed a firearm in self-defense. Based on these responses, plus the lost data, Lott still asserts that more than 90 percent of defensive gun uses involve brandishing a gun.
DO 98 PERCENT OF MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS HAPPEN IN GUN-FREE ZONES?
May 10, 2018
In layman’s terms, Lott’s definition is so wide that the White House, where there are snipers on the roof, would be considered a gun-free zone. His data set classifies the shootings that took place at Fort Hood and the Washington Navy Yard as having occurred in gun-free zones. Klarevas disputed Lott’s characterization — wondering how “a place can be a gun free zone if guns are present?”
DISCREDITED PRO-GUN RESEARCHER JOHN LOTT FALLS APART WHEN YOU PRESS HIM
September 19, 2019
During the hearing, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) asked Lott about Mary Rosh, a fictitious persona Lott acknowledged in 2003 that he had invented and used for three years to write positive reviews of his own works and to answer his critics. The senator questioned whether “it show[s] good judgement for a researcher to comment” on their own work “under a name that is clearly not transparent.” In response, Lott crumbled, insisting he didn’t write a Rosh review that called him “the best professor that I ever had” and blaming “somebody else in my family who was responding to attacks that were on me.”
SHOOTING STRAIGHT WITH JOHN R. LOTT
October 26, 2020
A1F: Do you see Joe Biden as a moderate on guns?
Lott: Biden has promised to make Beto O’Rourke his gun-control czar. Like Biden, O’Rourke has supported gun confiscation, a national gun registry and licensing. Biden also headed up Barack Obama’s gun-control push.
CONTROVERSIAL GUN ADVOCATE HIRED BY JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LAST MONTH
November 24, 2020
Since Lott assumed his new government job, he has kept up his outspoken presence on social media sites, often trashing the media and espousing pro-Trump views.
In a post on Facebook and Twitter last week, Lott appeared to endorse the White House’s wildly exaggerated claim that 1 million Trump supporters showed up in Washington earlier this month for the so-called Million MAGA March.
“NPR is pretty much Pravda at this point. Trump supporters (a million plus people) are right-wing activists and hate groups and they echoed Trump's false claims about vote fraud? Such editorializing (and lies) in a ‘news’ story,” Lott wrote.
DISCREDITED GUN RESEARCHER’S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT POST RAISES ALARMS ABOUT FUTURE OF CRIME STATISTICS
But respected academics have repeatedly discredited Lott’s work. “This is someone who’s body of research has been studied, critiqued, and most people would say thoroughly debunked by a large number of respected scholars in the field,” Dr. Garen Wintemute, the director of the Firearm Violence Research Center at the University of California, Davis, told The Trace. “What concerns me as an individual who works in this field is: We don’t know, and we’re being prevented from knowing, what his scope of action and authority is, and he’s been hired by an administration in its last days that is investing in making it difficult to govern the country.”
December 1, 2020
JUDICIARY DEMOCRATS TO BARR: EXPLAIN HIRING POLITICAL APPOINTEES TO CIVIL SERVICE POSITIONS
“The department recently hired John Lott, a pro-gun advocate who claims that widespread gun ownership can reduce crime,” the senators wrote. “Although the department has confirmed that Lott was hired as a senior adviser in the Office of Justice Programs, it has not said whether Lott is serving in a career civil service position or as a political appointee.”
December 8, 2020
SCRUTINY OF DOJ’S HIRING OF JOHN LOTT GROWS AS SENATE DEMS DEMAND ANSWERS ON HIS ROLE
Gun violence researchers told us that they fear Lott — who pushes the discredited theory that more guns in civilian hands reduces crime — could bury or distort government crime data.
December 9, 2020
WE NEED MORE HONEST DEBATE AND RIGOROUS RESEARCH ON GUN CONTROL
December 12, 2020
Dix wrote that the news of Lott’s appointment made his “blood run cold” because Lott’s thesis had been “found to be false” by Stanford Law Professor John Donohue and his colleagues. But whether or not he realized it, Dix’s citation actually showcases the need for much more credible and robust research into the effect of gun control policies.
Dix noted that Donahue and his colleagues concluded that Lott’s thesis was “without credible statistical support,” and that — contrary to Lott — right-to-carry gun laws were actually associated with higher rates of murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, etc.