This page contains links to web pages relevant to the controversy over an article in the Journal of Legal Studies by John Lott and David Mustard, in which they offer statistical evidence that laws requiring states to issue concealed carry permits to ordinary citizens reduce some forms of crime.It was created and is maintained by David Friedman. My objective is to provide links to the original documents (the Lott and Mustard paper and, when and if they are webbed, published articles criticizing or defending it), to web pages critical of the article, and to responses and comments. If you are aware of relevant online material to which I do not have a link, please let me know.
The Lott and Mustard argument appears in an
expanded form, along with responses to critics, in John Lott's recent
book More
Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control
Laws (University of Chicago Press,
2000).
I have not made any serious attempt to keep the page
up to date. Interested readers can find Lott's side of the current
argument at www.johnlott.org,
and the other side on Tim Lambert's pages (see below).
.pdf
version of the Lott and Mustard article
for download
Critique by Stephen Teret and response by John Lott
Critique by Daniel Webster and response by Lott
HCI critique and response by Lott
Critique by Tim Lambert, response by Lott and reply by Lambert
A new paper on the subject by Plassman and Tideman, which uses a different statistical approach and finds a stronger effect on homicides than Lott and Mustard do.
More links to commentary on Lott's work on Tim Lambert's web site
A more recent paper by Dezhbakhsh and Rubin critiquing Lott's work.
A much more recent paper by Ayers and Donohue critiquing Lott's work.
A response by Plassman and Whitley.
And a reresponse by Ayers and Donohue.
A recent entry in the Blog of Tim Lambert, a critic of Lott, defending Black and Nagin.
John Lott's Vita
D. Friedman's comments
on this controversy
D. Friedman's summary
and critique of Black and Nagin's
published critique of Lott and Mustard
Page of links relevant to gun control arguments from Tim Lambert's site
A recent
piece describing and criticizing a GAO
study often cited as showing how many lives could be saved by safer
guns. It isn't really part of this controversy, but I thought people
reading this page would be interested.
My thanks to Tim Lambert for
his generous help in updating this web page--thus demonstrating that
people who disagree about which side of a controversy is right can
still agree about the desirability of informed debate.