More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition

John R. Lott

University of Chicago Press, Jan 29, 2013 - Social Science - 472 pages

On its initial publication in 1998, John R. Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime drew both lavish praise and heated criticism. More than a decade later, it continues to play a key role in ongoing arguments over gun-control laws: despite all the attacks by gun-control advocates, no one has ever been able to refute Lott’s simple, startling conclusion that more guns mean less crime. Relying on the most rigorously comprehensive data analysis ever conducted on crime statistics and right-to-carry laws, the book directly challenges common perceptions about the relationship of guns, crime, and violence. For this third edition, Lott draws on an additional ten years of data—including provocative analysis of the effects of gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C—that brings the book fully up to date and further bolsters its central contention.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Michael_Lilly - LibraryThing

You would be hard pressed to find a more extensive collection of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies. But you might as well read it to learn the off beat logic used to justify the pro-gun position. It ...

More guns less Crime!

User Review  - sdfreeman - Overstock.com

Fact based book on our second amendment rights. Researched by John Lott jr. Know the facts behind so called gun control and read how gun control does not work and takes away our freedoms at the same time. A must have for any library

Contents

• 1 Introduction: 1
• 2 How to Test the Effects of Gun Control: 22
• 3 Gun Ownership Gun Laws and the Data on Crime: 37
• The Empirical Evidence: 56
• 5 The Victims and the Benefits from Protection: 100
• 6 What Determines Arrest Rates and the Passage of ConcealedHandgun Laws?: 120
• 7 The Political and Academic Debate by 1998: 125
• 8 Some Final Thoughts 1998: 163
• 9 Updating the Results in 2000: 170
• Nine More Years of Data and Nine More States: 235
• Appendeixes: 337
• Notes: 367
• Bibliography: 427
• Index: 435

About the author

John R. Lott, Jr., is the author five books, including Freedomnomics and Are Predatory Commitments Credible? Who Should the Courts Believe?, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Bibliographic information

• Title: More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition; Studies in Law and Economics
• Author: John R. Lott
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2013
• ISBN: 0226493679, 9780226493671
• Length: 472 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / Political Process / General; Social Science / Criminology; Social Science / General