Lott: Missouri Gun Study Cherry Picked Data

The economist, who is the leading expert on gun violence statistics, refuted a Johns Hopkins study that claims the repeal of Missouri’s “universal background checks” law is the cause of an increase in murder rates, in an exclusive Guns & Patriots interview.

“There is a lot of arbitrary cherry-picking of the data,” said John R. Lott Jr., president of Crime Prevention Research Center, a research and education organization that studies the relationship between laws regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime, and public safety.  “Other research that looked at all the states, not just one, comes to a different conclusion.”

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The Johns Hopkins study, which is expected to be published this month in the Journal of Urban Health only looks at the time period from 2008 to 2012 after the background checks law was repealed instead of examining the change in crime rates to include before the law was enacted in 1981, said the author of eight books including the 3rd edition of “More Guns, Less Crime.”

In the five-year period after the law was enacted, the murder rate went up faster in Missouri than it did in other states, but in the five-year period before the law was enacted the murder rate was going up even faster, said Lott. “Missouri was on an ominous path before the law was ended.” 

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