"Joseph E. Olson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > ������� Jim Lindgren's "report"concerning John Lott's survey of defensive gun > usage got wide publicity on several blogs.� But the concerns I raise haven't > yet been exposed.� They should be, IMHO. > > � > > ������� Jim Lindgren concludes that David Gross took a 1996 survey by a > professional polling organization done as part of a study by Hemenway and > Azrael at Harvard rather than a 1997 survey�taken by students as part of a > study John Lott of Chicago was conducting.�
That is not Lindgren's conclusion. He stated that Gross's description of the questions fit the Hemenway survey better than Lott's alleged survey. Most importantly, the answer to this question: 1) During the last year, were you ever threatened with physical violence or harmed by another person or were you present when someone else faced such a situation? should have been "no". My opinion is that he wasn't surveyed in either survey since neither fit and Gross was one of the prime movers behind the recently passed concealed-carry law in Minnesota. It is highly unlikely that someone with this great a motive for preserving Lott's credibility would be included in a random sample of 2,000 people. That doesn't mean that Gross made the story up--there is another possibility. Gross may have been contacted because there was a news story about his defensive gun use. You see, if you are designing the questions for a defensive gun use survey, you might want to test the questions out on a few people to see if they elicit the information you are after. The trouble here is that if you call people at random you will have to call hundreds of people before you get enough people who have used guns to properly test your questions. So what you can do is call some people who you know have used a gun for defence and try your questions out on them. I found a news story published in 2002 that reported Gross's activism and his defensive gun use. Obviously that story could not have caused someone to contact him in 1998 (or 1997 or 1996) and ask questions about defensive gun use, but if there was a story in 2002 there could have been an earlier story as well. So it's conceivable that Lott was thinking of doing a survey in 1997 and Gross was contacted to test some possible questions. (This would also explain why the questions that Gross reported don't match Lott's survey.) But even this most generous interpretation of the evidence doesn't help Lott, since even if you show he was planning to conduct a survey, there is still no evidence that he actually conducted a survey, and plenty of evidence that he didn't. -- Tim _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof
