http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2003/12#lottonkleck
As well as giving his own books perhaps as many as ten five-star
reviews, Lott has given one and two-star reviews to books by people
who have annoyed him in some way. One author has been singled out by
Lott to be the target of a campaign of negative reviews. And his
target is not someone on the other side, but pro-gun scholar Gary
Kleck who even wrote an endorsement of More Guns, Less Crime that
appears on the back cover of the book.
I feel that some pro-gun people have been reluctant to criticize Lott
because they think that he is on their side. Well, Lott isn't on the
pro-gun side--he's on his own side. For Lott it's not about whether
you support gun rights, it's whether you support Lott's ego. Read on.
I am highly confident that the three reviews below of Kleck's work
were written by Lott. In each case there are four independent pieces
of evidence that point to Lott as the author:
1. The writing style is Lott's
2. The subject matter: although they are supposed to reviews of
Kleck, he writes more about Lott's work
3. The location of the reviewer is somewhere where Lott was living
or working and also where he had posted other reviews from
4. The timing of the review was right after Lott was criticized or
posted another review
On June 10, 2000 I posted my review of More Guns, Less Crime to Amazon.
Kleck's book is better, June 10, 2000
Reviewer: Tim Lambert (see more about me) from Maroubra, NSW Australia
This book is a greatly expanded version of a paper published by
Lott and Mustard in 1997. In that paper they claimed that laws
allowing the concealed carry of handguns caused significant
decreases in violent crime. The paper was Lott's first publication
on firearms policy and unfortunately Lott's inexperience with this
subject shows.
Contrast the treatment of the topic of gun ownership in Lott's
book with that in another book by a pro-gun scholar, Gary Kleck's
"Targeting Guns". Lott looks at the results of two exit polls,
conducted in 1988 and 1996 and concludes that the percentage of
the population that owned guns increased by 50% in just eight
years. Kleck looks at 86 different surveys, going back to 1959, as
well as half a century of gun sales data, which show that the gun
ownership percentage has not changed since 1959. Kleck's
conclusion is obviously the better supported one.
Lott does a better job in his statistical analysis which found the
the introduction of concealed carry laws was associated with
declines in violent crime rates. That is because this analysis is
in his area of expertise, econometrics. Unfortunately, his
unfamiliarity with firearms research betrays him when he
interprets this result to mean that the laws caused the decrease
in crime. Kleck's book contains details of surveys of gun carrying
that show that the number of people that get permits for concealed
carry is much less than the number of people who carry illegally,
that is, the laws did not make a significant difference to a
criminal's chance of encountering an armed victim. Kleck concludes
that the crime decreases were probably caused by some factor other
than the carry laws.
There are many more errors of fact and interpretation in Lott's
book, too many to list here.
So why does the pro-gun book by Kleck have a sales rank of 72,000
while the pro-gun book by Lott have a rank of 1264? I think the
reason is that Lott goes well beyond what the data supports to
claim that more guns cause less crime. Kleck sticks with a
position that is supportable by the data--that the bad and good
uses of guns mostly cancel out, leaving little net effect on
crime. Pro-gun readers would rather hear Lott's message, even if
it's wrong.
Readers looking for a pro-gun book should buy Kleck's book, rather
than Lott's. Lott's book is only useful for those readers who are
interested in the details of Lott's multivariate statistical
analysis.
As I showed earlier just two days later Lott, posting as "A reader
from Philadelphia, PA", responded with a five star review of More
Guns, Less Crime that included a favourable quote from Kleck:
"John Lott has done the most extensive, thorough, and
sophisticated study we have on the effects of loosening gun
control laws."--Gary Kleck, Professor, Florida State University
But that wasn't all, because the next day there was another response
to my review--this review of Targeting Guns also by "A reader from
Philadelphia, PA" appeared:
NOT ANYWHERE AS GOOD AS LOTT, June 13, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Philadelphia, PA
This update of Kleck's "Point Blank" is useful, though I have a
few serious problems with it and ultimately I came away from the
book disappointed. Before stating my problems, however, I will
give Kleck this much, he is frequently unfairly attacked by gun
control advocates. In some sense, Kleck's work really should not
bother them too much because he is really saying that guns don't
matter. If they want to get rid of guns and it makes them feel
better, let them do it because nothing will change.
I will also say that the book provides a useful source for the
literature on guns.
Here are my most basic problems with the book:
How does one get from his survey data to his conclusion that guns
on net produce no benefit?
Kleck oversells the quality of his empirical work. If one wants to
see the best empirical work on crime, read Lott's More Guns, Less
Crime (the second edition is even much better than the first). The
difference in the amount of time that these authors put into doing
their studies isn't even comparable. The inability to even account
for other factors like arrest or conviction rates or the death
penalty or prison sentences or illegal drug prices or almost
anything else is disturbing. As to the previous review that Kleck
somehow alone in understooding that higher crime rates can cause
increased gun ownership, my advice is that he actually read Lott
and see how one is supposed to take this into account
correctly. By the way, once one does this and takes into account
the other factors that influence crime, Lott is correct: More Guns
mean Less Crime.
Personally, I also don't understand Kleck's criticizisms of Lott's
work. In a sentence he guesses that something else might exist
which could explain away why concealed handgun laws reduce crime,
but then he fails to even hazard what else should be accounted
for.
Is this a review of Kleck's book or of Lott's?
And this was the second negative review of Kleck's book that Lott
posted. Look at this review:
Pretty disappointing, May 13, 1999
Reviewer: A reader from Madison, Wisconsin
I thought that Gary Kleck's "Point Blank" was OK, but this book is
basically a reprint of that one with a few updated numbers and a
new title. I must confess that I felt cheated.
What bothers me the most about this book is that Kleck continually
argues that guns produce no net benefit or harm, but I could not
find any evidence that directly proves this contention. If someone
could point to the page that he provides direct evidence on this,
I would appreciate it because I completely missed it.
I thought John Lott's book (More Guns, Less Crime) was vastly
superior. When he makes a claim the evidence he marshalls is
directly on point, and I thought that his book was much more
clearly written. The two books aren't even close in quality.
Finally, I was also bothered with some of Kleck's discussion of
other research. Kleck gets upset when others attack him by saying
that something might explain away his results, but they refuse to
say what those unexplained factors are. Kleck is correct to be
upset this with. But he unfortunately does the same things to
others.
What does Lott mean in his last sentence when he writes: "But he
unfortunately does the same things to others"? Well, like the previous
one, this review appears to be a response to a critical review of
Lott's work. You see, a couple of days before it was posted I sent
Lott a copy of my critical review of Lott's "More Guns, Less
Crime". In a prominent part of that criticism I noted that in
Targeting Guns, Kleck had rejected Lott's conclusion, writing :
More likely, the declines in crime coinciding with relaxation of
carry laws were largely attributable to other factors not
controlled in the Lott and Mustard analysis.
Kleck said that "other factors" likely caused the crime reductions and
this is what Lott is complaining about in his last sentence.
I got an email from Lott a couple of days later (May 17) mentioning
that he had read my critique and he specifically responded to this
passage in the second edition of his book. Also note that Lott posted
an author's review of More Guns, Less Crime" and gave his location as
Madison, Wisconsin, the same as the author of this review.
On the very same day (May 13, 1999) that Lott anonymously slammed
Kleck he wrote a letter to Otis Dudley Duncan praising Kleck:
"I am a great admirer of Gary Kleck's work, and I think that he
has done a great deal to advance the study of crime. Few academics
have his integrity and courage."
Is Lott two-faced or what?
Now, most of Lott's reviews really have not made much
difference. There are lots of five-star reviews of his books, so the
six to ten that he wrote don't matter much. And one and two-star
reviews of books on politically charged subjects tend to be discounted
because readers of the reviews think that they are written by someone
on the other side of the question. Amazon lets readers rate reviews by
voting on whether the review was helpful or not, and Lott's anonymous
negative reviews did not garner many "helpful" votes. Except for his
reviews of Targeting Guns. Readers rated Lott's two reviews as the two
most helpful reviews. Amazon gives such reviews greater prominence as
"Spotlight Reviews", putting them first on the page. I believe that
the reason these two reviews rated so well is that they were obviously
from a pro-gun person, so pro-gun readers (the main market for Kleck's
book) would take them seriously instead of dismissing them as the
product of some anti-gunner. Whatever the reason, I think it likely
that Lott's reviews have hurt the sales of Kleck's book by persuading
people to buy Lott's book instead.
Lott also seems to have reviewed Armed: New Perspectives on Gun
Control by Kleck and Kates:
How many times can you write a book repeating the same point,
December 31, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from Washington, DC
I have read Targeting Guns and Point Blank. Point Blank was a
classic. Target Guns, despite the different title, was simply an
update of that book. I have also read the previous book by Kates
and Kleck entitled The Great American Gun Debate. My biggest
problem is that the same arguments keep on getting repeated over
and over again. What is the deal with this?
My second problem is why does Kleck seem to always feel so
strongly that guns do not on net decrease crime. This book again
talks about defensive gun use and implies that it is much more
prevelant than the bad things that happen with guns used in crime,
but never, ever explains why he thinks that the net effect is a
wash. Can someone please explain this to me?
My third problem is Kleck appears to really dislike Lott. He can't
even accurately discuss what research Lott has done on concealed
handguns. To Kleck the only thing that Lott has done is examine
the before and after crime rates with respect to concealed handgun
laws. Give me a break!
I confess that I couldn't bring myself to finish reading this
book. By the time I got 3/4's of the way through I realized that
the odds that "Armed" would bring up a new argument were extremely
small. If it wasn't for my respect for Kleck's work in Point
Blank, I would have given this book only one star.
What evidence is there in this book that "Kleck appears to really
dislike Lott"? Kleck hardly mentions Lott at all. In 360 pages, this
is all he says about him:
Economists John Lott and David Mustard found that crime rates
declined in states with right-to-carry laws after the laws went
into effect, to a greater extent than in states without the laws,
and attributed these decreases in a greater perception of risk
from victims among prospective offenders. Deterrence was
necessarily very indirectly inferred, and crime decreases that
might have been attributed to other factors were attributed to
unmeasured changes in criminal perceptions of risk.
I think Lott was sore because Kleck did not give Lott's research the
prominence that Lott thinks it deserves so, Lott let him have it with
another anonymous two-star review.
This review is "from Washington, DC", the location of Lott's
workplace, the AEI, and the location of other reviews by Lott
discussed here.
A few days earlier this review of The Seven Myths of Gun Control also
from Washington, DC appeared. It is obviously written by the same
person as the review above.
Well done popularized version of earlier work, December 26, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from Washington, DC
This book is a fast read, and it serves a useful niche taking the
research done by others and presenting the work in such a way that
it is easily understood by a wide audience. While the book
addresses second amendment issues, the biggest emphasis is on how
gun control increases crime. It is on this last point that the
book relies very, very heavily on John Lott's More Guns, Less
Crime and his op-ed pieces. Even though I had read Lott's book, I
hadn't read some of his op-ed pieces, so I still got something out
of even this discussion. I also think that Poe does a good job of
simplifying some of Lott's discussions. My bottom line: is that
Poe's book is still a valuable addition to Lott's book.
I almost think I should count this as another five-star self-review of
More Guns, Less Crime, since it mentions Lott twice as often as the
author of the book that is ostensibly being reviewed.
This concludes my series of posts on Lott's anonymous Amazon
reviews. The six to ten five-star reviews of his own books, and the
one and two-star reviews of other books were bad enough, but I think
that his conduct in publicly praising Kleck while secretly stabbing
him in the back again and again is absolutely outrageous, even by the
standards set by Lott's previous misconduct. What does it take for
pro-gun folks to cut him loose?
--
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
