Free Republic

Stand Your Ground laws have become a racial issue in the aftermath of the not guilty . President Obama and Attorney General Holder have weighed in, linking race and these laws. On ABC News' "This Week," radio talk show host Travis Smiley declared what many think: "It appears to me, and I think many other persons in this country that you can in fact stand your ground unless you are a black man." And they seem to have some evidence of this, now that the Tampa Bay Times has reviewed Florida's court cases to find “defendants claiming ‘stand your ground’...

On Sunday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg knew what was responsible for Trayvon Martin's death: Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. Or, as Bloomberg calls it: a "shoot-first" law. According to Bloomberg: "'shoot-first' laws like those in Florida can inspire dangerous vigilantism and protect those who act recklessly with guns. Such laws - drafted by gun-lobby extremists in Washington - encourage deadly confrontations by enabling people to shoot first and argue 'justifiable homicide' later." Many others have taken the same line since Saturday's verdict. But they don't understand the law. Nor do they understand why it was completely irrelevant to the George Zimmerman...

The George Zimmerman case should never have been brought. Saturday night after the “not guilty” verdict was delivered, State Attorney Angela Corey justified bringing the case “to put the facts out there.” But criminal cases should never be brought simply to put the facts before the public. No one should be charged with a crime unless prosecutors themselves really believe that the person committed a crime. Yet, the prosecution and their own experts’ language consistently showed a lack of certainty. Prosecutors aren’t supposed to bring cases where the best they can say is that something might “possibly” have happened or...

Prosecutors in the George Zimmerman second degree murder trial have pushed hard on two points as they seek to make their case against him: that the injuries to Zimmerman on the night Trayvon Martin died were “insignificant” and that he had studied Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law in a college class in 2010. To win conviction on second-degree murder, the prosecution has to show that the death was caused by a criminal act “demonstrating a depraved mind without regard for human life.” That’s why the prosecutor keeps pushing the claim that Zimmerman profiled Martin because he was black. Meanwhile, the...

Gun control, any already difficult task, just got even more difficult. The 3D printing revolution is well under way. This wonderful new technology will allow small companies and even individuals to manufacture a wide range of items, such as medical devices that fit each individual’s unique size and shape. However, it is increasingly obvious that guns and gun parts can be made, even including entire assault weapons. Unfortunately, the initial regulatory proposals will likely increase crime. As usual, new technology is hard to stop, and the Department of Homeland Security last week declared: "Limiting access [to 3D-printing to make guns]...

You can tell the conservatives liberals fear most because they start being automatically referred to as "discredited." Ask Sen. Ted Cruz. But no one is called "discredited" by liberals more often than the inestimable economist John Lott, author of the groundbreaking book More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. Lott's economic analysis of the effect of concealed-carry laws on violent crime is the most thoroughly vetted study in the history of economics, perhaps in the history of the world. Some nut Dutch professor produces dozens of gag studies purportedly finding that thinking about red meat makes people...

Will these 3D printed guns be used in the commission of crime? Undoubtedly. But will they also be used for self-defense? Equally surely. If you ban 3D printed guns, how does this change? With law-abiding citizens obeying the law, only criminals will be the ones who get these relatively inexpensive guns. Is this a civil liberties issue? To me this is a way to lower the cost of people obtaining guns -- a big benefit given that it is poor minorities who live in high crime urban areas who benefit the most from owning guns. Yet, it looks as if...

Author John Lott talked about his book, At the Brink: Will Obama Push Us Over the Edge, in which he argues that, thanks to President Obama, we are on the verge of economic and social collapse. This talk was part of Loudoun County, Virginia’s Ronald Reagan Lecture Series.

Can poor people be trusted with guns? Overwhelmingly, Republicans thinks so. But while Democrats fight against taxes on the poor and oppose voter photo IDs because they impose too much of burden, they seem to be doing everything possible – from fees, expensive training requirements, and photo IDs -- to make it next to impossible for the poor to own guns. Indeed, legislation in at least 17 states around the country is aimed specifically at making it more costly to own a gun. Democrats are voting in mass against exempting the poor from fees when it comes to guns. New...

Obama thinks he has a mandate for change. But this is the man who ran for president in 2008 promising to “cut net spending” and to shrink the federal government; a man who promised that his “stimulus” spending was only temporary. Obama hid regulations from view until after his reelection. The press maintained the fiction that Obama supports the Second Amendment and is no threat to citizens’ keeping guns for self-defense. Yet the day after his reelection, Obama called for the UN Arms Trade Treaty negotiations to be started again, and a few weeks later he promised to put the...

Gun-control advocates have recently been throwing around an impressive new number. President Obama used it last Wednesday, claiming: “as many as 40 percent of guns are purchased without a background check.” Vice President Biden and everyone from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to USA Today repeatedly use it. That “fact” provided the principal support for his first announced gun-control proposal, “universal background checks.” But unless you include family inheritances and gifts as “purchases,” it is simply false.The Brady Act background checks currently prevent someone who buys from a federally licensed dealer from buying a gun...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, gun rights author and scholar John Lott recounted meeting Barack Obama for the first time while he was a lecturer at University of Chicago. When the two met, Lott's reputation on guns preceded him, and Lott claims Obama said, "I don't believe people should be able to own guns." Read that again, and let it soak in; Barack Obama reportedly said, "I don't think people should be able to own guns." In my correspondence with Lott, he stood by his story. And there's little reason to doubt Lott's account, especially when you take Obama's history...

Warning about "weapons designed for the theater of war," President Obama on Wednesday called for immediate action on a new Federal Assault Weapons Ban. He said that "more of our fellow Americans might still be alive" if the original assault weapons ban, passed in 1994, had not expired in 2004. Last month, in the wake of the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) promised to introduce an updated version of the ban. She too warned of the threat posed by "military weapons." After the nightmare of Newtown, their concern is understandable. Yet...

Warning about "weapons designed for the theater of war," President Obama on Wednesday called for immediate action on a new Federal Assault Weapons Ban. He said that "more of our fellow Americans might still be alive" if the original assault weapons ban, passed in 1994, had not expired in 2004. Last month, in the wake of the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) promised to introduce an updated version of the ban. She too warned of the threat posed by "military weapons." After the nightmare of Newtown, their concern is understandable. Yet...

Here's the link.

Yesterday morning, Soledad O’Brien had on her CNN show economist John Lott, of More Guns, Less Crime fame (also an NRO contributor). As I’ve discussed before on NRO, O’Brien has a habit of bringing on conservative guests and then spitting out Democratic talking points under the glib guise of a non-partisan moderator calling them to account on the facts.But her encounter with Lott, the video of which you can view below, is a new low: Rather than parroting liberal arguments (which typically involve at least a few facts) in order to confront Lott’s arguments, she merely relates her bewildered sentiments...

From my appearance last night on CNN. LOTT: Every place that guns have been banned, murder rates have gone up. You cannot point to one place, whether it's Chicago or whether it's D.C. or whether it's been England of whether it's been Jamaica or Ireland. MORGAN: I'm sorry, but that's just a complete lie. It's a complete lie. The gun murder rate in Britain is 35 a year, average. You need to stop repeating a blatant lie, about what happens in other countries. [cross talk] No, you're not going to get away with this. You lied about it the other...

Mass shootings in the United States have at least one thing in common: they all happen in in gun free zones. Yesterday economist and author of More Guns Less Crime John Lott went on CNN with anchor Soledad O'Brien to discuss why mass shootings occur in gun free zones. O'Brien as usual, wasn't interested in factual data Lott was presenting and continually cut him off as he was making his points.CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO John Lott, the gun advocate who recently had a heated encounter with Piers Morgan, spoke to Soledad O'Brien on Monday morning — continuing to...

More About This Book Overview 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...

Regarding my first op-ed this last week at Fox News on Costas here is some of the reaction. I will update this later when I have time to put in responses. From Entertainment Weekly: As you can guess, his commentary was closely scrutinized, and while some applauded his effort, many criticized him for broaching a politically taboo subject in the midst of Sunday Night Football. Second-Amendment advocates like Fox News’ John Lott dismissed Costas for his “emotional reaction,” and media-watcher Howard Kurtz said, “If Bob Costas wanted to urge gun control during NFL, he should have made his own case,...