Free Republic

John R. Lott Jr. and Grover G. Norquist are the authors of Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future. Lott, a former colleague of the president’s at the University of Chicago Law School, answers some questions about the depth of the debacle and the way out from National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: John, you say that when you were a faculty colleague of Barack Obama, he tagged you as “the gun guy” and announced that “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.” That...

With the House committee voting Wednesday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, the stalemate between the Obama administration and Congress ultimately boils down to about 1,300 documents. Congress wants to know who prepared a February 4, 2011 letter where the Obama administration claimed that the U.S. did not knowingly help smuggle guns to Mexico (so-called “gun walking”), including the gun used to kill US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The Obama administration admits the letter was in error, but they have always maintained that the knowledge of these tactics did not reach the top political appointees in the...

Americans’ patience is running thin. Unemployment has been above 8 percent for 40 months. Since the recovery started, over 7.2 million Americans have given up looking for work and left the labor force. It is during recessions, not recoveries, that people are supposed to give up looking for work. But it is obviously all Bush’s fault. At least, that is President Obama’s new take. During his big economic address on Thursday, Obama repeatedly said that the economic problems we face today were “a decade in the making.” But there is a problem with Obama’s logic. Over the last three-and-a-half years,...

“The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government,” President Obama claimed on Friday. His solution to fix the public sector was more government spending. When people started screaming, Obama clarified his remarks and said “It’s absolutely clear economy is not doing fine,” but he just couldn’t bring himself to disown his statement about the private sector generally doing “fine.” His clarification still asserted that there is “good momentum in the private sector.” But private sector employment growth has fallen in each of the last four months, reaching...

On August 8th, Students for Concealed Carry are supposed to have a national convention in DC. The main liaison for the group dropped the ball and didn't do his job coordinating things. As a result, the convention is in desperate need to get a lot more bodies at the convention than we are currently looking to get. We should have at least 100 and we are at only about 40, and I am not completely sure that is for certain. Are there any college age or 20-something or even 30 something people who you know who could attend? At this...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to ban sugary soft drinks larger than 16 ounces. He believes that by this measure he can reduce obesity. But plenty of evidence indicates that he will fail. The ban will inconvenience people and waste their time, but it will not make them thinner. Bloomberg didn’t originate this type of idea. Public schools, which hold their students captive for much of their day, have tried a similar approach to making students lose weight. And some have gone further than Bloomberg’s limit on cup size and have banned such drinks completely. But even complete bans haven’t worked....

The new medical reports on the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case tell us a lot. And it is not just for what they find, but also what they don’t find. First, the reports provide striking evidence that Zimmerman did not start the fight with Martin, and that Zimmerman shot Martin in self-defense. Martin’s injuries were two-fold: broken skin on his knuckles and the fatal gunshot wound. Zimmerman’s injuries involved: a fractured nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury. It takes considerable force to break the skin on multiple knuckles....

Would you hire President Obama as your financial adviser? Three years ago his administration invested more than $100 billion in taxpayer money to bail out General Motors. On Tuesday, the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth less than $34 billion. By anyone’s definition, that investment is a glaring failure. Yet over the last few days the Obama campaign, in a $25 million marketing blitz, has flooded the airwaves with ads in battleground states, claiming the bailout should be counted a rousing success. Unfortunately, assertions that “all loans have been repaid to the federal government,” that the...

The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation is hosting a forum next Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and a highlight of the event – which is held in cooperation with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus – will be a debate between Colin Goddard with the Brady Campaign and economist John Lott, author of More Guns = Less Crime. SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb will be there, along with attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued both of this century’s landmark Second Amendment cases before the Supreme Court, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v....

A video of John Lott being interviewed by Malia Zimmerman. John explains facts about guns and crime.

This is a video from the Washington Journal on C-Span. I watched it this morning. John Lott hits the ball out of the park. Well worth watching. You need only go to the link. It is about 28 minutes, so you have to have the time to watch. John is not a lawyer, so he does not talk about Constitutional issues, but this makes his facts all the more powerful for people in the "middle".

The facts about gun ownership.

How do you hit the broad side of a barn in a news report when you can't see the core issues? How did we know the report would be misleading and terribly lacking? As you know, I write for non-gun owners. I furnish analysis and facts more on the issue of liberty and citizen authority than guns themselves. Guns, liberty, and our sovereign authority over officials in this country are inextricable, and I have shown why over the years. The armed citizen is not an opinion concept, it is and always has been a safeguard of our way of life....

Two women, victims of gun violence in gun-free zones, opened the Aug. 6 National Self-Defense Conference in Washington organized by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and the Second Amendment Foundation. Had the law allowed the women to carry their guns, they would not have been attacked, said Amanda Collins, who was then a student at the Reno campus of the University of Nevada when she was attacked. The second woman, Nikki Goeser, said she blamed the gun violence that she experienced on gun control laws. Goeser said her husband was shot and killed in a bar in April 2009...

Atlanta GA --(Ammoland.com)- AAR host Mark Walters brings a powerhouse lineup to the nations airwaves this Sunday, 11-13-2011 on the Armed American Radio Network. Joining Mark this week will be Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation along with Fox News Contributor, best selling author of More Guns, Less Crime, 3rd edition, the man who confounds the anti-gun establishment at every turn, Dr. John Lott. Mark Walters said, “In the wake of the continued stonewalling by Attorney General Eric Holder during this weeks Senate hearings, Alan Gottlieb will join me to discuss the growing calls for his resignation. In...

Just a couple of days ago, Media Matters had another list of false claims and I responded to their list here. Now Media Matters attacks an op-ed that I had at the New York Daily News. After David Brock's, the founder of Media Matters, hypocrisy in having Media Matters constantly attacking gun ownership while at the same time illegally having handguns publicly carried for his own self defense in Washington, DC, his organization continues its "do as I say, not as I do" policy. It is too bad that in the past Media Matters has refused to let me post...

Media Matters’ Founder David Brock showed no shame when he was caught illegally using guns for his own personal protection. Indeed, Media Matters’ continues to lash out at others who own guns or support letting individuals use guns for the own protection, even increasing their attacks. In April alone, Media Matters ran 32 articles attacking the NRA alone. Additional pieces have defended the Obama administration’s Fast & Furious program and dealt with other gun related topics. Media Matters also attacked me three times over the last two weeks: I had an op-ed in the New York Daily News and an...

If you invested more than $100 in a company, would you be happy if your shares were worth only $36? By anyone’s definition that investment would have been a terrible failure. Yet, that is how the federal government’s investment in General Motors looks. The federal government has put in well over $100 billion into shoring up General Motors, but the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth only $36 billion on Tuesday. GM sales have bounced around, rising in March and then falling in April, but investors’ best guesses for what future sales will be are already...

The charges brought against George Zimmerman sure look like prosecutorial misconduct. The case as put forward by the prosecutor in the “affidavit of probable cause” is startlingly weak. As a former chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, I have read a number of such affidavits, and cannot recall one lacking so much relevant information. The prosecutor has most likely deliberately overcharged, hoping to intimidate Zimmerman into agreeing to a plea bargain. If this case goes to trial, Zimmerman will almost definitely be found “not guilty” on the charge of second-degree murder. The prosecutor wasn’t required to go to the...

Few prominent economists have a worse record predicting the impact of Obama’s economic policies than Paul Krugman. Writing for the New York Times and touting his close “genuine contact” with the “smart” economists and others in the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership, Krugman has been, and remains, Obama’s most important champion. Not only has he been defending Obama’s Keynesian-type deficit-spending, but he has been advocating still more of these same failed policies. The economy just can’t gain ground. Thirty-four months since the "recovery" started in June 2009 and the actual number of jobs have increased by just 0.4%....