XPost: alt.politics.usa.constitution, alt.politics.guns, alt.california   
   XPost: sac.general   
   From: gp@dont-email.me   
      
   “I am not interested in giving any serious thought to John Lott   
   or his claims.”   
      
   Those are the words of University of Alabama associate professor   
   Adam Lankford in response to Fox News after economist John Lott   
   called Lankford’s highly publicized study into question.   
      
   Lankford’s study was published in 2016 but was touted by   
   President Obama and a fawning media anxious for any “evidence”   
   that gun ownership is somehow evil even before it was officially   
   published. Lankford’s anti-gun perspective is evident early on   
   in his paper. His eighth paragraph starts, “Less positive may be   
   the fact that, according to a comparative study of 178   
   countries, the United States ranks first in gun ownership…”   
      
   Despite all of the attention it received, Lankford’s study is   
   troublesome. He claims to have found that 31% of global mass   
   shooters attacked in the United States between 1966 and 2012. He   
   states that the U.S. suffered 90 offenders during this period   
   while only four other countries had more than nine offenders.   
   Obama took this alleged finding and ran with it, claiming “The   
   one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass   
   shooting in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in   
   the world.”   
      
   The problem is that Lankford’s study is lazy and sloppy, if not   
   deliberately limited. He used the New York Police Department’s   
   2012 Active Shooter report supplemented with the FBI’s 2014   
   Active Shooter Report and “data gathered on incidents from other   
   countries.” Lankford used the same methodology as the NYPD to   
   gather additional information.   
      
   The NYPD only used open-source material – i.e., Google. They   
   didn’t use subscription-based research services like LexisNexis,   
   government databases, or any of the resources available to   
   professors at well-funded world class universities. The “NYPD   
   limited its internet searches to English-language sites,   
   creating a strong sampling bias against international   
   incidents.” That methodology works for the NYPD’s purpose of   
   developing recommendations for risk mitigation but it doesn’t   
   work for a cross-national study because most of the world speaks   
   a language other than English. The FBI 2014 Active Shooter   
   report was limited to incidents in the United States.   
      
   President Obama and others eager for anything that casts gun   
   ownership as fundamentally dangerous took Lankford’s 31% claim   
   at face value. Other researchers, academics, and journalists who   
   questioned Lankford’s work – or even asked to see his data –   
   were rebuffed by the UA professor.   
      
   John Lott thought that 31% seemed high, so he asked if Lankford   
   would share his dataset – a common courtesy among academics and   
   researchers. Lankford refused. Repeatedly. Lankford also refused   
   to explain how he measured (or counted) mass shootings. Lankford   
   refused to tell journalists how he collected his data, despite   
   his claim that he found complete data for 171 countries –   
   somehow without using foreign language sources. Journalists at   
   Real Clear Politics asked Lankford questions about his   
   methodology and for access to his raw data; he refused.   
   Lankford’s paper does not include a list of the number of   
   shooters in each country, only providing the totals for five   
   countries including the United States.   
      
   So Lott built his own dataset using the University of Maryland   
   Global Terrorism Database, Nexis, and web searches for mass   
   shootings. Lott hired people who spoke foreign languages to help   
   with this effort. Unlike Lankford, Lott provides the search   
   terms he used as well as a list of the cases in his dataset.   
   Lott has been as transparent as possible with his study and even   
   acknowledges that his monumental effort likely undercounts   
   shootings in foreign countries due to current and historical   
   news coverage of such events in the developing world. Lott   
   looked at the years 1998-2012, likely to ensure the availability   
   of better data.   
      
   Lott found at least fifteen times more mass public shooters than   
   Lankford in less than a third the number of years (1998-2012).   
   Lankford claimed to find 292 mass public shooters over 47 years   
   while Lott found more than 10,000 such shooters around the world   
   in the last 15 years. Professor Carl Moody at the College of   
   William & Mary confirmed Lott’s counts for The Washington Times   
   and added, “By the way, anybody can do this. The GTD database is   
   free and available to all.”   
      
   Lott’s most important finding is that 1.43% of mass public   
   shooters attacked in the United States. That is starkly   
   different than Lankford’s 31% claim. Lott extended his work to   
   the number of attacks and found that 2.88% of mass public   
   shootings between 1998 and 2012 were in the United States.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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