Dear Mods and community, this thread is a neat bit bait built on linking a known fraudulent research site.
Crime Prevention Research Center
https://crimeresearch.org/
Crime Prevention Research Center is run by John Lott, who makes the round on behalf of the NRA after every mass shooting.
John Lott's 'research' has been debunked multiple times, literally over decades.
https://www.mediamatters.org/researc...hn-lott/191885
Stanford Law Review: Lott's Central Hypothesis Is "Without Credible Statistical Support." In a Stanford Law Review report titled "The Latest Misfires in Support of the 'More Guns, Less Crime' Hypothesis," Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue III studied how coding errors in data undermine Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" hypothesis. The authors explain:
PW [Lott's co-authors Florenz Plassmann and John Whitley] seriously miscoded their new county dataset in ways that irretrievably undermine every original regression result that they present in their response. As a result, the new PW regressions must simply be disregarded. Correcting PW's empirical mistakes once again shows that the more guns, less crime hypothesis is without credible statistical support. [Stanford Law Review, accessed 12/3/12 via Deltoid]
Computer Scientist Tim Lambert On Lott's Data Errors: "If Anything, Concealed Carry Laws Lead To More Crime." In an April 2003 blog post on ScienceBlogs.com, computer scientist Tim Lambert discussed Ayres and Donohue's Stanford Law Review findings, noting "Ian Ayres and John Donohue wrote a paper that found that, if anything, concealed carry laws lead to more crime." Noting that "Lott, (along with Florenz Plassmann and John Whitley) wrote a reply where they argued that using data up to 2000 confirmed the "more guns, less crime" hypothesis," Lambert summarized Ayres' and Donohue's response to Lott's defense of the data:
Lott Became Subject Of Ethics Inquiry After Failing To Produce Evidence That He Actually Conducted A 1997 Survey. A January 17, 2003 letter written by Northwestern University Professor of Law James Lindgren, raised concerns that Lott fabricated a survey that found 98 percent of defensive gun uses involved only brandishing a weapon. Lott has failed to produce the data from the study, claiming to have lost it in a computer crash. From Lindgren's letter:
Computer Scientist Tim Lampert And Sociologist Otis Dudley Duncan Summarized A Number Of Suspicious Circumstances Surrounding Lott's Defensive Gun Use Survey. Among other points, Lampert -- a critic of Lott's research methods -- noted that Lott regularly cited the 98 percent defensive gun use statistic prior to when he says he conducted his research that reached that conclusion:
Lott Attempted To Cover Up Debunking Of "More Guns, Less Crime" Thesis By Changing His Statistical Model. From an October 12, 2003 Mother Jones article describing how Lott reacted to Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres and Stanford Law School professor John Donohue's revelation that fixing coding errors in his research caused Lott's conclusions to be undermined:
Lott Created A Fake Internet Persona To Defend His Research
Washington Post: Lott Posted Online Under The Pseudonym "Mary Rosh," Who Called Lott "The Best Professor I Ever Had." For three years, Lott repeatedly posed as an imaginary former student named "Mary Rosh." Rosh "tirelessly defended Lott against his harshest critics" in numerous online debates. From a February 1, 2003 article:
Mary Rosh thinks the world of John R. Lott Jr., the controversial American Enterprise Institute scholar whose book "More Guns, Less Crime" caused such a stir a few years ago.
In postings on Web sites in this country and abroad, Rosh has tirelessly defended Lott against his harshest critics. He is a meticulous researcher, she's repeatedly told those who say otherwise. He's not driven by the ideology of the left or the right. Rosh has even summoned memories of the classes she took from Lott a decade ago to illustrate Lott's probity and academic gifts.
"I have to say that he was the best professor I ever had," Rosh gushed in one Internet posting.
Indeed, Mary Rosh and John Lott agree about nearly everything.
Well they should, because Mary Rosh is John Lott -- or at least that's the pseudonym he's used for three years to defend himself against his critics in online debates, Lott acknowledged this week.
[...]
Lott said that he frequently has used the name "Mary Rosh" to defend himself in online debates. The name is an amalgam of the first two letters of his four sons' first names. In a posting to the Web site maintained by Tim Lambert, an Australian professor who has relentlessly attacked Lott's guns studies, "Mary Rosh" claims to be a former student of Lott at the University of Pennsylvania, where the economist taught between 1991 and 1995.
"I had him for a PhD level empirical methods class when he taught at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania back in the early 1990s, well before he gained national attention, and I have to say that he was the best professor that I ever had. You wouldn't know that he was a 'right-wing' ideologue from the class. . . . There were a group of us students who would try to take any class that he taught. Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors more to be exposed to other ways of teaching graduate material." [The Washington Post, 2/1/03, retrieved via Nexis]