Liberty Maven

If you have not read John Lott’s latest article, you need to.

Lott, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland and author of well-known works such as More Guns, Less Crime, The Bias Against Guns, and Freedomnomics, to name a few, meticulously dissects the obviously-rigged “experiement” staged by ABC’s 20/20 program.

First, in planning the experiment, it was clear the whole thing was set up to make the student fail.  They put an armed student in a classroom, and had an armed attacked barge into the classroom to gauge how effective the armed student would be:

…It did not resemble a real-world shooting. The same scenario is shown three times, but in each case the student with the gun is seated in the same seat –- the center seat in the front row. The attacker is not only a top-notch shooter –- a firearms expert who teaches firearms tactics and strategy to police -– but also obviously knows precisely where the student with the gun is sitting.

Each time the experiment is run, the attacker first fires two shots at the teacher in the front of the class and then turns his gun directly on the very student with the gun. The attacker wastes no time trying to gun down any of the unarmed students. Thus, very unrealistically, between the very first shot setting the armed student on notice and the shots at the armed student, there is at most 2 seconds. The armed student is allowed virtually no time to react and, unsurprisingly, fails under the same circumstances that would have led even experienced police officers to fare poorly.

But in the real world, a typical shooter is not a top-notch firearms expert and has no clue about whether or not anyone might be armed and, if so, where they are seated. If you have 50 people –- a pretty typical college classroom –- and he is unknown to the attacker, the armed student is given a tremendous advantage. Actually, if the experiment run by “20/20″ seriously demonstrated anything, it highlighted the problem of  relying on uniformed police or security guards for safety: the killer instantly knows whom to shoot first.

Lott, who has made it a major part of his career to study such things and can rattle off statistics from the tip of his tongue, makes plenty of other good points that completely invalidate the so-called experiment.  He points out numerous cases (which ABC failed to mention) in which armed citizens were able to thwart attackers.  Conversely, he points out that “all multiple victim public shootings with more than 3 people killed have occurred where permitted concealed handguns are prohibited. Rather than studying what actually happens during these shootings, ABC conjured up rigged experiments aimed at convincing Americans that guns are ineffective.”

Indeed, as Lott concludes, the keen advice offered by the experts at ABC make things safe for attackers, not victims.

Read Lott’s excellent article here.